How do we take control of the agenda from the GOP?

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat

Going a bit too far? Well perhaps. The GOP has abandoned the center ground of US politics and, like Tony Blair before him, Obama has apparently decided that all he needs to do is raise his colors on the center-right, and the Democratic Party can expect to hold office for a decade or more until the GOP finally comes to their senses.

As a political strategy for an office-seeker it is pretty much unbeatable. For those of us who care about policy outcomes rather than political outcomes, and who care about what is achieved rather than who gets to be driven around in the big car with a flag in front, it sucks.

In the midst of a recession with interest rates at zero the Washington policy debate is centered on the question of the long term deficit. At this point in the business cycle the sane economic approach for a government is to print and spend money until demand has caught up with capacity. Instead we are discussing the long term issue of the deficit because that is what the GOP wants to discuss.

Ideology provides a bracing experience for party members. Who would not want to be part of a movement that has discovered a supreme and absolute political truth? Office seekers for one: Ideology is more usually than not electoral poison. To get elected, an ideological party usually has to disguise their ideology, wait for the pragmatic party to make a mess, or convince the electorate that their opponents are even more ideological. and thus even more unelectable. than they are.

Until very recently, US political parties had been based on interests and causes rather than ideology. The difference is significant.  Ending slavery is a cause, but the belief that lowering tax rates causes revenues to rise is an ideology, and a pretty nonsensical one at that. Individual politicians have been ideologues, but it has been only on very rare occasions that a Williams Jennings Bryant has been able to bring a whole party around to their ideological positions.

The consolation of ideology is that it provides the power to set the agenda. Blair had ten years in office but governed on terms set by the Tories. Above all, the establishment media is lazy. The ideological party offers an intellectual framework that claims to explain and solve every problem. The pragmatic party offers up nuances and complexities, and in reply the ideological party offers the clarity of a fool. The establishment media picks the one that is easiest to explain.

The challenge for the Netroots is to find a way to break this cycle: How do we take control of the agenda from the GOP? If we can do that, then everything else that we want will follow. If we can't, we will continue to win all the battles but lose the wars (and even then, are we really  winning the battles?)