To Understand Politics, Watch the Fringes

To Understand Politics, Watch the Fringes

How the two parties treat their extremists is important — and revealing.

Radical, not unusual.

Radical, not unusual.

Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg

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Lawmakers on the Democratic fringe are ideological outliers but not radicals; those on the Republican fringe are radical, but not necessarily policy outliers. We couldn’t get a better example of that distinction than in the news from Monday.

On the Republican side, first-term Representative Madison Cawthorn made news by repeating the false and irresponsible claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” and appeared to be sanctioning or even encouraging violence in response. Fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger got it right: “This is insane. Based on a total lie. This must stop.”

Unfortunately, there are a lot more Cawthorns than Kinzingers in the House Republican caucus. But that’s not a question of ideology (as liberals who like Kinzinger found out when he expressed hawkish views on Afghanistan over the past two weeks). There is, of course, nothing ideological about falsely calling an election fraudulent. Nor is there much in the way of policy content involved, unless you consider “Republicans should always win elections” to be policy. But the language Cawthorn uses is the language of radicalism — the demand that something must change, and must change now, or else the results will be apocalyptic. 

As for the Democrats? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and three others made news by coming out against the renomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Why? Because, they wrote, “We urge President Biden to re-imagine a Federal Reserve focused on eliminating climate risk and advancing racial and economic justice.” 

Members of the House, of course, have no vote in confirming presidential nominations. Nor is it likely that more than a handful of lawmakers agree that addressing climate risk and racial justice — rather than economic growth, jobs and stable prices — should be the main task of the Fed. That is: These are policy outliers; if you want to call them extremists, I’m not sure that they’d disagree. But they’re trying to move policy in their direction. In this case, the fact that they’re in a tiny minority and that they’re in the House, not the Senate, means that a little public performance is actually a fairly pragmatic approach. The radical move here might be to hold the infrastructure bills hostage, or to threaten to shut down the government, or even to refuse to vote to increase the debt limit, unless they got their way. Instead, the most liberal Democrats are issuing a press release in a situation where they don’t have leverage. In other words, they’re using the opportunity for a little advocacy (and, to be sure, self-promotion). But watch them: When they do have leverage, they use it to bargain for somewhat better (in their view) legislation. With rare exceptions, they are pragmatists, not radicals. 

All political parties have fringes. But the difference between the Democratic and Republican fringes is important, and it tells us a lot about the difference between the parties right now. 

1. Dan Drezner with a pessimistic view of Congress and foreign policy. He’s correct about Congress collectively. But it’s also true that in the past some representatives, and quite a few senators, have seen political advantage in heavy involvement in foreign policy. One thing that probably would help? Reviving House and Senate committees, and giving more money to professional staff for them and their subcommittees. 

2. Jacob Grumbach and Erick Schickler on Congress and protecting democracy.

3. Zoltan Hajnal, Vladimir Kogan and G. Agustin Markarian at the Monkey Cage on a reform that would instantly produce much higher voter participation. 

4. Greg Sargent on the urgent need to revise and update the Electoral Count Act. 

5. Nathaniel Rakich on the revolt of (some) House moderates.

6. And Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern on Texas law, the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade. 

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