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Do Government Shutdowns Hurt Republicans?
Conventional wisdom suggests Republicans will be harmed electorally by government shutdowns. Is there any evidence for such a claim?
- The government was shut down eight times under Ronald Reagan, the first in the fall of 1981 and the last at the end of 1987. In those six years, Reagan won a massive electoral landslide; the Republicans kept the Senate in two out of three elections, and failed to take the House in three of three elections.
- Bush (41) vetoed a continuing resolution, and the government was shut down for five days in 1990. Democrats held the Senate and the House for the next two elections. Bush lost his 1992 reelection bid.
- The government was shut down twice under Clinton, both times in 1995. The Republicans, having retaken both Chambers in 1994, kept them both for five straight elections. During that time they won two Presidential victories.
- The government was most recently shut down under Obama in 2013. The following year, the Republicans kept the House and won the Senate.
Obviously there myriad factors that determine whether a particular government shutdown is a good idea, but there seems no real precedent to suggest that government shutdowns necessarily harm Republicans electorally.
It’s also worth noting a famous shutdown-fight where the government was not shut down: In 2011, the shutdown was averted at the last minute by a compromise between Republicans and Democrats. In the following election, the Republican Presidential candidate was defeated. The Republicans failed to take the Senate (losing two seats) and kept control of the House (losing a net-eight seats — and the popular vote).
Published in Elections, General
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell ruled out government shutdowns because it was the politically safe thing to do.
Now Boehner is gone and the base is boiling over. A byproduct of the base’s anger is the rise of Donald Trump.
Because those gentlemen played it safe, the Republican Party and the conservative movement are in greater danger than ever before.
Looks like you beat me to it. If I had pearls, I’d be clutching them right now.
MoltoVivace, something to consider is that ‘we’ (collectively those of us on the right) do not get to choose when to use this tactic. The current configuration with R Congress and D White House means it is up to us to appropriate funds. The President has the choice to sign the appropriations or veto the them (assuming McConnell has the stones to get it through the Senate) and hold out for funding more consistent with this priorities.
I realize in this configuration the media will never promulgate a narrative that the gov’t is ‘shut down’ due to Obama’s veto. However, the decision to ‘shut down’ the government lies with the executive assuming the Republican Congress will fund the Constitutionally essential functions (defense, VA). Medicare and SS are not subject to appropriations.
Bastiat Junior, I think what contributes to the Trump phenomenon is how the Republican majority was sold to us. My recollection is the sales pitch went something like this: “We will stop the Obama agenda.” The pitch wasn’t: “We will not vote for any new legislation proposed by Obama, but we will fund 100% of what has already been enacted.”
My point being that the door was opened for Trump in the perceived betrayal by the Republican Congress from what they sold us on. The door did not open merely because of the failure to exercise the power of the purse.
I think that is a great point, and oft overlooked. In a very real sense it is never really the Congress that “shuts down” the government. The majority of shut downs were due to a veto by the President, rather than a failure to produce a budget by Congress (the 2013 shutdown would be the exception I believe). Constitutionally, the power to say “No” resides with the President, while it is Congress who has the power to say “Yes” by proposing legislation. It was somewhat disheartening to me that very few Republicans ever used that argument:
“We did not shut down the government. We passed a budget. Obama and the Democrats shut down the government.”
Rather it seemed all our efforts were focused on either arguing against the shut down or defending our use of the tactic. It’s semantics, but sometimes those arguments can be effective. I hesitate to say they’d be less effective arguments than the pearl clutching you mentioned earlier.
Also, I’m beginning to wonder how important media response should be to our actions as Republicans and conservatives. If you listen to the media, the Republicans shut down the government every day. Media bias is a known quantity, a sunk cost as it were, and therefore it would seem irrelevant to the discussion of our strategies and tactics moving forward.
MV, the 2013 showdown is helpful in describing how truly horrible the Republicans are at communicating.
The issue I recall was primarily funding for ObamaCare. There are parts of that program that poll well, but on the whole it does not.
We had a situation where solely Democrats passed the bill, it polls poorly, and Democrats were ushered out of power in the House and their numbers dwindling in the Senate.
