There’s been a lot of talk recently about a new Republican wave led by the teabaggers. This is a very different election year. The economy is horrible and voters are fed up. I can’t really blame them. The Democrats story is “it would have been a whole lot worse” is not very compelling nor is “the Republicans won’t let us do anything.”
The problem is, these are not your father’s Republicans. Many of them are just batsh*t insane. They’re birthers, tenthers, “2nd amendment solutions” candidates. In a sane political year, Sharron Angle, Jan Brewer, Joe Miller and Rand Paul wouldn’t stand a chance. We’re not in a sane political year, though.
What we have to look forward to is government shutdowns, endless nuisance subpoenas and perhaps even impeachment proceedings. Some Republicans have already talked about this. The Republicans will put their top assholes in charge – Joe “apologize to BP” Barton will be in charge of energy, Paul “privatize Social Security” Ryan will be in charge of finance and Joe “You Lie!” Wilson will be in charge of Armed Services. Daniel Larison at American Conservative (one of the few actual real life thinking conservatives) has some thoughts on how this will play out:
As I have said before, I don’t think the GOP will win the House, but if that did happen it would primarily be bad news for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. If that seems a little too counterintuitive for you, let me explain. Should the GOP somehow win the House, they will not have earned it and they will not deserve it, and they will proceed to destroy themselves in very short order. Arguably, there was nothing worse for the American right than to be given the free gift of winning the 2002 midterms, because this win encouraged them to pursue the policies that proved to be their undoing, and a similar win in 2010 would have the same effect of enabling Republicans’ most destructively self-indulgent impulses. As one horrified by the prospect of Republicans in power, Erik should look forward to this.
After all, even if the Republicans won the House there would not be much that they could do once in office, except waste their time as they did in the ’90s hauling executive branch officials before committees to testify on this or that outrage of the week. They would likely be stymied by the Democratic majority in the Senate on any major legislation, and Obama would veto just about anything they passed if it somehow got to his desk. At the same time, Obama would make them into a much more effective foil for his arguments once they had some hold on power, and out of frustration they would become increasingly obsessed with “getting” Obama and become even less interested in representing the interests of their constituents.
I think this is likely true, but how many people will pay attention? Perhaps the GOP’s ability to dominate the news cycle will play against them here. People are bound to get pretty upset if we still have a crappy economy and the GOP is spending their time in Congress talking about birth certificates and teleprompters. However, if we do finally see a change in the economy will Republicans get credit for it? I think the economy will improve very slowly but surely – there’s a large overhang to get rid of and I doubt Republican policies will help very much.