U.S. Fringe Festival By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

October 8, 2013   U.S. Fringe Festival   By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There is one group of people with an even greater interest than Democrats in President Obama prevailing over Tea Party Republicans in this shutdown showdown, and that is mainstream Republicans.

What exactly are supposedly mainstream conservatives — starting with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — thinking? If the “Ted Cruz Wing” of the G.O.P. prevails and forces the president to curtail Obamacare in any way in return for funding the government, mainstream conservatives will be staring at a terrible future. In the near term, they’ll be taking orders from Senator Ted Cruz, who would be crowned kingmaker of the G.O.P. if he got Obama to give in one iota on Obamacare. Cruz and his Tea Party allies would be calling the shots, and Boehner would become that very rare bird — a SPINO (a Speaker in Name Only).

In the long run, because this fringe would be dictating the party line, Republicans would stand zero chance of winning the White House in 2016. If the country rejected Mitt Romney’s bad imitation of a far-right conservative — one hostile to immigration reform, health care, gay marriage and a grand bargain — imagine how the real thing would fare.

Finally, given the way the Republicans have managed to gerrymander so many Congressional districts in their favor, they can easily retain control of the House under any normal economic conditions. But if they trigger a U.S. government default, a disruption in Social Security payments and economic turmoil in their effort to scuttle Obamacare — and a majority of voters blame Republicans — that could overwhelm the G.O.P.’s gerrymandered House advantage.

In other words, the only thing standing between mainstream Republicans and a hellish future of kowtowing to Ted Cruz, never seeing the inside of the White House and possibly losing the House is President Obama’s refusal to give in to the shutdown blackmail that Cruz & Co. have cooked up. The more pragmatic Republicans, who know that this is a disaster for their party but won’t confront Cruz & Co., have settled on this bogus line: “Well, sure, maybe Cruz and the Tea Party went too far, but it’s still President Obama’s fault. He’s president. He should negotiate with them. He needs to lead.”

President Obama is leading. He is protecting the very rules that are the foundation of any healthy democracy. He is leading by not giving in to this blackmail, because if he did he would undermine the principle of majority rule that is the bedrock of our democracy. That system guarantees the minority the right to be heard and to run for office and become the majority, but it also ensures that once voters have spoken, and their representatives have voted — and, if legally challenged, the Supreme Court has also ruled in their favor — the majority decision holds sway. A minority of a minority, which has lost every democratic means to secure its agenda, has no right to now threaten to tank our economy if its demands are not met. If we do not preserve this system, nothing will ever be settled again in American politics. There would be nothing to prevent a future Democratic Congress from using the exact same blackmail to try to overturn a law enacted by their Republican rivals.

The president has said that he would give the G.O.P. an agenda for negotiations that could start when the government is funded and the debt ceiling lifted. He’s ready to consider trading the medical-device tax in Obamacare for another equivalent source of revenue or having a talk about closing tax loopholes and reforming entitlements — to both lower the deficit and raise revenue to invest in infrastructure or early childhood education. What Obama will not do, and must not do, is pay an entry fee to that negotiation — say giving up the medical-device tax — just to help Boehner down from the tree. Cruz & Co. would claim victory.

The reason so many mainstream Republican lawmakers want Obama to give something to Cruz & Co. is that they want to get out of this mess, but they’re all afraid to stand up to the far-right fringe themselves — with its bullying network of barking talk-show hosts and moneymen. But Obama shouldn’t take them off the hook. Only Republicans can delegitimize the nihilistic madness at the base of their party. (I wouldn’t exaggerate this, but I think Boehner underestimates how many mainstream Republicans feel their party is being stolen from them by radicals — and hunger for a leader who will take them on.)

For their party’s sake and the country’s sake, Republicans need to go through the same kind of civil war and fundamental rethinking that the British Labour Party went through — after successive defeats by Margaret Thatcher — to produce “New Labour” and that Democrats went through — after successive defeats by Ronald Reagan — to produce “Clinton Democrats.”

Yes, it will cost them today, but it will enable them to thrive in the future. America needs a proper right-of-center conservative party to challenge a left-of-center Democratic Party. Without a healthy opposition party — one that is ready to win some and lose some and learn from its losses, one that has a real agenda for upward mobility, not just a low-tax obsession and boiling anger — our two-party system doesn’t work, and neither does the country.

