Who Bends the Rules Better?

Kevin Drum asks Who Bends the Rules Better?.

He quotes Matt Yglesias, "I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I think this is a really genuinely and non-ironically praiseworthy attribute of the Republican congressional caucus that makes congressional Democrats look really, really bad....Republicans are determined to follow the actual laws and rules. When in the minority, they don’t rebel. They don’t murder their political opponents, they don’t organize coups d’état. What they do is they try to win legislative battles through all the tools at their disposal. And when in the majority they . . . do the same thing. They believe, strongly, that letting wealthy businessmen get what they want is good for America, and they go about doing that with seriousness of purpose. Many Democrats, by contrast, seem to believe that their highest responsibility is to make themselves look good, to preen for the cameras, or to maximize their own personal authority."

Drum then comments, "OK, but look: Democrats did use all the tools at their disposal to pass healthcare reform. They hauled out reconciliation and used it in a very unusual way to overcome Senate rules and pass the final bill. And there's more. Obama has made increasing numbers of recess appointments. He used TARP to rescue GM and Chrysler even though that was pretty plainly not what TARP was intended for. Dems passed PAYGO rules and then declared anything that violated it 'emergency spending.' Likewise, they denounced closed rules when they were out of power but used them routinely when they took over the House. Just last week Obama appointed Elizabeth Warren as a White House special advisor to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a way of evading the normal rules for Senate confirmation."

On a related note, Ezra Klein notes How Newt Gingrich remade the Senate based on a recent paper. "The House, as we know, is a more polarized place. That's been especially true since 1978, when Newt Gingrich was elected and began ratcheting up the GOP's partisanship in order to create a clearer contrast with the majority Democrats. Gingrich's strategy worked -- and not just in the House. Some congressmen, after all, go on to become senators. And it turns out that the behavior of those congressmen-cum-senators can single-handedly account for the rise of polarization in the Senate."

Kevin Drum also wrote about it and concludes "Take from this what you will. But there's not much question that the radicalization of House Republicans during the 80s and after was largely a Newt Gingrich phenomenon, and Theriault and Rohde demonstrate pretty convincingly that he was eventually responsible for the radicalization of the Senate too. Nice work, Newt."