Republicans would rather lose than cut deals.

Follow Us Get the newsletter Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, now on its way to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature, is a major policy loss for Republicans. It's also the logical consequence of their long-term strategy for dealing with new Democratic presidents: Oppose everything and regard losing as better than cutting a deal. That was bound to be the Republican congressional reaction to Biden because it was their reaction to Presidents Bill Clinton in 1993 and Barack Obama in 2009, and in both cases they considered the strategy to have been successful. In 1993-1994, that was an easy case to make. Some of Clinton's biggest legislative initiatives, notably an economic stimulus bill and a health-care plan, were defeated, and Republicans won huge landslide victories in the 1994 midterm elections. The 2009 outcome was more complicated. Republicans did win big in the 2010 midterms, but large portions of the Democratic agenda passed, including the Affordable Care Act, in part because Republicans managed to alienate one Republican senator (Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter) so much that he switched parties, giving Democrats a brief period with the 60 Senate seats they needed to overcome Republican filibusters. Stepping back a bit, the case is even fuzzier. Many of Clinton's problems at the beginning of his presidency were self-inflicted, thanks to a botched transition and an inept initial White House. As for Obama, the slow and tepid recovery from the 2007-2009 recession, and not Republican actions, probably cause the most damage heading into the midterms. Obama survived to win a second term fairly easily, just as Clinton had won more decisively in 1996. It's not surprising that Republicans in 2009 copied and even intensified what they had done in 1993, and that Republicans now are following the same playbook; it's natural for people to believe that the choices they made were responsible for political outcomes. But that doesn't mean it's true. And it's almost certainly correct that if half a dozen Senate Republicans had really tried to reach a health-care compromise, Obamacare would have been a smaller bill. By 2021, Republicans were so locked into their strategy that it's unlikely they could have altered course if they wanted to. House and Senate Democrats simply weren't going to believe that 10 Republican votes were potentially available to reach a filibuster-defeating 60. It seems likely that Biden agreed. He was willing to listen, but never appeared to seriously enter into negotiations when a smattering of Republicans offered up alternatives to the Democratic relief plan. But it wasn't just their reputation; Republicans, after initially proposing a bill about a third the size as what Democrats were proposing, never made a second offer or even hinted at one. There's nothing particularly wrong with this in principle. No matter how often pundits praise bipartisanship, it's not weird or unusual in politics for parties to disagree, and for the out-party to oppose what the in-party proposes. The question, however, isn't whether an oppose-everything strategy is unethical, but whether it gets the best outcomes. Surely, the top Republican preference was for the relief bill to collapse as it went through Congress. As it turned out, they were unable to make that happen. It seems likely after that, however, that their next-best preference was to have it pass without their votes because agreeing to a deal that would produce a smaller bill would still leave Republican legislators open to accusations that they were unwilling to fight. There's not much scarier to them than being slapped with the dreaded RINO label, Republican in Name Only. The second problem for Republicans, however, is that they've finally lost their credibility when they claim to oppose deficits. For decades they had managed to persuade many pundits to erroneously believe that they favored small deficits when Democrats are president, when in fact the party, for all its "deficit" talking points when Democrats are in the White House, was actually uninterested in actual federal budget deficits. At any rate, after Republican tax cuts widened the deficit under President Donald Trump, no one believes GOP deficit talk. That fact, along with some changes in Democratic policy preferences, helped produce the huge relief bill. At this point, only a very aggressive Republican effort to reach a deal might have had a chance to work, and everything Republicans believe and have done for the last 30 years pushed against making an serious effort. Which is one of the reasons that Biden will be signing a bill on Friday that deals Republicans a whole bunch of policy defeats. 1. Brendan Nyhan on extremist videos on YouTube. 2. Jonathan Collins at the Monkey Cage on public opinion about opening schools. 3. Seth Masket on civics education. 4. Good Perry Bacon Jr. item about the relief bill and legislative politics during the Biden administration. 5. Dylan Matthews on the relief bill and poverty. 6. Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz on how the relief bill changes Obamacare. 7. Chye-Ching Huang on tax enforcement. 8. And Mini Racker on how members of Congress reacted to contracting Covid-19. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. 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