These articles just pain me:
The votes were barely counted last week before national columnists and pundits began analyzing the impact of the Republican victories. Many predicted more gridlock.
“Moderate Republicans will be less likely to cooperate across party lines for fear of primary challenges from conservatives unwilling to compromise,” wrote Tribune News Service Lisa Mascaro in an analysis printed in this newspaper.
I think — and I certainly hope — that they are wrong. If politicians of both parties have the sense of a Maine moose, they will recognize that the election returns show that people want Congress and the president to do what it takes to turn the economy around. That can’t be done by government gridlock.
Nothing I saw in the election returns leads me to conclude that voters think either party has all the answers — neither the Tea Party right nor the far-left approach of soon-to-be-former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Not every post-election analysis suggests that the new Congress will be gridlocked.
Sen. Susan Collins is optimistic that the middle-of-the-road reasonable lawmakers from both parties will find a way to work together. Moderates may find answers that elude hard-core partisans, left and right.
The day after the election, Collins told me she had received a post-election telephone call from Mark Kirk, the Illinois Republican elected to fill the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama.
You’re still going to get a tea party challenger, Susan.
And, in fairness, if given the opportunity to screw poor people, gut financial regulation, or give tax breaks to the rich, they probably will get a couple Democratic Blue Dogs to cross the aisle and sign on to something odious. It is in their DNA- Nelson, Lieberman, Landrieu will all jump at the chance to get in on something like that for their corporate masters. Hell, Evan Bayh hasn’t even finished his lame duck term and he is out there making sure all the front groups know he is open for business.
Zifnab
Remember back in the 40s when Louisiana elected a crazy demagogue populist Huey Long to governor, a guy who was pushing a 100% income tax on incomes over $1mil / year?
Whatever happened to that Louisiana?
Between Landrieu and Vitter, hurricanes are the least of that state’s problems.
dmsilev
“In other news, Senator Sasquatch and Senator Unicorn unveiled a plan to solve everything. It is similar to the plan released last week by Representatives Mermaid and Jackelope.”
dms
Larry Signor
What part of fuck the people don’t the people understand? Moderates, my ass.
El Cid
__
If by “work together” you mean Eric Cantor’s definition — Democrats simply approve Republican plans 100% — then, yes, bipartisan compromise is very possible.
General Stuck
The whole thing just sucks eggs. You get what you vote for America, and sending a bunch of randian pyromaniacs to Washington probly won’t get er done.
One example.
Normally, I would call this good news on the liberal PR gooper over reach front, but national mean spirited insanity seems to be running things right now.
Guess I will just watch it all and wait for the last straw.
BenA
The whole myth hear is assuming that Susan Collins, et al are “middle of the road.” If they are, they don’t vote like it.
Culture of Truth
The day after the election, Collins told me she had received a post-election telephone call from Mark Kirk, the Illinois Republican elected to fill the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama.
That’s her evidence? Two lawmakers in the same party manage to complete a phone call?
Good luck with that
Guster
Now Susan Collins would be a _great_ target for anger about DADT. A gay woman working for the government who is throwing up procedural roadblocks to prevent gay women from working for the government is pretty deeply hypocritical.
cleek
this person has no idea how Congress actually works.
Jay
I read a HuffPo article yesterday suggesting Linda McMahon wants to be the Republican nominee against Lieberman in ’12.
That’s like the Iran/Iraq war right there.
My prediction is that McMahon will get a not-insignificant number of pro-choice women who’d vote for Rep. Chris Murphy, the likely Dem., but not enough to cost Murphy the race.
Is it too early to put CT’s Dem nominee, whoever it is, on some kind of ActBlue/general fundraising page?
PeakVT
Why is Collins making noises about being a reasonable moderate? Didn’t the gov. and leg. just flip Repuke in Maine?
mds
@Culture of Truth:
Well, teabaggers will probably push a bill eliminating all telephone service, since the authors of the Constitution didn’t use telephones. So highlighting the convenience of phone calls is the new bipartisan centrist position.
Zifnab
@General Stuck:
With a CoS like that, it’s going to be hard to corral the congressman’s vote. The GOP assigned staffers are supposed to be a freshman Congressman’s handlers. It’s one way they keep control on the young bloods. If you’ve got Republicans tossing the reigns, it’s good for anyone who favors GOP infighting.
