{"id":848,"date":"2013-04-23T17:42:40","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T22:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=848"},"modified":"2013-04-23T17:42:40","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T22:42:40","slug":"gun-background-check-failure-further-proof-of-gop-radicalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/gun-background-check-failure-further-proof-of-gop-radicalization\/","title":{"rendered":"Gun Background Check Failure Further Proof of GOP Radicalization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greg Sargent summarizes the argument:<\/p>\n

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Yup: Radicalized GOP is what killed expanded background checks<\/a><\/h2>\n

\"\"As I\u00a0noted this morning<\/a>, the primary culprits in the killing of the Toomey-Manchin compromise are the GOP and the 60-vote Senate, despite the best efforts on the part of some to blame Obama\u2019s lack of \u201carm twisting\u201d for the debacle.<\/p>\n

Steve Benen reminds us that the death of Toomey-Manchin\u00a0is also another reminder of just how radical today\u2019s GOP is in historical terms<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an ongoing reluctance among many to appreciate the scope of Republican radicalization. For many, especially in media, there\u2019s an assumption that there are two major, mainstream political parties \u2014 one center-left, the other center-right \u2014 and an effective president can govern through competent bipartisan outreach.<\/p>\n

Those assumptions are wrong. As we\u00a0discussed<\/a>\u00a0in January, outreach doesn\u2019t work because Republicans have reached an ideological extreme unseen in modern American history. It\u2019s\u00a0a quantifiable observation<\/a>, not a subjective one. Even if GOP policymakers were inclined to work with Obama, they realize that they\u2019d be punished soon after by a primary challenge \u2014 and they know this to be true because it\u2019s happened more than a few times in recent years (look up names like Crist, Specter, Bennett, Lugar, etc.).<\/p>\n

Kevin Drum had\u00a0similar thoughts the other day that are worth returning to<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s the most obvious change of all: the decision by Republicans to stonewall every single Obama initiative from day one. By now, I assume that even conservative apologists have given up pretending that this isn\u2019t true. The evidence is overwhelming, and it\u2019s applied to practically every single thing Obama has done in the domestic sphere. The only question, ever, is whether Obama will get two or three Republican votes vs. three or four. If the latter, he has a chance to win. But those two or three extra votes don\u2019t depend on leverage. In fact, Obama\u2019s leverage is\u00a0negative<\/em>. The last thing any Republican can afford these days is to be viewed as caving in to Obama. That\u2019s a\u00a0kiss of death with the party\u2019s base.<\/p>\n

One thing that continues to get lost in discussions of the demise of Toomey-Manchin is the degree to which it represented a genuine compromise proposal. Remember, after Newtown, one of the few things that was broadly agreed on by many politicians in both parties was that the background check system needed to be improved.\u00a0A number of\u00a0Republican Senators agreed with this, and said so publicly. There were various iterations of this \u2014 some said we needed to improve state data sharing on the mentally ill with the feds; others said we needed to take a hard look at how to run checks on private sales \u2014 but there was genuine consensus around the basic idea that tightening the background check screen was the appropriate way to deal with gun violence, post-Newtown.<\/p>\n

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The solution to the problem negotiated by Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey was a real compromise offering. It addressed the problem both parties agreed needed to be solved, but did so while showing extraordinary sensitivity to gun owners and gun culture. Both Senators \u2014 one a Republican, and one a red state Democrat \u2014 came from states with deep gun cultures, and both had \u201cA\u201d ratings from the NRA. The proposal they negotiated was very responsive to not one, but two major objections from the gun rights crowd. Some worried that the proposal would infringe on certain types of casual gun transfers, such as those among family members, friends, and hunters, so the two Senators exempted all private transfers that don\u2019t go through commercial portals at gun shows or over the Internet. Others\u00a0worried that the additional record keeping under the proposal would lead to a national gun registry, so the proposal\u00a0strengthened<\/em>\u00a0prohibitions against any such registry.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

None of this was enough to win over more than four Republican Senators \u2014 less than\u00a0one tenth of the number of Republican Senators who voted against it. Even if every Democrat in the Senate had voted for it, the proposal would have failed.<\/p>\n

There have been certain moments during the last few years that have been widely acknowledged as a sign of the radicalization of the Republican Party. Among them: The debt ceiling fights; the absolute refusal of Republicans to accept any tax hikes on the wealthy until the fiscal cliff showdown forced them to; Jim DeMint\u2019s declaration that defeating Obamacare was crucial because it would be Obama\u2019s \u201cWaterloo\u201d; and Mitch McConnell\u2019s claim that the GOP\u2019s single overriding goal should be to render Obama a one-term president. The defeat of Toomey-Manchin should be added to that list. Instead, it\u2019s\u00a0being widely held up as proof of failure on Obama\u2019s part.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n