Did you see what they just did there?
Republicans added to their numbers in the House (thanks mainly to their severe gerrymandering of districts that made most of their existing seats safe) and took over the Senate (thanks mainly to unfavorable conditions this year for Democrats, who had to defend many more seats, a key number of them in red states), And with all that, and vote suppression of gargantuan proportions, many close elections that could have gone the other way allowed the GOP to prevail.
So let the games begin! Again!
But what pundits and citizens and Republicans alike tend to overlook is that while all this was going on, voters in polls strongly endorsed the Democratic Party agenda from health care reform to raising the minimum wage, and enacted a number of progressive measures in states and cities across the nation, via binding referendums. That's why Republicans made pretend noises championing their faux defense of the social safety net (we're talking about you, Paul Ryan, in particular), and swiped other Democratic platform talking points. In some states, Republicans in disguise have run as Democrats. Now, increasingly, they're campaigning as Republicans who espouse Democratic policies. Until they're elected.
Which just happened. On a dime, GOP heads turned and began spinning their midterm victory (which is pretty normal, historically) and calling it a sign of voter disapproval of Barack Obama's policies -- you know, the policies some of them were pretending to back in campaign rhetoric just hours earlier. Well of course they would dump on him and appropriate any clearly successful Democratic policies voters had noticed with approval. They've been doing it for six years. That's why Sen. Mitch McConnell had to denounce "Obamacare" in the campaign yet promise to keep Kentucky's health care marketplace, functioning only because of that same health care reform law -- a huge contradiction, but one intended to bamboozle low-info voters.
And of course, after meeting with the president at the White House at his invitation Friday, Repubs postured and puffed and complained that Obama's not willing to compromise, even though history suggests strongly that it is Republicans who almost never compromise and Democrats who have done most of the genuflection, Obama himself included. Otherwise, why would previous Democratic majorities in Congress, with the president's approval, pass legislation based in significant measure on conservative ideas? Like the Affordable Care Act?
So don't drink the Kool-Aid, Mr. President. If they continue to play these games, stick it to 'em. You're not running for re-election. You are free. Have at it. Do the right thing. Dismiss GOP posturing for what it is. BS.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) says the president remains "unmoved and even defiant," which is hilarious coming from a man whose party stonewalled Obama at every opportunity, and which party remains unmoved even now, just a day or two after its new (actually existing) congressional leadership talked nicey-nice about bipartisanship and cooperation in a Wall Street Journal column. Yes, add a GOP president to the mix in 2016 and we'll have a Soviet-style troika, probably of aging white guys, to tell us how the country is going to work, or not work.
As Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Coal Companies) said, he wanted to agree with the president wherever they could find agreement. Well, apparently, McConnell couldn't find any such ground over the past six years. Think he'll really be able to find it now, or that he's even really looking, now that he's going to be in charge of the Senate? Nope. To the Republicans, as usual, "agreement" and "compromise" translate into an implicit command to "agree with us on everything and compromise all your principles and views in doing it." Or, no deal.
Which is why Republicans apparently will continue to sit on immigration reform. Never mind that the Democratic Senate already passed a bill many months ago. The House Republicans couldn't do likewise in four years, but Speaker John Boehner now says if the president will give his party just a few more months to block reform, then later, after the new Senate Republican majority is sworn in, they suddenly stop blocking it. Hey, a lot us people here at the ground level watch football and basketball and we know what running out the clock looks like. And so does the president.
So expect a lot of poison-pill legislation and brinkmanship from the new expanded GOP majority in Congress, which already had that power. Same old same old, in other words. Which is to say, expect nothing new. Except, if we're lucky, a president more willing to push back, up to and including executive orders and vetoes, like other presidents -- especially Republican presidents -- did when faced with their own tests from opposition majorities.
The GOP should not be rewarded for its all-but-seditious obstructionism, or given any further cause to believe that it's a winning strategy to be used again and again. Push back, or let them push your buttons. That is all.