Abstract
This was a difficult piece to write. The last eight years of anti-governance from the Republican Party was so widespread, and literally began the moment Obama took office, making it's hard to explain the arch of their actions in a proper manner without writing 50 pages. I tried to discuss the Republicans' obstruction through three different avenues: impeding legislation, intentionally causing gridlock, and dragging their feet on Obama cabinet/judge appointments.
First, I focus on impeding legislation by summarizing the long road to passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the untold lengths taken by Republicans to reject a plan that many of them had once championed. With succinctness in mind, this piece focuses mainly on ACA, which I see as a microcosm of the Republicans' behavior over the past eight years.
There are a few options to pick from on intentional gridlock caused by Republicans, as well. But by far the most famous of them all is the Republicans' refusal to pass a budget for 2014, unless said budget did not appropriate any funds for ACA. This of course, lead to the now infamous two-week government shut down of 2013. Even though there was no hope that they would achieve their goal, House Republicans saw obstruction as their best course of action, even if they knew it would ultimately be a fruitless effort.
The final aspect of their obstructive tactics was a bizarre tendency of the Senate to drag their feet on, or outright reject, Obama appointments. The case of Merrick Garland, most recent choice for Supreme Court, will likely go down in history as one of either party's greatest political coups. While we will always remember Garland, this is yet another piece of anecdotal evidence that represented the norm.
I understand that this piece is solely my opinion. But I have tried to cite and back up every piece of info with hard, reliable sourcing and data. As always, I encourage educated and civil discussion on my blog, And thanks for reading!
From Day One
In January of 2009, shortly after Barack Obama was inaugurated, the rookie president visited the Capitol to speak with congressional Republicans about his economic recovery plan. His intentions were to present an $815 billion stimulus devised by House Democrats, with intentions of revitalizing an economy in dire straights.
For the most part, Obama's stimulus package seemed like an open-and-closed case. The U.S. economy was in huge need of such, and Republican George W. Bush had implemented and passed a similar stimulus bill one year previous. But before Obama even left for the meeting, he was handed a disturbing press release by one of his staffers. Turned out, House of Represenatives Minority leader John Boehner had already announced his opposition to the bill during his weekly press conference, and urged his colleagues in the House to voice their opposition.
In what was viewed an early extending of the proverbial olive branch by Obama, Republican leadership called for a unanimous rebuke of his plan before the president could even make his case. This type of obstruction was a sign of things to come. Despite Obama holding the presidency for eight years, and the Democrats holding both or one house of congress for six of those eight, the Republicans refused to do business.
Boehner was not the only Republican leader to step away from the table with Democrats. Senate Minority leader Eric Cantor pledged 100% opposition to Obama's stimulus deal. At the time, such a pledge seemed far-fetched. But in the end, Cantor got his wish, as only three Republican Senators (one of them, Arlen Specter, soon after switched his allegiance to the Democratic Party) voted against the bill. Incredibly, Boehner got an even more unified vote from his end, as 177 of 178 voted against the stimulus, with one abstaining. In the end, the bill passed the Democratic-controlled congress with essentially zero Republican support.
Impeding Legislation
The Republicans' strategy to fight Obama's economic stimulus bill was just the beginning. On healthcare legislation for example, Republicans laid waste to anything and everything they could during the path to the passage of reforms, reforms that Obama largely campaigned on during the 2008 election.
Although Obama had wavered back-and-forth on his support for a single-payer system, he worried that a single-payer variation would get shot down immediately immediately by Republicans and centrist Democrats. Instead, the Obama Administration looked to the past for a compromise with any possible defectors. Republicans had previously suggested a privatized system that included an individual mandate on health insurance as an alternative to single-payer. Obama and Democrats saw the mandate as a decent compromise. Again, the Republicans weren't interested. Senate Republicans insisted they would filibuster any version of the bill that included an individual mandate, making the legislation essentially impossible to implement from an economic standpoint.
While the bill passed the house 220-215, with only one Republican voting in favor. Cantor's pledge of 100% voting opposition to legislation coming from the White House was officially becoming the norm. Incredibly, many of those same Republicans actually supported similar legislation in past years. The tactic of obstruction couldn't have possibly been more transparent. Negotiating bipartisan legislation was just not an option.
Republican Senators also remained 100% opposed to the bill. Again, the 60-39 passage of the bill saw 100% Republican opposition.
Even after delaying and fighting the bill for years in congress, the Republicans continued to focus their attention on dismantling the bill after its passage. The house voted an astonishing 60 times to repeal ACA, knowing full well that this would never pass the Senate, and Obama would quite obviously veto any repeal of his bill. They even were behind an extensive legal challenge claiming that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. The challenge reached the Supreme Court before being struck down by a 6-3 ruling.
ACA was far from the exception. The Republicans responded similarly and with varying success to even the most popular of bills such as Obama's highly popular jobs/infrastructure bills, specific gun control legislation supported by the vast majority of Americans, or the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
Intentional Gridlock
Soon after ACA's passage, Republicans regained control of the House in 2010, as the rise of the Tea Party saw them pick up 63 seats in the midterms. Even Cantor, the man who had pledged complete and consistent opposition to all things Obama, lost his primary race to David Brat, who ran to the right of Cantor and characterized him as another pawn in a corrupted government.
With one of the two houses of congress now under their control, the Republicans knew they had the power to wreak havoc. Sure, they didn't exactly have the full support of the American public. But with continued cooperation from House Republicans, Obama and the Democrats would be unable to pass any of their intended legislative reforms.
The House did Boehner's bidding immediately. Obstruction had always been the name of the game. And a majority in merely one chamber of congress, coupled with unified opposition to all things Obama, meant constant gridlock.
