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Dems Take the House, GOP Widens Control of the Senate
For the next two years we’ll get more fine judges and gridlock on everything else.
Fine by me.
Published in General
Agreed. The less we get out of congress the better in my book. Last I checked we have plenty of laws.
Gridlock?
But isn’t Trump Hitler?
Congress did not do all that much when the Republicans controlled both houses.
Special Report thinks the final number will be 234.
We weren’t going to get anything else, no matter what, given the Senate filibuster rules, so, fine.
I think that it will be interesting to see the public reaction to the Dems visibly wasting all of their time on nothing but investigations. The Repubs will then have something to run on- “They did absolutely nothing but issue subpoenas….”
Gridlock is the next best thing to Constitutional Governance. – Stephen Hayward
Yep. Yer speaking my language.
The republican-held congress was pretty anemic anyway, bring on the crazy. The Left hasn’t figured Trump out yet, so I’m figuring that whatever they’re rubbing their hands and cackling about is going to blow up in their faces anyway. Trump isn’t a Romney or a Bush, who could be counted on to do a Kevin Bacon thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another.
Most of the Left’s antics don’t go so well when up against Trump’s thumb-in-their-eye style. Since we’ve got a good hold on the Senate, I say release the Kraken. If nothing is going to get done anyway (Thank you God! (Hmm, lots of Animal House references here tonight)), I hope Trump decides to spend his public time going after everything we have all been grinding our teeth about lo these many years – Benghazi, Clinton Global Intitiative, Schumer/Pelosi/Feinstein/et al tax returns, etc. A few tweets about pulling out of the UN. Why not? Chains are made to be jerked.
While behind the scenes he continues to hold fast to border security, deregulation, foreign policy pursuits. Supreme Court.
If Republicans actually cared and had any sense. The house would now pass a hundred percent repeal of Obamacare. And and send it to the senate. The senate could then use its once-a-year ignore filibuster rule to pass it. Next year. There is now enough Republicans so you don’t have two or three squishy Republican Senators stopping it. If that happens. I don’t really care about everything else for the next two years. And I’ll vote for Trump in a heartbeat in the primary. Make the Democrats scream. And prove how pointless it is that they now control the house.
I’ve never heard of that rule.
Yay I am over simplifying it but thats basically is what the Byrd rule is. My understanding is you can only use it once a year. Can’t remember which Ricochet podcast I heard that on and who stated it.
This is how they passed the tax cuts. It is a reconciliation rule that involves a revenue “neutral” budget provision. It is limited in scope.
Also, the new Senators don’t start until next year, when the Dem controlled house starts. I would expect the one-time thing to do permanent middle class tax cuts.
That would be a-ok with me, however I fear there’s a decent chance we’ll get a large infrastructure spending bill in the next 2 years. Trump has been better than I expected on many fronts, but he’s no deficit hawk.
I think the midterms were a disaster for the GOP. In Texas, the DNC picked up two House seats on the strength of Beto O’Rourke. It shows what happens, if you spend enough money and have an appealing messenger. The GOP leadership completely failed to choose a messenger and a message and let it be all about Trump. That is not a winning proposal on the margins and only works when Hillary is on the other side of the ticket.
If I ran the GOP I would have said here is our message:
1) prosperity
2) security
3) the American Way
Let each candidate explain how they will work for those things in a way that best helps the district. The American Way is great, because it can be used to promote fairness, equality, compassion, grit,…
The only legislation on which Pelosi and Trump could reasonably be expected to cooperate would be an infrastructure boondoggle. Gimme gridlock, baby. Not a bug in our system; a feature.
They managed to pull themselves together to give us a cut in the corporate income tax rate. That’s only one item on the long, long list you and I would have given them of course, Paul, but it’s not nothing.
There’s someone in the White House who hopes you’re right about that, Duane!
That, alas, is only too true.
That would be nice, but Gerrold Nadler, soon to chair the House Judiciary Committee, is promising an investigation to lead to the impeachment of Kavanagh (and of Trump.) There will be an outcry from the Left for Kavanagh to recuse himself from all cases until the impeachment is decided. Wouldn’t surprise me if California and other one party states build on the Sanctuary movement and in addition to ignoring legislation they don’t like, start to ignore selected SCOTUS decisions if Kavanagh or any subsequent Trump appointees are on the case.
Excellent.
Other than two more years of no improvement on the horrible debt problem, I agree!
Peter,
I’m sorry but I don’t like this at all. The Republican establishment bought into the terrible threat from “nativism” and murdered the Tea Party, that which won them the House in the first place. The non-existent threat of nativism is like the non-existent threat of Man Made Global Warming, a win-win for the extreme left.
Meanwhile, we have placed Nancy Pelosi (aka The Wicked Witch of the West) back as Speaker of the House and Tucker Carlson has screaming psychotic Antifa leftist thugs making terroristic threats at his home. If you think that all this means is “Grid Lock” then perhaps you haven’t seen Pelosi’s new chief of staff.
Regards,
Jim
Republicans did less badly in the 2018 midterms than Democrats did in midterms under Obama. As we see internally at Ricochet, there are still Republicans who want to save the party from Trump. Some of them are in the House and are about to yield their seats to Democrats.
Keeping the Senate under the control of Republicans is certainly important today, as the news spreads that Ruth Ginsburg is hospitalized due to a bad fall.
Add this to Peter Robinson’s headline!
Exactly. The House losses came down to Democrat billionaires outspending the GOP in targeted swing districts. I guess Citizens United doesn’t look so bad to them now that it’s Citizen Bloomberg uniting with Citizens Steyer and Soros.
I’ll admit to consigning countless GOP fundraising letters directly to the trash bin nearest my box in the post office. The ones with return addresses from Ryan, Romney, and other anti-Trumpers were ripped in half with particular gusto. Finally I got one from Jim Jordan and the Freedom Caucus, but my small contribution split among a group of worthy recipients didn’t save a favorite in the group, Dave Brat.
President Trump did a great job in the key Senate races, but you can’t be in 435 places at once. The GOP needs more outspoken, successful public figures speaking the truth about illegal immigration, the radical race-mongers, the mainstream media, etc. We also we need our donor class (and our chattering class!) to step up and get in touch with base — the Rush listeners, the Tea Party voters, and the Trump rally crowds — on these issues. The Koch Brothers and others like them need to spend less time worrying about the labor pool for their toilet paper plant, and more money investing in media ownership (e.g. TV + new media networks headed up by e.g. Donald Trump, Jr.) to bring the conservative message home in swing districts.
Larry Elder had a great guest on last night, he’s a Republican insider from California. He said that they spent $20 million to defeat Dana Rohrabacher. $4 million came from Bloomberg.
One house seat.
What Bloomberg spends in Minnesota on electioneering is absolutely mind boggling. The Democrats in Minnesota don’t know anything about gun policy, they just want guns banned, and I’m not exaggerating.
Fix the health insurance system and make the economy less regressive. Make education a better value one way or the other. That is what they need to talk about. Socialism and populism are popular for good reason. Cultural Marxism is real and people are sick of it.
Also, the pro-statist media is a huge problem. Don’t act like it isn’t.
What I have heard is that for this election cycle, the Koch Brothers donated monies only to the campaigns of those candidates supporting immigration.
Skilled immigrants or people loaded with capital–fine. Everyone else–no.
If we had a highly libertarian economy with great purchasing power, kind of like Texas, it wouldn’t matter but that is not what we have.
If you wonder why we have so many social problems and a wacky political system, there you go.