On January 29, 2009, the whittled-down and beaten-up Republican minority in the House of Representatives gathered for a strange celebration of defeat.
The Democrats had just drubbed them at the polls, seizing the White House and a 79-seat advantage in the House. The House had then capped President Barack Obama’s first week in office by passing his $800 billion Recovery Act, a landmark emergency stimulus bill that doubled as a massive down payment on Obama’s agenda. Even though the economy was in free fall, not one House Republican had voted for the effort to revive it, prompting a wave of punditry about a failed party refusing to help clean up its own mess and dooming itself to irrelevance.
But at the House GOP retreat the next day at a posh resort in the Virginia mountains, there was no woe-is-us vibe. The leadership even replayed the video of the stimulus vote—not to bemoan Obama’s overwhelming victory, but to hail the unanimous partisan resistance. The conference responded with a standing ovation.
“I know all of you are pumped about the vote,” said Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip. “We’ll have more to come!”
The Republicans were pumped because they saw a path out of the political wilderness. They were convinced that even if Obama kept winning policy battles, they could win the broader messaging war simply by remaining unified and fighting him on everything. Their conference chairman, a then-obscure Indiana conservative named Mike Pence, underscored the point with a clip from Patton, showing the general rallying his troops for war against their Nazi enemy: “We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time! We’re going to go through him like crap through a goose!”
This strategy of kicking the hell out of Obama all the time, treating him not just as a president from the opposing party but an extreme threat to the American way of life, has been a remarkable political success. It helped Republicans take back the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016. This no-cooperation, no-apologies approach is also on the verge of delivering a conservative majority on the Supreme Court; Republicans violated all kinds of Washington norms when they refused to even pretend to consider any Obama nominee, but they paid no electoral price for it—and probably helped persuade some reluctant Republican voters to back Donald Trump in November by keeping the Court in the balance.
...
In December 2008, Cantor gathered his House whip team and two Republican pollsters at his condo building. With the media narrative dominated by the terrifying danger of a second Great Depression and the historic election of the first black president, Cantor wanted to discuss his strategy for responding to the Democratic landslide. It was a messaging strategy, not a governing strategy, and it was pretty simple. It was to defy the conventional wisdom that Republicans needed to move to the center and reach out to Obama if they wanted to start reviving their ruined brand. “We’re not here to cut deals and get crumbs and stay in the minority for another 40 years,” Cantor declared. “We’re going to fight these guys.”
Cantor knew he couldn’t stop Obama’s agenda in the House. But he figured that if Republicans stuck together and made sure the president couldn’t brag about bipartisan support for his progressive priorities, they could make him pay a political price for failing to cure the partisan divisions in Washington. The goal was not to make Democratic initiatives more palatable to conservatives; the goal was to make those initiatives unpopular, scuff up Obama’s post-partisan Yes We Can media shine, and eventually drive the Democrats out of power. In early January 2009, when the House GOP leadership held a retreat at an Annapolis Inn, the team’s new campaign chairman, Pete Sessions, opened his presentation with a philosophical question: “If the Purpose of the Majority Is to Govern…What Is the Purpose of the Minority?”
His answer was on his next slide: “The Purpose of the Minority is to Become the Majority.”
That same weekend, McConnell gathered his depleted Senate Republican caucus in the ornate Members Room of the Library of Congress to deliver a similar non-governing message. He warned his colleagues that they would have nothing to gain from working with the incoming president, that bipartisan cooperation would just make Obama look like a hero. An aide later provided a copy of his talking points:
“We got shellacked, but don’t forget we still represent half the population.”
“It’s important to keep an eye on regaining the majority.”
“Most importantly, Republicans need to stick together as a team.”
That was all before Obama took office. After his inauguration, Republicans quickly canceled his honeymoon.