The Dance of the Moderates
Nov 22nd, 2005 at 6:24 am by Susie
E.J. Dionne on the recent budget disaster:
But the Republican leadership does not want to revisit the tax cuts. It wants to keep control over the budget within the Republican Party, which is dominated by its right wing. Eventually, enough moderate Republicans cave in. The game continues. The system guarantees that moderation, so often praised by academics, editorial writers and columnists, is the one approach that’s impossible.
And so it was not surprising that hours after the budget vote, the House blew up over Iraq. If the House leadership had wanted a real debate on Iraq policy, it wouldn’t have sprung a synthetic, one-sentence “resolution” crafted to embarrass Democrats at the last minute. It would have permitted amendments and alternatives, and allotted serious time to a serious subject.
Which brings us back to those democracy experts we are sending around the world. Let’s bring just a few home and ask them to advise our leaders on how to bring democracy to Congress. If we want to sell reason and moderation to our Iraqi allies, we’d be more persuasive if we could have reasonable debates ourselves about how to fund our government and how to conduct our policy in their country.
