I was motivated to write this post by an interesting comment from Andy Rudalevige in response to my earlier post on whether the Democrats were better off passing health care without the support of the majority of the country or looking incompetent for failing to move their most important domestic policy agenda. Andy suggested looking at the Republican motivation: if, as many Republicans have claimed, successful passage of health care reform will lead to a Republican House and Senate, then why are Republicans being so vehement in trying to prevent its passage?
Political science suggests two basic motivations for legislative behavior: ensuring their own reelection and pursuing changes in policy that move that policy closer to their own preferred policy. So let’s posit a world where Republicans believe that the current version of health care reform will in fact move policy farther from their preferred policy in terms of health care. The behavior we observe is vehement opposition to this bill, but going beyond simply voting against it to measures that seem genuinely targeted at try to ensure its defeat, such as trying to persuade individual Democrats to defect, threatening all sorts of procedural maneuvers to defeat the bill, etc. What can we conclude then about the beliefs of Republicans about the likely electoral effect of health care reform passing and/or their relative weighting of electoral vs. policy concerns?
It seems to me that we have to be living in one of these three versions of the world:
Republicans don’t really believe that if health care reform passes it will help their electoral prospects, and therefore there is no trade-off between opposing health care reform and seeking re-election (ie., they buy the point I made in my previous post).
Republicans do believe that if health care reform passes it will help their electoral prospects, but dislike it so much that we have a real example of policy concerns trumping electoral concerns in their attempts to defeat the bill.
Republicans do believe that if health care reform passes it will help their electoral prospects, but feel that in order to maintain credibility with the voters they need to appear to be trying to defeat it in every way possible. So electoral concerns still trump policy concerns (ie., privately Republicans want it to pass so they will do better in the coming elections), but politics dictate that the party keep up the appearance of opposing the bill.
Any thoughts on which of these scenarios are in play? I guess a final option is that the Republicans believe it is inevitable that health care reform will indeed pass, but they think if they repeat “health care reform will cost the Democrats the House and the Senate” enough times, it will become a dominant narrative heading into the campaign and help with the 2010 elections. So in this case it wouldn’t be a trade-off so much, but just making the best of a bad situation.
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It seems to me that the simple answer is probably the best:
1. They really believe, on some level, this narrative.
2. They really do oppose (right now) health care reform.
3. They know that for the narrative to pay off, though, they have to be in the media as adamant opposers of the legislation. If they let it pass for reasons of electoral calculus, the narrative changes and the presumed electoral benefit evaporates.
what Ariston said, plus it’s a matter of framing: If Republicans successfully convey the message that passing hc reform is an electoral disaster for Democrats that may well turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So making these types of statements is perfectly rational for Republicans. And if Dems don’t pass hc reform that will not have happened in a framing vacuum, either, but in a context where Reps have defeated “socialized medicine”.
I think the Republican communication strategy makes perfect sense.
It seems clear that they’re just trying to rattle wavering Dem Congresspersons to try to actually prevent passage of the bill. I doubt the leaders really believe this, though the Tea Partiers probably do and will be very surprised when it turns out to be a reasonably popular measure once it’s passed.
If you want to look at the R motivations, I should think the potential “stories” that they’d tell to voters come election time would matter.
A. I fought it as hard as I could, but it passed anyway. Don’t blame me for it.
B. I fought it as hard as I could, and we won. Reward me!
Wouldn’t not fighting now mean there was (all else equal) nothing the R could say in their story?
C. Well, I don’t like it much, but didn’t do anything to fight it, so…look over there, puppets!
Oh, and there’s the whole issue of intra-party particularistic benefits of playing the Good Soldier. As above, win or lose in fighting the bill, those Rs that don’t stand up may face retribution (and again, all else equal, since there’s plenty of disunity on other axes…).
Another thing to consider is not just these two competing motivations, but the uncertainty with which each operates… Republicans may simply be against the health care bill not because they value policy over politics, but because if they lose this legislative battle, they will CERTAINLY see policies far away from their ideal points implemented, but any political gain they may receive would happen in the future, and thus is far less certain.
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