T Plus One: What To Expect Next

Yes, the Republicans achieved greatly yesterday...electorally, at least. Yes, the United States Senate can no longer be used as a place where bills passed in the House go to die of neglect. Yes, Harry Reid will no longer have the catbird seat of Majority Leader from which to spout vicious denunciations of the Koch brothers, Rush Limbaugh, and whatever other conservative luminaries he chooses to defame. Yes, yes, yes.

That doesn’t mean the war has been definitively and permanently won. Far from it.

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The Senate’s six-tenths majority requirement for invoking cloture remains in effect for most issues; only presidential nominations to positions below the Supreme Court have been excepted. Therefore, the Democrats’ shrunken caucus – no less than 46 seats, by the most optimistic estimate – will remain able to block votes on GOP-favored bills. Whether that will become a blanket strategy remains to be seen, but I cannot doubt that we’ll see it at least a few times in the two years before the next elections. It’s the only way remaining to them to spare Obama from having to veto popular legislation.

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The Republicans’ legendary, long endured fear of the Main Stream Media doesn’t appear to have changed. Those media have already poured copious hot wrath upon...well, upon everyone and everything, really, for displacing the Democrats from control of the Senate and various “blue-state” governorships. More will follow, undoubtedly rising in intensity as the struggle for dominance of Washington intensifies. In addition, expect the media to focus more closely on state-level issues henceforward, with particular attention to those states where the Republicans have gained the governorship or majorities in the legislature. Media venom is endless, and while the barons of the media are vicious, they’re not stupid; they know very well where the next generation of federal officials will come from.

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Another interesting observation about the major media: Several of their more prominent voices are already suggesting, much as they did in 2000, that the GOP now has an obligation to compromise with the Democrats on issues such as immigration and taxation. I expect that theme to be trumpeted at ever greater volume from now until January 3, when the next Congressional seatings take place. Why, then, did the Democrats not have an obligation to compromise with the Republicans when they took control of Capitol Hill in 2006? Will anyone with a national audience pose that question? We shall see.

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Many conservatives fear that with the midterms behind them, the GOP Establishment will simply return to “business as usual:” earmarks, pork, and cheerful acquiescence to Big Government in all its venues and varieties. It’s a legitimate fear. If there’s a near-term countermeasure, it must involve “holding their feet to the fire.” Continuous pressure must be mounted upon particularly slippery legislators to conform to a broad conservative agenda:

• Border control;
• Tax rate reduction;
• Preservation of the dollar;
• Restoration of our military pre-eminence;
• Reassertion of our primacy on the seas and in space;
• Sharply reduced regulation of all industry and commerce;
• Revivification of our existing treaty alliances and reassurance of our allies;
• Proactive protection of American diplomatic and military installations outside the United States;
• Respect for federalism, individuals’ rights, and the Constitution’s constraints on government at all levels.

It won’t be easy. Freshly elected or re-elected legislators tend to go partially deaf in the period after a victory. But we can do it. After all, we outnumber them.

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Finally for the nonce, the Democrats, having lost majority support, will shift to alternate tactics.

When in the majority, Democrat power brokers are principally concerned with keeping their coalition together. That coalition is composed of a number of groups that don’t share many agenda items:

• Negroes and “black power” thugs;
• Welfare clients;
• “Gay rights” poofs.
• “Women’s rights” viragoes;
• “Immigrants’ rights” buffoons;
• Anti-gun rights activists;
• The environmental Mafia;
• Federal bureaucrats and Civil Service employees;
• Corporate beneficiaries;
• Communications and entertainment media;

...and others of lesser profiles. It should be obvious that oftentimes, pleasing one will displease another, if only because the funds available for redistribution are not infinite. However, when they’re in the minority, the Democrats can use those interest groups individually as political cat’s-paws. Each group can be moved to attack the Republicans as an enemy of the group’s narrow agenda. Those attacks can look and feel fearsome when aggregated.

Such pressure can be withstood, but in the past, the GOP has not been staunch about doing so. Will this turn of the carousel prove different? We shall see.

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From the above, it would appear that it’s not really time for an exuberant celebration. In truth, given the terrible political deterioration of the Republic, it could hardly be otherwise. So as I’ve said any number of times already: Keep your powder dry.