The real threat to U.S. national security, By RICHARD HAASS

The real threat to U.S. national security

By RICHARD HAASS | 10/7/13 3:21 PM EDT

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/the-real-threat-to-us-national-security-97938.html

The United States faces a number of serious challenges from abroad, including a more assertive China, terrorists, climate change, a North Korea with nuclear weapons and an Iran close to having them, and a turbulent Middle East. But the greatest threat to American national security comes from within — from our own political dysfunction.

The ongoing shutdown of the federal government is only the most recent example of this reality. It comes against the backdrop of sequestration (which cuts spending without regard to its economic consequences and fails to protect investment in the physical and human capital needed to make this country competitive over the long term) and the pending vote to raise the debt ceiling, the failure of which to pass would push interest rates higher, causing both economic growth and markets to plummet.

Some observers have noted the dangers posed to U.S. security by the shutdown, citing the furlough of federal employees who provide intelligence that helps keep us safe. This is true, but the consequences of what is going on (and not going on) within Congress and between Congress and the White House threaten U.S. national security in other, even more significant ways.

Foreign policy and a country’s reputation are as much about what it is as what it does. This country sacrificed an enormous amount in both lives and treasure in trying to spread democracy to the greater Middle East. One can argue the wisdom of having tried to do so, but what cannot be argued is that we are now discrediting democracy by shutting down our own government. The appeal of the American economic model took a major hit from the events of 2008; now we are doing the same to our political model. No one should be surprised when official entreaties to Egyptians go ignored, or when elites in China and other authoritarian societies conclude that their approach, for all its flaws, is still preferable to ours.

Even more dangerous is the likelihood that political disorder here at home will lead to political disorder abroad. The most important currency for a great power is to be reliable and predictable. Friends and allies count on it, as it is their principal source of security. Actual and would-be foes also need to take U.S. capacities and commitments into account, as they know that certain actions on their part will trigger a U.S. response, possibly military retaliation. In return, the United States derives influence and a more stable world.

America’s reputation for reliability was already suffering before the shutdown, in large part because of President Obama’s uncertain handling of the Syria crisis. The eleventh-hour decision to ask Congress for the authority to carry out limited military strikes against a Syrian government that had used chemical weapons was a source of dismay even to those who questioned the wisdom of the strikes themselves – especially as most observers judged this Congress would not support such Obama’s request.

Now comes the cancellation of the president’s trip to Asia, making a mockery of the “pivot” or rebalancing to that part of the world and away from the Middle East, which was the big strategic theme of Obama’s foreign policy. The result is that small countries in the region are more likely to acquiesce to Chinese demands, while stronger countries, such as Japan, are more likely to take it upon themselves to stand up to China. One can hear the tectonic plates shifting in a part of the world destined to shape much of the trajectory of the 21st century.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, uncertainty about U.S. behavior has led a number of longstanding partners to discount U.S. preferences and simply conduct their own foreign policy. One sees this in Saudi policy toward Egypt and Syria — and we could well see more of it in Israel’s policy toward Iran.

Speaking of Iran, it is unclear that Obama could persuade Congress to go along with any easing of sanctions, sure to be a necessary part of any deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program. The same holds for trade policy: Even if the U.S. trade representative manages to conclude negotiations with his Asian counterparts, no one can predict with confidence that an increasingly isolationist Congress would go along.

So where will divisions inside the Beltway lead us in the world outside? The short answer is that American political dysfunction is hastening the emergence of a post-American world. It is not that the primacy of the United States will come to be replaced by anyone else – no other country has the capacity or habits to take on such a role – but rather that this world will be one defined by growing disarray. A failure of governance in the United States is leading to a failure of governance in the world.

Americans are kidding themselves if they think they can insulate themselves from such a world. Globalization will visit us, whether we like it or not, whether we are ready or not.

So Americans should see the government shutdown and what it represents for what it is: a threat to this country’s national security. Those who oppose Obamacare should try to amend or repeal it thorough normal legislative processes; failing that, they should try to elect those who are like-minded. In the meantime, the government must open, including ensuring that the United States meets its obligations, financial and otherwise. If this requires the White House and the Congress meeting halfway, so be it. It is time to put country before party and politics.

Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order.