Outside of possibly Ted Cruz I don’t recall any of them making those points about why they did not think they should appropriate funds for Obamacare and make the President explain why they should.
Amen Robert. Could we please drag this meaningless meme out back of the house and shoot it for the rhetorical rabid dog it is.
A popular vote election would have been played entirely differently. A campaign might have attempted to motivate (or in Dem strongholds, manufacture) large majorities in large homefield states. Or a campaign might have attempted to turnout votes in large states where a majority is never a realistic goal. Maybe a combination of those approaches.
No campaign would even choose to throw the vast majority of their resources into a few closely contested states.
The “we’ve only won the popular vote in one of the last six elections” is sour cherry picking, usually by amnesty advocates. Myth of the conservative hispanic vote usually follows. We’ve also won five of the past nine elections. And held the most representative branch of Congress and most state legislatures for most of the past two decades.
The popular vote in 2000 is almost never cited in an intellectually honest manner.
Can you imagine Dems citing the popular vote totals if a few votes had given Ohio to Kerry in 2004?
That poll, first introduced by me, shows that shortly after that huge spike in Dem support a flip toward Republican support. Frank wants to say that was two months after, but when you go to Real Clear Politics and hover your mouse over it you will see that it is late November early December time frame. So what Frank and the rest of “smart set” want us to believe is that the GOP was loved prior to the shutdown and then hated our guts during the shutdown and then, not merely a month afterward began loving us again. I’m sorry but the American people–as politically bi-polar as they are–are not that bad. I hold that a shutdown, properly executed and explained to the constituents of Congressional members could go a long way to earn support for us by explaining a difference between us and them. But it takes backbone, something many in the “smart set” have a hard time locating when it counts.
Agree.
During the September debate, even Ted Cruz failed to make that point. I mentioned that in a post three months ago.
A few days later in an interview, Marco Rubio did point out that it would be Obama shutting down the government. That would reinforce the idea that Rubio is better at politics.
I noticed that, too, and agree that this point goes to Rubio. Still, it looks like Cruz would be a better candidate and president. The failure to vote on Ex-Im and on the latest budget betrayal are two huge points against Rubio.
Why were there surpluses after 1995 then?
Shutdown is a term that the Dems and the media used — and excessively, I agree. They like to hype it as though everything comes to a screeching halt. It’s actually a minor slowdown that is controlled heavily by the executive branch’s shenanigans.
Peace dividend, in part.
They could easily have squandered it — they didn’t. Only Newt has a record historically of letting revenue increase and not going all out to try and spend every single bit of it.
The reforms ended up being more modest than originally anticipated. Newt was making progress on what could have been long-term reforms, where we scaled back the size and scope of government. People were starting to come around to the idea that we’re all in this together – that maybe if we’re going to cut my favorite programs it will be OK because we’re cutting everywhere. But some GOP congressmen refused to play when it came to agricultural programs. No subsidy cuts for them. And if we’re not going to cut the porkiest of corporate welfare, it’s pretty hard to make the case to other segments of our society that if we do it right, they can be better off without so much government money.
So the whole Gingrich revolution fell apart. Sure, Democrats were opposed, but it’s Republicans who sabotaged it from the inside. Sure, we cut welfare for the poor, temporarily. But that’s not the welfare that most needs reform, and not the reform that can result in long-term structural changes.
Quoting from an e-mail from a long-time friend and movement leader:
…I keep reminding you, and you keep forgetting: every single time the Republicans have in the last few decades caused a shutdown, their polls numbers rose.
And then they did better in the subsequent election than they’ve done historically.
The press only does us a large favor by attacks on Republican shutdowns, hence getting our ¡no mas! message out to a GOP base which does not trust the press. This is elementary political public relations jiu-jitsu. (Look at the recent upset election of Bevin in Kentucky, which Morton Blackwell wrote about recently — a classic case of a hostile press giving our side a big win.)
…
1 / Maybe, therefore, the RNC also needs to hire an historian?
2 / And also start a mandatory-attendance political elementary school for Members and Senators? (Ron Johnson needs Kindergarten, first.)
