Corrosion of Conformity

By Kevin D. Williamson March 3, 2019 March 3, 2019

After all those years of complaining about Republicans “marching in lockstep,” the Democrats have a new program: marching in lockstep. There was a time, not that long ago, when Democrats used to decry “voting in lockstep.”

That was a big talking point during the George W. Bush years, with a couple of unspoken qualifiers: “Voting in lockstep” was bad when Republicans did it, and very, very bad when Republicans did it while in the majority.

That line of rhetoric lasted for a few months, until somebody did some actual reporting and found that the data demonstrated the opposite: In spite of all their humble-bragging about being more diverse and less disciplined than Republicans, Democrats in Congress in fact voted with their leadership more often than Republicans did at the time.

There were some pretty obvious reasons for that: Ron Paul and other libertarian-leaning Republicans often opposed the Bush administration, fiscal hawks voted from time to time against go-along/get-along spending bills, etc. That continued into the Obama years as more ideologically rigid Republicans from safe districts increasingly bucked at the leadership of more moderate Republicans such as Speaker of the House John Boehner. As Ryan Lizza put it in the New Yorker in 2013: “Boehner has lost his ability to control his caucus.”............To Read More....