Monday, September 10, 2012

Why Congress will remain in GOP control in 2013

Even in the face of the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by a handful of angry white aging billionaires in this campaign, the President has a chance of reelection because he commands national attention even without funding. He can make the news almost daily from now to November.

Not so with Joe Blow Congressman from Some Small State, running for reelection. For the billionaires to swamp President Obama's voice with their well-financed bullhorn is nearly impossible. But it's a snap for the Angry Billionaires' Club to bury congressmen--even including many state senators--out of their petty cash fund. And since it's legal to lie in political ads, and also legal to keep your involvement secret (so major corporations can conceal their meddling in politics), the ABC can and will target vulnerable congressmen across the country with libelous campaigns--including dirty tricks like chain emails and telephone "push polls" like they used to bury John McCain in 2000--and do it in last-minute banzai charges that give Democrats and moderate Republicans guilty of ever cooperating with Democrats very little change of surviving.

So even if President Obama is re-elected he will face an intransigent Republican House majority and either Senate majority or submajority (i.e. enough Republican senators to block nearly all confirmations and legislation through preventing majority votes).

Meaning you should vote for Romney if you think there's nothing worse than gridlock in our Capitol--or for Obama if you think efficient achievement of Republican aims is even worse than gridlock.

Those aims start with repealing ObamaCare in its entirely. Governor Romney is making the rounds saying he'd keep various parts of it. He won't, because that's not up to him. A Republican Congress with a 51 vote Senate majority will use an arcane process called reconciliation to send him a blanket repeal of ObamaCare in toto. Do you seriously think he'd veto that? He would sign it, fulfilling his tacit promise to the Republican base to do as Grover Norquist said--sit in the White House and stay out of Norquist's way, signing all Republican legislation sent him without making a peep. All a President Romney would need to have is a functioning right arm and enough neurons to guide it through a signature.

It is unlikely for the ABC to manufacture enough votes to give the Senate a veto-proof majority. Which means a Democratic president would be able to force Congress to compromise--just as Clinton forced the intransigent Newt Gingrich Congress to play ball, even though Clinton had to call the GOP's bluff and bring most federal functions to a halt for a period of time.

So if it goes one way, control of America will pass to Congress, but actually to the ABC; if it goes the other way, we'll get four years of pitched battles between a Congress that believes compromise is immoral and a President who has nothing to lose by blocking them. At the very least it would be entertaining to watch this kind of unstoppable force-immovable object Kabuki dance play out...


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Trying to figure out if there is evidence of anyone reading your stuff.

You go on and on, and on and on, and on and on, about how everything the Republicans do is wrong, and everything they say is a big lie, to the point of setting a heretofore unimagined standard for the ridiculously biased.

Then the incredulous reader looks to the stat line and sees that there are absolutely no reader comments. Either no one is reading this, or the comments are unanimously in concurrance that your socialist, affirmative action, redistribution, entitlement, welfare state, raid the public treasury agenda is so unabashedly blatant as to be completely without merit and unworthy of response. So, which is it?