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Will voters punish the Republicans?

By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: October 02, 2013

THE federal-government shutdown that started this morning is the result of a factional fight among Republicans in the House of Representatives, pitting an ultraconservative tea-party minority against a merely very conservative majority. As Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, puts it, "We are no longer seeing a revolt against the Republican leadership, or even against the Republican 'establishment'; this revolt is against anyone who accepts the constraints of political reality." Like other extremist movements, he notes, the tea-party faction spends more of its energy fighting other conservative Republicans than it does fighting Democrats, since rivals are more of a threat than enemies. The political dynamics of the shutdown will thus play out on two different fields: that of Republican voters, and that of American voters in general. The two groups are likely to respond differently, and that means we're in for a very rocky year.

Polls so far are suggesting that the general public will blame Republicans for the shutdown. It's not clear how far such disapproval can move the needle on overall disapproval of congressional Republicans, though. Republicans in Congress already have a -44% unfavourable rating (68% unfavourable to 24% favourable), according to TPM's Polltracker average of polls, and it's been in roughly similar territory since mid-2011. Those numbers are clearly not bad enough to affect Republican behaviour, and they were good enough to allow them to retain the House in last year's elections. Congressional Democrats are much better off than Republicans, but they still have a -24% rating (59% to 35%), and even if the public does blame the GOP for the current impasse, it seems unlikely that this will lead to better ratings for Democrats. Things have in fact been moving in the opposite direction: Polltracker'scongressional generic-ballot poll average, which Democrats had led since last year's elections, is now about even for the two parties, not because Republicans have improved—they have spent the entire period hovering at 38%—but because Democrats have dropped to meet them.

Meanwhile, we can safely assume that the 24% of Americans who do still approve of congressional Republicans are almost all Republicans themselves. (Twenty-two percent of Americans currently identify as Republicans, according to Gallup, against 31% who identify as Democrats.) And among Republican voters, the government shutdown is likely to make their congressmen more popular, not less. Tea-party organisations are blaming the shutdown on intransigence—Democraticintransigence. Heck, Erick Erickson is still denouncing House Republicans for failing to "stand your ground", because the final version of a continuing resolution they sent to the Senate no longer demands the complete defunding of Obamacare.

There is no equivalent on the moderate-Republican side to the organisational muscle and rhetorical elan that propels the party's tea-party wing. No one is lining up to back moderate primary challengers to tea-party candidates. Establishment figures from previous Republican administrations who have found themselves transformed into voices of caution and moderation, such as Mr Gerson, most of the writers at National Review Online, and even (mutatis mutandi) Karl Rove, appear to have little ability to affect the party's course anymore. As someone once said of Mikhail Gorbachev after he had lost control of the Soviet Communist Party, they are "moving the levers, but they aren't attached to anything."

In other words, it's hard to see what political force could lead the Republicans' ascendant tea-party wing to change its behaviour and agree to any deal with the Democratic Senate, be it passing a clean continuing resolution funding the government at current levels or, as we move towards October 17th, raising the federal debt ceiling. It just isn't clear what's in it for them. So far, a scorched-earth strategy of total resistance has won them victory after victory, within the party at least. Why mess with a winning formula?

The upshot is that even if the broad public does blame Republicans for the shutdown, there's little reason to believe that this will force the GOP to do anything about it. It is possible, though unlikely, that anger over the government shutdown and the rest of this autumn's confrontations could affect public attitudes enough to shift the congressional vote and give the Democrats a majority in the House after the 2014 elections. RealClearPolitics' poll average still gives Democrats a 4% advantage on the generic congressional vote, and that could certainly widen. But the elections are a long way off. Recent history suggests that during the campaign, Republicans are likely to become more intransigent in Congress, not less, to safeguard against primary challenges. In sum, unless GOP party discipline somehow cracks, America is probably in for a pretty lousy political year.

政府停擺　美國選民怎麼看？

2013-10-02 Web only 作者：經濟學人

10月1日，由於美國的民主與共和兩黨無法針對新預算案達成協議，聯邦政府支出失去法源，導致部分聯邦政府單位被迫停止運作。面對這樣的僵局，美國選民的態度究竟如何？

根據最新民調顯示，一般民眾大多把這筆帳算到共和黨頭上，認為是共和黨的杯葛導致聯邦政府被迫停擺，但這結果不會影響共和黨的行動。雖然目前僅有24％的選民支持共和黨，68％的人表示反對，但還不致於糟到迫使共和黨改變他們的立場。至於民主黨，情況也沒有好到哪裡去，有35％選民表示支持，59％的人反對。換句話說，民主黨並沒有從這次聯邦政府停擺的事件當中得到任何好處。去年大選後，民主黨的支持度原本一直領先共和黨，但隨後兩黨的支持度逐漸逼近，原因並非共和黨的支持度有所改善，而是民主黨支持度下降。

我們可以假設，支持共和黨的24％選民都是共和黨人，而這次的事件只會讓共和黨的國會議員在黨內的支持度扶搖直上。黨內的保守派勢力「茶黨」更是直接把過錯歸咎於民主黨不願妥協，而非共和黨的責任。

隨著茶黨聲勢水漲船高，共和黨內的溫和派愈來愈沒有發聲空間。對茶黨的行動提出質疑的溫和派議員得不到黨內支持，至於其他黨內重量級人士或是立場偏共和黨的《國家線上評論》（National Review Online）網站作者，對於共和黨的路線問題，似乎已沒有太大影響力。就目前看來，共和黨不太可能改變策略，也不會與民主黨達成任何協議，至少現在的策略已經讓他們在黨內贏得了支持，實在沒有理由改變。

因此，即便一般大眾不滿共和黨的做法，但是完全無助於改變現狀。除非民眾的憤怒情緒高漲，導致明年國會選舉變天，民主黨佔眾議院多數，但這似乎也不太可能發生，而且這也無法改變現在的僵局。根據過去經驗，共和黨只會愈來愈堅持己見，不會有任何妥協。看來，短期內美國的政治僵局很難化解。（吳凱琳譯）