Dems leaders in denial while Republicans find many new faces with strong views . . .
For Democrats, the November election was a kick in the pants and one wonders if the leadership in Washington really got the message. I do firmly believe that the message has been loud and clear to the majority of the elected Democrats who survived and represent districts from Pennsylvania west to Utah and all parts in between. They get it but of course, those folks don’t control the party.
Leadership positions in the House for Democrats are controlled by the Liberal factions from the Northeast and West Coast and for Democrats, their worst nightmare may be occurring if Nancy Pelosi truly goes through and runs for minority leader. If that happens, Pelosi will be the face of the Democrats in Congress once again after the worst shellacking in 72 years. This would be staggeringly stupid but Liberals outnumber the remainder of their Congressional brethren and so it appears it will happen.
For Republicans, now this will be interesting to watch. They have at least 80 new freshmen and these folks come from a wide swath of the country. They come to Congress ready to reduce Government and cut spending. The big question is will their leadership really go for cutting the budget or will they just tinker on the fringes? How vocal and aggressive will these new members be?
Over in the Senate, it’s good news, bad news for Republicans there. The bad news is that Republicans didn’t win control of the Senate. The good news is that Republicans didn’t win control of the Senate!
In reality, the best Republicans could have hoped from the 2010 election was a 51-49 majority. That would have been a huge problem for Republicans as they tried to run the Senate because they have a couple squishy members such as Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The Women of Maine along with Mr. Graham have demonstrated through the years that they are incredibly unreliable for Republicans.
In addition, the reality for Senator Scott Brown is that he is up for re-election in Massachusetts in 2012 and you will not find a stronger leftist state in the country. He has been fiscally conservative but has trended toward his state’s tastes on non-fiscal issues. But Senator Brown for me is fine because has been very solid fiscally and that is THE issue of importance for the coming years. Social issues have been put on the backburner by the American people.
The bottom line is that Republicans would have struggled to hold a majority together on a whole host of issues and Collins, Snowe and Graham would have gained the ultimate power to control the fate of legislation in the Senate. Consequently, Republicans might have electorally held the majority but legislatively Democrats would control the chamber and made life miserable for Republicans who would also bear all the responsibility in the court of public opinion.
So there you go. As someone once said, “A politician thinks of the next election – a statesman of the next generation.” It’s time for the statesmen to rise and be counted . . .