Nothing shows the downward trajectory of the GOP better than Ole Bob Dole

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) was on Capitol Hill yesterday for a bipartisan event celebrating this week’s 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The law, which has done so much to improve the lives of millions of Americans, is “the sort of big bipartisan triumph of yore that now seems unimaginable,” the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted this morning.

This truth did not elude Dole, the 92-year-old war hero now bound to a wheelchair, who’s occasionally candid about his disappointment in today’s radicalized Republican Party. Referring to the dozens of congressional Republicans who simply refuse to compromise, Dole said yesterday, “I don’t know what they are.”

But it’s against this backdrop that The New Republic’s Brian Beutler considered whether the Americans with Disabilities Act would pass in Congress “if it were introduced as new legislation today.”

In general, and whether it’s true or not, Republicans tend to oppose federal regulation on the grounds that regulation imposes heavy burdens on businesses. In 1990, opponents to the ADA, such as they were, made precisely this argument. And they weren’t wrong! Requiring places of business to accommodate disabled people is an obviously worthy undertaking, but it isn’t necessarily a cheap or easy thing to do.

It’s not that the burdensome-to-business objection is a red herring exactly, but the ADA shows that once upon a time not too long ago, Republicans in Congress were happy to override that objection if they viewed the underlying regulatory goals as particularly worthy.

Well said. The arguments against the ADA were rooted in fact – requiring businesses to spend money accommodating the needs of people with disabilities is expensive – but a quarter of a century ago, Democrats and Republicans agreed that it was a burden worth imposing on the private sector.

In contemporary politics, for purely ideological reasons, GOP lawmakers tend to think any government-imposed burden on business is offensive, if not literally unconstitutional. It’s the difference between a center-right party in 1990 and a radicalized party in 2015.

Dole Appears, but G.O.P. Rejects a Disabilities Treaty
By JENNIFER STEINHAUERDEC. 4, 2012

WASHINGTON — Former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas sat slightly slumped in his wheelchair on the Senate floor on Tuesday, staring intently as Senator John Kerry gave his most impassioned speech all year, in defense of a United Nations treaty that would ban discrimination against people with disabilities.

Senators from both parties went to greet Mr. Dole, leaning in to hear his wispy reply, as he sat in support of the treaty, which would require that people with disabilities have the same general rights as those without disabilities. Several members took the unusual step of voting aye while seated at their desks, out of respect for Mr. Dole, 89, a Republican who was the majority leader.

Then, after Mr. Dole’s wife, Elizabeth, rolled him off the floor, Republicans quietly voted down the treaty that the ailing Mr. Dole, recently released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, so longed to see passed.

A majority of Republicans who voted against the treaty, which was modeled on the Americans With Disabilities Act, said they feared that it would infringe on American sovereignty.

Among their fears about the disabilities convention were that it would codify standards enumerated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — and therefore United Nations bureaucrats would be empowered to make decisions about the needs of disabled children — and that it could trump state laws concerning people with disabilities. Proponents of the bill said these concerns were unfounded.

The measure, which required two-thirds support for approval, failed on a vote of 61 to 38.

Dole's sunny side is prone to accommodating his allies and sponsors. His dark side, by contrast, is prone to skepticism, umbrage, and defiance. God help the politician who provokes Dole's dark side. Just ask Bill Clinton. Arm in arm with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Dole is doing everything possible to destroy Clinton's presidency. But if Dole were to capture the White House, he wouldn't have Clinton to kick around any more. The only remaining agenda would be Gingrich's doctrinaire counterrevolution. Would Dole continue to go along with that agenda? Or would his dark side turn against it?

The legend of Dole's dark side is as old as Mother Jones. In 1976, as President Ford's running mate, he blamed the deaths and injuries of 1.7 million American soldiers on "Democrat wars." He derided Jimmy Carter as "Southern-fried McGovern." Running for president in 1988, he told Vice President Bush, on live national television, to "stop lying about my record." He dismissed Bush as "a qualified loser" and ordered a sidewalk heckler to "get back in your cave."