If — as is looking increasingly likely — the Democratic Party suffers a rebuke in the 2022 midterms, it will be exceedingly well-deserved.
Following the 2020 general election, Joe Biden’s mandate from the American people, such as it was, was simple: Be normal. Don’t tweet. Don’t run the executive branch like Donald Trump did.
Biden achieved that on his first day in office. Everything else that he and the Democratic Party have pursued over the next two years was hubris. We know this because the American people gave Biden’s party razor-thin margins in Congress. In fact, the Democrats lost seats in the House while taking the presidency two Novembers ago.
In 2022, Americans are telling Democrats: Stop with your inflationary spending! Stop with your cultural-revolutionary madness in the schools! Enough with your lunatic energy policy!
It’s no insult to the GOP to say that the American people, in voting it into power, have not affirmatively endorsed a Republican agenda. Indeed, Republicans barely campaigned on anything like a forwarding-looking agenda, content mainly to criticize Democrats. By taking office in January, congressional Republicans will have put to pasture what remains of the Biden “Build Back Better” agenda. That will fulfill their mandate. And that’s all to the positive.
So . . . what then?
Republicans will have two choices:
Yes, they can spend the next two years doing everything possible to score points amid the combat of Twitter slap-fights; they can schedule hits on friendly cable-news talk shows; they can repeat the pointless suicide charges of the Obama-era government-shutdown fights; they can goose their fundraising numbers and focus on red meat.
Alternatively, Republicans can soberly and thoughtfully move sensible legislation through Congress and place it on President Biden’s desk (since Republicans unfortunately never got around to putting a legislative agenda forward; for ideas, check out the proposed GOP agenda put together for a special issue of the magazine); they can exercise their constitutional powers of oversight and rein in the administrative state where appropriate; and they can enact sensible reforms to how Congress itself operates and functions, especially to the budget process.
None of the above will mean that the Republicans can’t pass the occasional messaging bill or pursue legitimate investigations of Biden-administration corruption or pandemic-era foolishness. But, remember, most presidents get to do “one big thing” during a term in office. Will, say, a President Ron DeSantis really want to spend his first two years in the White House and much of his political capital on a bruising effort to reform Medicare and Social Security on a party-line basis? I doubt it.
A savvy GOP would take advantage of the coming period of divided government. It would embrace it and use it for its own purposes. If Republicans in Congress have the moxie to cut one or two steely-eyed bipartisan deals with Democrats — especially on entitlement reform and taxes — it will put the country on a better financial footing while avoiding the political trench warfare of moving a partisan bill through Congress entirely on their own a few years down the road. Would it be everything conservatives or Republicans want? Of course not. But, as Ronald Reagan knew well, Republicans must to be willing to take half a loaf in pursuit of their goals.
Taking half a loaf — through a bipartisan entitlements-and-taxes compromise — would be wise. It’d be in the country’s best interest. It’d set the party up well for a 2024 campaign. And it would prove that Republicans are a serious party devoted to the business of governing.
And, of course, Republicans can always come back for the rest of the loaf in 2025.