That said, one Congressman acting like a nutter is nothing new. And it’s not like a CoS is the only lead. Boehner could just ask Glenn Beck to run a “vote my way” story, and that will be enough to rally the Tea Party vote. The only question you have to seriously ask is “how often will Tea Party Congressmen line up”. I think the answer is going to be depressing.
ruemara
Dear Susan Collins. You don’t get moderate when the incoming Senators are extremists. Hope this clears things up for you, enjoy your coming primary from the lunatic asylum. Fuck you for voting against DADT repeal and give a hearty fuck you to Sister Snowe.
Rue Mara.
Kryptik
We’re never getting out of this shit alive, are we?
Culture of Truth
@mds: And don’t terrorists use phones?
Jay C
The worst part of having to read tripe like this that gets passed off as “Serious” political analysis is the facile evocation of “far left” as the imaginary counterpart of the “far right”, and the bland “pox on both their houses” hand-waving the so-called “pundits” use to disguise the absolutist bullyragging that lies at the heart of today’s Republican politicking.
Nancy Pelosi as “far-left”?? In Pinochet’s Chile, maybe: by American standards, she’s a plain middle-of-the-road liberal: but unfortunately, given the vilely low standards of what passes for journalism nowadays, it’s all too east to paint her a veritable Rosa Luxemburg. And of course, God forbid anyone should point this out…
Neutron Flux
@Kryptik: Nope.
But, I got mine, so fuck you.
mds
@PeakVT:
Was it Collins or Snowe who did robocalling on behalf of the batshit far-right no-compromise teabagger who just got elected governor? You know, in a spirit of reasonable, bipartisan moderation?
General Stuck
@Zifnab:
Yes, they are nuts. And some of their demands will make Tom Delay seem like a flower child of the sixties (a little overdone). The tea partiers are going to be like our blue dogs in an alternate dimension. Pulling the already crazy wingnuts even further into glibertarian nihilism. It remains to be seen if they have the numbers overall to do this with the GOP caucus, but unless they get some of their loony concessions, it will make voting closer than it would otherwise be. I guess, Oh, hell, I don’t know what is going to happen.
Bulworth
Sigh. Yes, Speaker Pelosi is to the “far-left” as the teatards are to the “far-right”. I guess now that Pelosi will lose her Speakership we can expect her to vow armed-insurrection and the overthrow of the government? Far left and far right are just the same after all, right?
Larry Signor
Where, exactly, was the support for moderation in this past election? It looked like the wingnuts took the day. Moderates don’t elect Rand Pauls or Mario what’s his name…
Citizen_X
Sort of on topic, Alex Pareene takes a Louisville Slugger to the Moderate Messiah, Michael Bloomberg, over his appointment of publisher Cathleen Black to Chancellor of NYC schools. Pareene also wails away at a lot of sacred cows, mainly the myth of corporate superiority:
The whole post is worth reading.
Catsy
That was where I stopped reading, content in the knowledge that I wasn’t missing anything.
Anyone who seriously thinks Pelosi is “far left” is too divorced from reality to have anything to say worth reading.
ppcli
@El Cid: Even that wouldn’t work, because if Obama proposed something on the Republican list of plans, they would take it off the list. The stimulus was in large part tax cuts, so for the first time in history, Republicans were opposed to tax cuts. (Of course, just exactly those tax cuts, not any others.)
This pattern (i.e. Cantor has a list, and if Obama proposes something on the list, Cantor has a technique for taking it off the list) is what mathematicians call the “Cantor diagonalization method”.
Kryptik
@Larry Signor:
It was in showing that DemoRATS really WERE the far left crazy fuckers everyone knew them to be, and that the country wouldn’t take them running everything into the ground, even if supposedly they run everything anyway and should be able to negate elections through the massive electioneering fraud industry they run through Soros and ACORN. ‘MERICANS SPOKEN! NO FUCKING LIBS EVER!
FDJKLFHDJKFHZDJKShfjksdhkfsdhfeuiyr3uiyr-
Larry Signor
@Kryptik: Aha! Moderation.
NonyNony
@ppcli:
You, sir, owe me a new keyboard. This one is now full of coffee.
Joe Beese
Those darned Blue Dogs… screwing over the people to serve their corporate masters!
Why can’t they be more like Obama who, when stacking the Catfood Commission with people who will recommend cutting Social Security benefits, does so not to serve his corporate masters, but out of a sense of fiscal responsibility?