In 2013, having already waited until the final second to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 (another "sure thing" in the past that had been passed with little quibbling from either party), the House lead another "game of chicken," refusing to appropriate funds for the 2014 fiscal year that didn't include the defunding or delaying of Obamacare.
As the standoff continued, House leader John Boehner recanted, settling for a reassurance on a minor provision in the law. But the rest of his party saw things differently, defying their leader and voting overwhelmingly in favor of the shutdown, passing the 2014 budget with zero funds included for Obamacare. Incredibly, it would be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (who took over Cantor's post) who would say that the House Republicans tactic was "not a smart play." The Kentucky Senator joined bipartisan discussions to finally come to an agreement.
With House Republicans now so unified that they would even defy even Boehner, the Texas Republican resigned in 2015 amidst increasing pressure from his caucus.
Amazingly, while Boehner and Cantor had achieved the uniformity they so desired from their caucuses, their party's overall platform ended up being even more partisan and obstructive than they had desired, which ironically lead to their respective removal's from power. They created the beast so to speak, but they could not control it. In all, congress would pass a record-low amount of legislation from 2011-15, as House Republicans simply refused to play ball. Even for a divided congress, the inactivity was virtually unprecedented.
Obama Appointees
But the obstruction was not just directed at legislation, it was dedicated to destroying anything Obama touched. Even First Lady Michelle Obama's plan to require certain health standards for school lunches, was torched on partisan grounds. But perhaps most frustrating for the Administration was Senate Republicans' delays and refusals of Obama appointees.
The Senate's recent refusal to even consider Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court after the death of Antonin Scalia, is perhaps the best example of Republican Senators' refusal to make any appointment easy, no matter who Obama picked.
Scalia's sudden passing in early 2016 at his West Texas ranch came as a political problem for Republicans. They had already fought tooth-and-nail against Obama. But now with the Democratic POTUS able to appoint a justice to the court, it was almost a certainty that the court would flip to a 5-4 left-leaning majority, carrying on their nemesis' legacy for years to come.
Before he even knew who Obama would appoint, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (the Republicans took back the Senate in a 2014 election behind woeful turnout) expressed merely one hour after Scalia's death that there would be no hearing on a replacement for Scalia, at least not until after the election in November. Just as they had with the stimulus of '08 and budget of '14, congress was obstructing processes in an unprecedented manner. After all, no SCOTUS nominee in history ever went more than 125 days without a vote from the Senate. Garland would wait for 300 days without even a Senate hearing. His nomination died on Jan. 3 at the conclusion of the 113th United States congress.
Furthermore, as was the case in previous examples, the Republicans refused to bend on a matter where Obama had actually attempted to reach across the aisle. After all, Garland was widely viewed as an ideological moderate. Not that Republicans cared at this point, but the hypocrisy was all too obvious.
Weeks before Obama nominated Garland, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch had exclaimed that "The president told me several times he’s going to name a moderate [to fill the court vacancy], but I don’t believe him. [Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants.”
Elsewhere, Senators Jerry Moran and Lisa Murkowski both reversed course on holding hearings, revealing the continued pressure of Senators to uniformly obstruct Obama's selection of Garland. And in 1997, when Garland was being considered for the D.C. District Court of Appeals, seven current Republican Senators voted on the matter, all of them supporting Garland. Pat Roberts of Kansas was one of those seven, and he made the obstructive strategy all too clear when asked why he had reversed course on Garland, telling a CNN reporter that "it's not about the person." Indeed, the Republicans not only weren't going to vote on Garland, they weren't going to remotely consider any realistic Obama SCOTUS appointee, no matter the selection.
While Garland's ordeal may go down as the Republicans' most famous obstruction of Obama appointees, it is far from the only example. Attorney General Loretta Lynch waited nearly six months for the Senate to even hold a vote to confirm her nomination. The process was the longest for an Attorney General in American history.
The overall data supports the anecdotal evidence provided. In all, Obama's picks waited for Senate confirmation far longer than any other POTUS' nominees in recent history. Trial court judges waited over 215 days from nomination to confirmation, a number which easily outnumbers that of his immediate predecessors. The Senate had already filibustered an astonishing 82 of Obama's nominees by his second term. For perspective, the Senate had only taken this action 86 times in total before Obama took office.
Eight Years Later
It's been eight years of constant Obama obstruction. That's not just partisanship talking - it's what the data says. No president in recent memory faced a congress simply unwilling to work with them on any matter. For the Republicans of 2008-16, no progress was their kind of progress.
Today, the strategy somehow seems genius. The disproportionate economic"recovery" brought on largely by the congressional gridlock, and arguably the Democrats' inability to explain why the recovery wasn't being felt everywhere, resulted in many voters looking for a change of the status quo. The anger sparked by said "recovery" and government's inactivity on the matter, drew many Americans to the polls to vote for non-establishment candidates. This sentiment is perhaps what helped Donald Trump to overwhelming support from most all of America's more economically stagnant counties, and turned off some voters to Hilary Clinton, viewed as a part of the D.C. machine that had caused all this mess in the first place.
For eight years, the right wing machine spurned any sort of left-leaning or bipartisan governance. This was a bold move. One that many considered political suicide. And yet, when Trump takes over the Oval Office on Jan. 20, Republicans will hold their largest majorities across the board since 1928. The age of obstruction suddenly seems a genius political con.
Congressional Republicans spent eight years limiting any possible progress that could be attributed to Barack Obama and Democrats. Now after all those years of playing rope-a-dope, they are coming out of the corner throwing heavy punches. The stories of the '08 stimulus bill, the arduous passing and defense of Obamacare, and the Senate's rejection of Garland, are accurate representations of congressional Republicans' strategy.
The numbers support that whether it be partisan debate, or even the most basic of bipartisan processes, the Republicans simply refused to come to the table and govern. And it worked.
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