3 / Maybe the national HQ of the Republican Party needs to be moved to Indiana or Wisconsin.
4 / Or give these Cowardly Lions some courage medals, and of course the Scarecrows some diplomas, since they ain’t in Kansas any more?
So, you think the Republicans — by themselves — did this sabotage. No help from the media?
Getting the poor of welfare is the greatest gift that can be given — regardless of whether it saved the country a dime. It is the most basic structural change — human beings in a poverty cycle.
If this is such a wonderful gift (and I agree that it is) how can we make the case that even though it may hurt in the short run, and there may be a difficult adjustment period, but we’re making the cuts for people’s own good — if we can’t apply it to the corporate welfare queens on the Republican side? How can the poor and their so-called advocates trust Republicans on this if Republicans don’t apply it to themselves?
This is why it was such a corrupt, dastardly thing for the agribusiness welfare queens to sabotage the Gingrich revolution. This shows why ag subsidies are the root of all evil – worse, even, than the Ex-Im bank. If we can’t reform this, we have no basis for reforming anything else. If we do reform this, we have an example to use to show how to reform the rest of government and make us all better off.
And this is why Rubio’s support of sugar subsidies is going to make him a big failure if he ever gets into the oval office. To be effective, he needs to reform himself, first.
Republicans didn’t need the media’s help on this. They did it themselves.
The leftmedia are flaming hypocrites of course. They claim to be against corporate welfare. But not even they have sunk so low in the sewer as to preach the virtues of corporate welfare. They will usually sit on their hands or run sly stories emphasizing the dark cloud that obscures the silver lining when agribusiness or any other industry is kicked off of welfare. But they can get by with not exposing their own hypocrisy for all to see because Republicans do their dirty work for them on this issue.
Corporate welfare Republicans. I put them low on the scale of social redeeming value. Lower than commies, fascists, socialists, and Bolsheviks.
The problem is that “do government shutdowns [sic] hurt Republicans”
depends on what you mean by “Republican.”
John Nolte has a piece up at Breitbart which, though it is headlined
says something that can be said about many important issues:
The question is: which of the current candidates haven’t already surrendered?
Boehner supported the 2013 shutdown.
He did. I was operating under the impression that he joined McConnell in ruling out shutdowns earlier this year, but now I can’t find anything on the internet about it.
The ruling out might have been McConnell only. If so, my bad.
Boehner was not my favorite, but we ran the wrong guy out of leadership in Congress and darn sure downgraded the position Boehner vacated.
He should have supported the budget cuts, not the shutdown. That may have resulted in a so-called shutdown, but if that’s what you’re supporting, you’re doing it wrong.
The first actual government shutdown that was characterized as such by someone determined to play it politically was in 1995. The “Reagan shutdowns” (which also characterizes 1990) were treated by the president as short term inconveniences and the Feds moved heaven and earth to not affect the daily lives of citizens while the compromises were worked out.
In other words, if the White House is run by adults, the effect is not a great problem. No one closes the national parks, etc.
After the 1995 shutdowns, Clinton was re-elected, then in 1998 he gained seats instead of losing them- this despite Republican confidence that they had a shot at a veto-proof Senate.
Under Obama, the Clinton playbook was doubled down. Where Clinton had trod carefully, Obama dived in full bore, knowing that he could spend extra money to close the WWII Memorial, block the highway past Mt. Rushmore, and the “press corps” would never say a word other than blaming Republicans.
Anyone who retails the utter nonsense that another shutdown under Obama would be anything but disaster is out of her/his ever-lovin’ mind. A “shutdown” is no big deal with an adult president using the bully pulpit like an adult. We will not see such a thing for at least 13 months.
I gladly apply for the label of “out of his ever-lovin’ mind.” The issue has to be worked, of course, in the face of a hostile press. At one time I thought all that was needed was a better work ethic on the part of the GOP.
Now I realize that the root problem is the corrupt, anaerobic cesspool known as GOPe. It does not want to reform spending, so does not want to handle these showdowns effectively. An adult president is not going to make a difference.