Underdog politics: the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives

288 Pages·2015·1.656 MB·English

by  Green, Matthew N

UNDERDOG POLITICS
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MATTHEW N. GREEN
Underdog Politics
The Minority Party in the U.S.
House of Representatives
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2015 by Matthew N. Green.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections
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the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for
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e-mail [email protected] (U.S. offi ce) or [email protected] (U.K. offi ce).
Set in Janson type by Newgen North America
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, Matthew N., 1970–
Underdog politics : the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives /
Matthew N. Green.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-18103-6 (paperback)
1. United States. Congress. House. 2. Political parties—United States.
3. Opposition (Political science)—United States. 4. Republican Party
(U.S. : 1854– ) 5. Democratic Party (U.S.) 6. United States—Politics
and government—1945–1989. 7. United States—Politics and
govenment—1989– I. Title.
JK1319.G74 2015
328.73′0769—dc23
2014017645
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
one The Politics of the Minority Party 1
two Electioneering 34
three Messaging 71
four Obstructing 113
fi ve Legislating 142
six The Minority Party and American Politics 179
Notes 191
Bibliography 237
Index 267
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PREFACE
It was a warm late morning in early August, but it was not the
weather that made the day so peculiar. The Republican cloakroom,
located just off the fl oor of the U.S. House of Representatives and
normally off-limits to all but members of Congress and their staff,
was being used as a thoroughfare for dozens of tourists. They were
walking through a room normally used by G.O.P. lawmakers to get
to the fl oor, make a phone call, eat a snack, chat with colleagues, or
just rest in a comfortable chair. In fact, the presence of anyone in the
cloakroom was unusual because the House was not even in session;
the room should have been empty altogether.
But this was no ordinary summer day. Congress was indeed in re-
cess, but many congressional Republicans had refused to go home to
their districts. Instead, they were preparing to convene an extremely
unusual “mock” session on the fl oor of the House. There would be
no C-SPAN coverage and no microphones. The public would be
welcome to come to the fl oor to watch. And with both the Demo-
cratic cloakroom and the chamber’s other doors shut to outsiders,
the G.O.P. cloakroom was the only entryway available to visitors.
Groups of them were being guided through the room to the fl oor by
congressional staff to join a growing audience of curious citizens.
By quarter past eleven, the cloakroom’s low-lying chairs were lit-
tered with visitors’ bags, cameras, cell phones, and other items that
were prohibited in the House chamber. Over a hundred people were
seated inside waiting to hear from the seventeen Republicans who
would give speeches. The theme of the day—indeed, of the entire
exercise—was that Democrats, the majority party in the House,
had abdicated their legislative responsibilities: gasoline prices were
$3.80 per gallon, just below an all-time high of $4.10 reached in
mid-July, and yet the ruling party had recessed the House and its
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PREFACE
members had returned to their districts. It was the fi fth day of the
Republicans’ “mock” fl oor session, and they would doggedly repeat
the routine daily for another four weeks.
In politics, as in life, not everyone can be the winner. This book is
about the losers. Specifi cally, it is about one set of losers in particular:
those who belong to the party in the U.S. House that holds fewer
congressional seats than the other party. Why do I focus on them?
It stems in part, I suppose, from being raised by parents who often
rooted for the underdog, whether it was people subject to discrimi-
nation, quixotic presidential candidates, or hapless sports teams. But
I also chose this topic because I believe that the losers in a democracy
are never hopeless. In fact, one of the themes of the book is that
the minority party in the U.S. House can win: in elections, in policy
decisions, in presidential politics, and in the way they are treated in
Congress. Even when it does not, which is often, it still seeks out
and exploits any opportunities it can to secure its goals and protect
its interests, even occasionally innovating new ones like the August
“mock” session.
The House minority party is a neglected stepchild, assumed to
be a single-minded seeker of majority status without importance or
infl uence. Perhaps this is why so few books have been written about
it. But after collecting and analyzing a variety of data on the minority
party, including archival material, fl oor votes, procedural motions,
and speeches in the Congressional Record, and conducting forty inter-
views with current and former lawmakers and staff, I have concluded
that the minority party is, in fact, not only important but also illus-
trative of key (and sometimes underappreciated) features of legisla-
tive politics. Its ability to infl uence political outcomes despite lacking
many formal powers is a good sign, I think, for our democracy: the
minority party does represent an important segment of the popula-
tion. At the same time, however, the minority party’s positive—as
opposed to negative—contribution to policy-making has diminished
in recent decades, and its primary means of infl uence have shifted
from lawmaking to symbolic messaging. As I will argue in the con-
clusion, this trend is disturbing, the fault of both an irresponsible
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PREFACE
minority party and an arrogant majority party, Democrats and Re-
publicans both.
There are many people I have to thank for helping bring this
book to fruition. My seven-month-old daughter and I were fortu-
nate enough to be present at the Republican “mock” session in Au-
gust 2008, an experience that helped inspire this study. For that, I
owe considerable gratitude to John Stipicevic, a leadership aide on
Capitol Hill and former Catholic University student who invited
my daughter and me to witness the unusual August protest. Colleen
Shogan of the Congressional Research Service graciously invited me
to present my early research on procedural motions by the minority
party to her CRS colleagues. It was at a follow-up luncheon with
some of those colleagues that one of them, Jim Saturno, suggested
I turn what was then a rather narrow project into a broader study of
the minority party in Congress. This book is the result.
Financial support came from several sources. The Institute for
Policy Research and Catholic Studies (IPR) provided invaluable re-
search funding, and I am particularly thankful to the Institute’s direc-
tor, Steven Schneck, for giving me a place to work when an earth-
quake forced the evacuation of the politics department at Catholic
University. Additional fi nancial assistance was made available by a
generous research grant from the Dirksen Center.
I also am in debt to the many members of Congress and congres-
sional staffers, both current and former, who willingly took time from
their busy schedules to be interviewed (mostly anonymously) for this
book. Their insights and observations were invaluable, enlightening,
and often highly entertaining. Win Boerckel, Alison Dagnes, Linda
Dooley, Rochelle Dornatt, John Feehery, Daniel Petri, Troy Phil-
lips, former congressman Al Swift, James Wallner, Dan Wirls, and
Don Wolfensberger were among those who provided help in secur-
ing interviews.
I was fortunate to have the help of several outstanding research
assistants with gathering data for the book, including Josiah Baker,
Robert Christian, Greg Collins, Daniel Davy, Darrell Rogers, K risten
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