Friday, July 18, 2014

 

Each Side is a Mystery to the Other

Here is a New Republic article by Brian Beutler which tries to chart out the future (difficult to do) of federal politics after the 2014 midterm elections and the near Republican tidal wave it threatens to be. I was struck by this paragraph.


There is an existing tension between conservative rank and file Republicans and Republican party leadership—between those who insist on maximizing the GOP's existing power as a Congressional party, and those who prefer to eschew politically unsupportable exercises of power for the sake of the party's national standing. A GOP victory in November would encourage both factions to pull harder in opposing directions.
This guy doesn't know squat about the political ambitions of the Republicans and the main fault line which exists to divide the party. There is, alas, such a fault line, probably more like the borders of tectonic plates, but it's nothing like this guy describes.


This is more accurate, at least I hope it is more accurate, about the effect of a Republican majority in the Senate.



The flip side, of course, is that Republicans would gain agenda setting power. If they were disciplined with this new power, they would splinter the Democratic minority and force Obama to veto popular legislation—something he and Hillary Clinton and everyone else in the Democratic party have every interest in avoiding.



And we could stop cold the deleterious, long term effects of the President and Senate putting nothing but lefty judges into the federal judiciary. That alone is worth a lot of work and sacrifice by the right.

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# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:18 AM
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