Joshua
@Jay C:
Not too long ago, Digby made a post quoting Tweety saying that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have “lived their lives in the center.” Digby helpfully posted that these guys have something like a 96% rating from the American Conservative Union.
It’s hard to overstate how stuff like this damages discourse.
General Stuck
@Joe Beese:
If I throw a dead chicken over the fence, will you fuck it for us?
Larry Signor
@General Stuck: Is that sorta like melamine in the milk? Protein enhanced poultry?
liberal
@BenA:
IIRC Americans for Democratic Action’s scorecard puts both of them to the right of Ben Nelson (NE).
Linda Featheringill
As a Leftie, I am offended when people refer to very centrist folks as “far left.” They don’t have to agree with me but at least recognize my stance for what it is and quick stealing the label.
Geez!
Comrade Dread
I’m finding the parallels between my own state government (CA) and the national mood.
We’ve got:
1. An electorate that grew to hate taxes and ‘big government’, yet simultaneously wants to live in a modern state where services are provided by the government effectively.
2. Increasingly polarized and partisan politicians from both parties who spend most of their time passing pointless laws or handing out perks and money to their favorite moneyed interests.
3. No incentive to work together for the common good, discuss the common good, or what the common good actually means.
4. A prevailing theory that we can have it all via the magic of the invisible hand and economic growth and not the old fashioned way of making hard choices and prioritizing needs/desires.
The only thing we have that you don’t is a means of direct democracy that has been largely purchased by special interests. Though, I can honestly see a Palin type pushing for that in the future.
MattR
@Citizen_X: I may be alone in this but I would take a competent manager with no experience in education over someone who brillianltly understands the field but has no ability to manage people.
Dennis SGMM
You forgot Max Baucus (D-HMO).
Zifnab
@ppcli:
Winner of the internets.
catclub
@NonyNony:
Also remember that the rationals have measure zero,
while the irrationals have measure 1.
Who says pure math has no everyday application?
freelancer
Breaking…DeMint: “You can’t be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative.”
I see hooker/rentboy scandals in his future.
mds
@Comrade Dread:
A strong showing by Democrats relative to most other states in last week’s election? Passing of a referendum that will finally allow the legislature to raise revenue without a supermajority? Rejection of a referendum that would have suspended global warming legislation? Daring even to consider legalization of marijuana? Yeah, it’s like looking into a mirror.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Catsy: Bingo!!
maus
@General Stuck:
This requires a noncomplicit media willing to engage Republicans in shame, though.
Chris
A little late to this ball game, but there are no moderate Republicans. In 1996, Goldwater commented with amazement that he and Bob Dole had become the new moderates of the Republican Party; it was a fact, and the “extremists” of back then are the so-called “RINOs” of today, being run out of Washington for not having been conservative enough. So anyone who, like Lisa Mascaro, begins an article by talking about what “moderate Republicans” will do, is using a word devoid of meaning; and in case she hadn’t noticed, “moderate Republicans” almost never cooperated with Obama in the last 2 years either.
Calouste
@Jay C:
By European standards, Obama is to the right of most of the current conservative leaders like Sarkozy, Cameron and Merkel (not Berlusconi though, he’s fit right in with the monye wing of the GOP).
I won’t start where the Republicans fit in the European political spectrum.
RalfW
“…the far-left approach of soon-to-be-former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.”
I heard a similar statement on NPR over the weekend.
The Overton window has moved so far to the right that basic protection of the environment, modest reforms of banking, making private for profit insurance available and affordable to all Americans, and generally letting Obama and Gates run the military as they see fit is far left?
When was the last time an American journalist of any credibility visited, say, Bolivia? THAT’s far left. Brazil, one could argue, is quite left.
But Pelosi/Obama/Reid? They’re to the right of Nixon. A lot to the right of Nixon. “Obamacare” is to the right of Romneycare, for God’s sake.
AAaaaarrgh.
piratedan
pray tell, where the hell was Ms. Collins when the Obama WH was busy passing the moderate Republican agenda (circa 1994) for health care reform last August…oh yeah, she was allowing the Fillibuster to continue to be used as a ploy to delay implementation in order to play partisan politics. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out Susan…..
Rezepte zum Abnehmen
The next election in Italy will probably not go Berlusconi’s way so he’s right to enjoy the live with all it’s benefits while it lasts. It appears this is what he’s doing anyway!