GOP vote on stimulus package a triumph of discipline over reason

WASHINGTON — Watching the House Republicans vote unanimously against President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package, I thought of Ronald Reagan, the air traffic controllers and the potential consequences for those who fail to recognize that one political era has given way to the next.

You may recall that the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization went on strike in August 1981, seeking better working conditions and more pay. Reagan had been in office just seven months, and the nation still wasn't quite sure what to make of him. The controllers' union had legitimate gripes and calculated that the new president would deal rather than risk a disruption of air travel. The union knew that strikes by government workers were illegal, strictly speaking, but also knew that other organizations of federal employees had gotten away with similar walkouts in the past.

Reagan declared the strike a "peril to national safety" and gave the more than 13,000 air traffic controllers 48 hours to return to work. A few complied. When the deadline expired, Reagan fired the 11,345 controllers who had defied him. Two months later, the union was decertified. Years passed before any of the strikers were allowed to work as controllers again.

The point isn't to revisit the merits of the strike or the wisdom of Reagan's hard-line stance. The point is that the controllers' union failed to realize that the dawn of the Reagan administration represented a rare fundamental shift in American politics. Under Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford or even Richard Nixon, the controllers might well have won their strike. Under Reagan, they had no chance — not just because of his stubborn resolve, but because American voters had given him a sweeping mandate for change.

That episode turned out to be just the beginning. Before Reagan, the economic beliefs that came to define the modern Republican Party — always cut taxes, always slash government spending, always deregulate — were associated with the conservative fringe. He brought them into the mainstream, effectively shifting the whole political spectrum sharply to the right.

Reagan's new orthodoxy wouldn't have been possible unless Americans had the sense that the old orthodoxy had reached a dead end. Carter had famously talked about "a crisis of confidence." There was the feeling that America's greatness was somehow slipping away, that things were out of control, that the old rhetoric was empty, that the old solutions wouldn't solve anything, that we needed to try something new.

Um, is this ringing any bells for Republicans on Capitol Hill?