As long as Boehner permits this lunatic fringe to have a virtual veto power in his caucus, we will descend into chaos again and again. And as long as more middle-of-the-road conservatives hang back because they fear primary challenges, scoldings from Heritage Action, or occasional insults from the talk-show barons, the Republican Party will remain in receivership.
Those who genuinely want a more moderate approach to politics must also reflect on what just happened. Many who chase the political center no matter how far to the right conservatives might drag it were uneasy when Obama and an astonishingly unified Democratic Party insisted that there could be no negotiation over raising the debt ceiling. It was time, they said, to stand up against government by intimidation.
The irony the centrists must confront is that there is now a larger opening for moderate governance precisely because foes of the far right’s extra-constitutional abuses of the congressional process stood firm. In doing so, they brought a large majority of the American people with them. Republicans paid a high price for a benighted strategy, which gives the most thoughtful among them a chance of pushing their party back to more reasonable ground.
And because the effort to hold the country hostage to right-wing demands failed, a crisis of this kind is less likely in the future. Sen. Ted Cruz and those who joined his doomed crusade find themselves discredited. Cruz acknowledged as much when he slipped away, announcing he would not block a deal of the very sort that, days earlier, he was denouncing as a sellout.
Obama needs to build on this victory. He must push the national and congressional agendas back toward the issues the nation cares about — above all, shared and more rapid economic growth, and lower unemployment. This, in turn, means a real effort over the next two months of budget talks to ease deep sequester cuts that are harming the economy, in exchange for the first steps toward longer-term deficit reduction.
To keep the initiative, Obama needs to engage with Congress as he never has before. His task is to build a broad front against crisis-to-crisis governance by rebuilding confidence in government itself and the role it plays in American life.
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