[9/6/10] Where Do We Go From Here?

Regarding predictions that Republicans will retake the House and perhaps the Senate, a correspondent writes

How will the Republicans blow it?  If the Republicans do manage to capture both the House and Senate, but not at the level of a veto-proof Congress, Obama will triangulate and return successfully to the White House in 2012, with a Congress perhaps on or just over the edge of Democrat control. The Republican party by then will have torn itself intellectually apart among de facto socialists (e.g., McCain), religious folk [...], and the few rational economic conservatives and libertarians (i.e., Randists).

You need to temper your pessimism a bit.  Since libertarians are not a majority, the winner-take-all election process ensures that their impulses can only be realized through the Republican Party, and then only incrementally.  It is an imperfect vessel into which to pour such hopes, but there is no other!  The religious right may still have some remaining toxicity with independents, but it is unlikely to play any role in the near term.  The main threat is from the Spendicans -- what you call the "de facto Socialists."

So just what would the path forward from a Republican wave victory look like?

A Boehner speakership will not be so stupid as to announce that the presidency is irrelevant, and follow the Gingrich road again.  The right strategy for it to adopt -- given a Senate majority, but no 60 vote super-majority -- is to make the President propose, and then dispose of his proposals, focusing on reducing spending in every case.  The fact that the Constitution requires that all appropriations bills originate in the House will give them some leverage even if they don't hold the Senate.

Neither can the Republican Senate leadership -- whether in the majority or not -- be so stupid as to ignore the primary losses of sitting Senators Robert Bennet and Lisa Murkowski, two of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's close associates.  Nor are they so dense as to ignore the Tea Party primary defeats of Trey Grayson (TN), McConnell's chosen successor to Jim Bunning, or of the Republican National Senatorial Committee's early endorsees, Jane Norton (CO), and Sue Lowden (NV).  Nor will they be able to ignore that Club for Growth candidates forced Arlen Specter (PA) -- another McConnell associate -- and Charlie Crist (FL) to jump the party ship, which lead to the former's defeat in the Democrat primary and will probably lead to the defeat of the latter in November.  This is such a repudiation of the NRSC, it should abandon its Spendican bias or cease operations focused on primaries.

After November 2, the Spendicans of both Houses of Congress will recognize that any leadership role they might have will be owed to the Tea Party and its antipathy for spending, a very precarious position going forward to the primaries of 2012.  That should reduce any tendency they might have toward occasional dalliances with Obama and congressional Democrats.

Finally, Obama is no Clinton.  The White House that writes the stuff he reads from the teleprompter is staffed from bottom to top with progressive ideologues raised from pups on Illinois politics.  There is no compromise they can tolerate, so they will continue trying to energize their left wing base, and will further offend the center of the electorate in the process.   Triangulation would require them to recognize two more sides to issues than they are capable of seeing.

And as for Obama's chances in 2012, if the 2010 election is the historical repudiation of progressive policies it is shaping up to be, I see no way he can be reelected.  Now that their leftist tendencies are out of the closet and progressivism is a dirty word, it will be a long time till the next blue-state progressive-Democrat presidency.

Too bad for the Democrats that they can't run southern governor Trojan horses again, but that well is completely fouled and filled with the decayed reputations of Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.