Are Republicans Ready to Run Congress?
If voters remain as angry at Democrats as they are today, an obstructionist Congress will become pretty popular over the succeeding two years before Obama’s re-election campaign. On the other hand, with that in mind, independent voters might like the idea of divided government enough to favor Obama rather than a Republican in 2012 under those circumstances.
[...] In all of these calculations, it’s assumed that the GOP will indulge in an orgy of hearings and obstructionism rather than using the chance to actually govern. What happens when the Republican House starts passing legislation that repeals ObamaCare and issues its own free-market reforms? When Paul Ryan crafts a budget that reduces government? When a John Boehner-led caucus takes on serious entitlement reform, and then sends all of these to a Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House?What will happen is that Democrats will have to obstruct the Republican agenda, either through blocking it in the Senate or with presidential vetoes.
It takes some time to pivot effectively from effective obstruction to a positive agenda. Are we there yet? I'm unsure, and my sources say no. So the question is: will the GOP be ready in time?
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May '10
Re: Are Republicans Ready to Run Congress?
I suspect that the GOP is ready to run Congress so long as there is a Democratic president, and not yet ready to run it should a Republican return to the White House. So I'm rooting for a republican takeover this November.
May '10
Re: Are Republicans Ready to Run Congress?
My hope is that we elect enough principled conservatives that when it's time to "do something," we don't see Republicans defining "something" as crony capitalism and wasteful spending that would be hard to decipher from Democratic policy!
Scott Brown's vote on the finance reform boondoggle comes to mind. Sobering, to say the least.
May '10
Re: Are Republicans Ready to Run Congress?
James Poulos, Ed.: Ed Morrissey thinks so:
Well, nothing actually because the chance of the Republicans actually getting down and going to work if, please God, they regain control of the House of Representatives are vanishingly small. First order of business will be squabbling over who gets what office, then getting stationery printed, then restaurant and tee time reservations, then lining up junkets to trouble spots like the Cayman Islands and Monaco.
The best we can hope for from the Republicans is a tiny break, a tiny slowing in the rate of decline.