Subtitle: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Speaker Pelosi. She's da bomb when it comes to keeping the White House in 2008.
As I got my mind around the lousy Republican polling, I started to remember a post I did two years ago this time, The Day After Election Day, where I wrote up a faux 2008 New Republic piece on the hamstrung Kerry presidency. As we went into the elections of 2004, conservatives worried what things would look like if Kerry won; my piece posited that it wouldn't be as bad as we might fear, given a Republican congress to rein him in.
As we head into this fall's elections, we're faced with the indigestion-causing prospect of a Speaker Pelosi. I don't have a new future-history piece to offer tonight, but here are some thoughts that will keep you from reaching for the Rolaids quite as much in the weeks to come
(1) If the Democrats do take the House, it won't be by much. It will be feasible, if not likely to put together a working majority of Republicans and moderate Democrats. They already have to do that in the Senate with anything that can be filibustered. Given the likely Republican majority in the Senate and Dubya still in the Oval Office for the next Congress, legislation will likely be center-right rather than center-left, even with a Democratic House majority.
There were far more conservative Blue Dogs in 1980 than now (they didn't use the term Blue Dog back then; boil weevil was the label for center-right Democrats in the early 80s), but Reagan got his tax cuts passed through a Democratic House. The committee chairs might not have liked it, but that might be a model for working
Democrats might hold the committee chairs and have the committee votes to vote out liberal legislation, but those can be amended on the floor if the Rules Committee doesn't go draconian. If they do play Rules Committee hardball a la 1993-4, a center-right coalition can live by the discharge petition, where a majority of the House can sign a petition to bring legislation to the floor; some media-shy Democrats might have to sign at night, giving us a nocturnal discharge petition.
(2) The Senate will still be in Republican hands. One of the advantages of the Senate is that it gives us a six-year moving average of public sentiment. Only a third of the seats are up this fall, making it hard for Democrats to pick up the six seats needed for a majority.
That means that anything overly liberal coming out of the house will be sent to the Senate to cool, as the original George W put it. The moderate Republicans might have more clout as the GOP majority gets trimmed to 54 or so, but
(3) The Well-Armed Lame Duck. I support the right to arm bears; ducks, too. Dubya still has a veto pen; you don't lose the right to veto when your approval ratings fall below 40%. You also don't lose the veto pen because you're on your last two years in the White House.
He might be more able to use the veto in that situation; he's freer to tick off Congress since he's heading back to Crawford in '09 one way or the other.
(4) Moonbats on Parade. Here's an interesting AP article cited on Michael Moore's web site that illustrates the point.
As for those prospective Democratic chairmen, the group is overwhelmingly liberal-leaning.
Only two of 20 earned grades of less than 90 percent on last year's voting records from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action interest group. Half had perfect scores of 100 from the ADA — or would have had it not been for missed votes.
Republicans can make hay over the more outlandish actions of this crew. They can spend the '08 election cycle saying "We told you those folks are way out there. You can rectify that mistake in 08."
One downside to an arch-liberal with subpoena power is that they can go on a neocon witch hunt and have lots of confrontations with the Bush team that will generate more heat than light. However, the original congressional witch-hunter, Tailgunner Joe McCarthy, looked better in 1952 than he did in 1956. There will be plenty of Ed Murrows in today's media, both in the blogosphere and in the MSM, to call BS on any overreaching committee chair.
(5) It's the House, not the Senate. I can remember when we had our congressman in to visit our high school Government class in 1979. The hot issue of the day was the Panama Canal Treaty. However, it was a moot point to ask his opinion on the treaty, since it was the Senate, not Congress as a whole, who got to vote on it; we asked him anyway.
Speaker Pelosi and the Donkey Kongs in the House will be moot on treaties and judicial nominations. For those issues, the margin of victory in the Senate will be more important, and where those losses or gains come; for instance, losing "Son you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop 'lectin' that RINO" Lincoln Chafee won't hurt the judicial votes, since he votes Democratic more often than not to begin with.
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So, don't lose any sleep over the prospect of Speaker Pelosi. A Democratic House will be more bark than bite.
Nuff said probably...yet it is
Hard to imagine making a bigger mess than junior and his dady's old neocons have. I look forward to Nancy Pelosi cleaning house and draining the swamp. It probably WILL take a woman to straighten out the mess this faux-Republican party has made, and it won't be Hillary Clinton.
A very pissed off ex-Republican.
Posted by: BayAreaWillI | October 13, 2006 at 04:14 PM