If you believe, as I do, that the $1.75 increase in the minimum wage will have relatively little actual impact on the economy in either direction, it begs the question of why the parties have so vehemently squared off on this issue. The answer is found in the polling on the minimum wage. It turns out the president's proposal is overwhelming supported by the American people. A number of polls have confirmed that something in the 60 to 70 percent range support the increase. Of course, among Democrats it's even higher at about 90 percent. Independents are at about the national average and even about half of Republicans think it is a good idea.
Yet, even though the proposal probably does not have much effect on the economy as a whole and it has the support of a wide majority of the American public, virtually every Republican congressional leader has knee-jerk condemned the increase. In fact, they have literally rushed to the microphone to trumpet the evils of the minimum wage. They have done so because there is only one group that opposes the increase, the tea party. By an almost 2 to 1 margin, self-identified tea party members say the increase in the minimum wage is a bad idea.The problem for Republicans in Congress is that tea party members represent a large bloc of, and in some cases, a majority of Republican primary voters. As a result, congressional Republicans are literally caught between a rock and a hard spot.
If they acquiesce to what a majority of Americans want, they risk alienating the folks who decide who their party's nominees will be. So instead, congressional Republicans go in front of the cameras and tell the American people their opinion about the minimum wage does not matter because they are wrong which, not surprisingly, further alienates most voters.
Of course, being the masterful political tacticians they are, the Obama political team knew exactly how a proposal to increase the minimum wage would play out. In issue after issue, the president has laid the same trap for the Republicans, forcing them to thumb their noses at the majority of the American public to placate their base. And every time, the Republicans fall for it, rushing over the cliff like a herd of lemmings.
Most recent polls show that the president's job approval rating is far higher than Congressional Republicans. In some polls his advantage is nearly 2-to-1. And the approval rating for Congress generally and congressional Republicans specifically is at the lowest level in decades. Democrats now enjoy an advantage of several points in generic congressional polls. In a president's second term, his party has never gained seats in the mid-term election. But if something does not change, the Democrats are positioned to do just that.
The fact that the Republicans may for the first time in the history of the republic lose seats in the mid-term elections of a president's second term shows just what a death spiral the Republican Party is in.
Many moderate, business-oriented Republicans are increasingly turned off by the party's leaders' antics. The only reason many Republicans have not bolted from the party altogether is simply because they view the alternative as so much worse.
When I first began in business more than 30 years ago, I had a mentor who would frequently ask me, "Do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?" His point was that sometimes insisting that you are right on every issue gets in the way of pragmatic solutions.
It is a lesson that the Republicans need to learn, and had better learn fast. With demographic trends already forcefully moving against the Republican Party, it can hardly stand to be outflanked time and again by the president into making it look like it does not give a damn what a majority of the American people think.
News flash to Republicans: This is still a democracy and, notwithstanding the dysfunctional primary system, at the end of the day, the majority rules.
