The Elephant In the Room

John Boehner took the oath of office as Speaker of the House yesterday, and the cheering from his fellow Republicans was probably the most joyful noise made by white people since Muhammad Ali got beaten up by Leon Spinks. Some folks saw political significance in the size of the gavel Speaker Boehner elected to use; it was a pretty big gavel, seemingly almost as big as outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who handed it to him. What did it represent? Boehner's desire to crush Democrats? His manhood? His idea that bigger is better? More likely, he was sending a signal to the country that, for all of his displays of humility, he plans a no less heavy-handed and radical way of doing things since Newt Gingrich occupied that same office.

Pelosi may have felt she got the last laugh with an introductory speech for the new Speaker that caused him to tear up in public again, but trust me, Boehner won't be crying much longer. Old people are going to cry when they see their Social Security and Medicare benefits cut. Children are going to cry when they find their school lunch programs have been zeroed out, and their parents are going to cry when they find that their kids aren't learning anything in this defunded schools. And more and more of us are going to cry after the 2012 elections when redistricting in favor of the Sun Belt solidifies the Republican majority in the House.

Health care reform is the first target of the Republicans, as the House will vote to repeal it next Wednesday with no ability for Democrats to offer amendments, although Harry Reid - who still leads a majority caucus in the Senate - vows not to bring that bill to a vote there. Next will be regulatory "reform" that will in effect get rid of various regulations designed to protect people from the abuses of big business. Michele Bachmann has already vowed to vigorously support repeal of the new financial regulation law.

As wrongheaded as Republicans are, liberals have their own reality to contend with, which is that nothing much can be done to adjust or redirect America's rightward trajectory. The 111th Congress marked the second time since 1989 that a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President declared the end of the era of Ronald Reagan only to have a Republican resurgence begin Reaganism anew. This country is simply not a liberal country. European-style social democracy has never been a saleable product in the United States. Americans who worship self-reliance reject the idea of a nanny state, and they view shared wealth as the antithesis of the old dream that they, too, can join the moneyed classes - in a word, get rich. I know that polls suggest support for more taxes on the rich and expansion of health care reform, but if you counted the number of Americans who would push those ideas to creating the conditions embodied by, say, the Canadian system, you'd be very disappointed. The same people who don't want their Social Security benefits cut still don't the government to regulate and tax every last bit of human activity to the same extent as they imagine it to be in other Western nations.

And yet I've argued for a strong liberal party to either replace or at best supplement the Democrats. A more liberal America is possible in the future - several countries have remade themselves and started over with new assumptions in the past - but not as long as two corporate mainstream parties control everything. Only one out of five Americans identify themselves as liberal, but a new liberal party, formed from the grass roots, could grow that number over time.

In the meantime, we'll have to work with what we have - a party too beholden to corporate interests to work for the people. And the Republicans, too.