It's only two days since from election day and already the House Republicans are making noise that they are going to engage in the same old bullshit that we saw for the last four years rather than work with President Obama and the even more securely held Democrat Senate. What to do? First, there needs to be a concerted campaign to educate the public as to why the GOP still controls the House of Representatives. One word describes it: gerrymandering. The Virginia 2nd Congressional district is but one example where the district was revised by the GOP held Virginia General Assembly in a bizarre and contorted way to ensure hate group almost guarantee Christofascist Scott Rigell was reelected. The examples go on and on. Second, as a Business Week piece describes, Obama has the leverage on his side this time around and he needs to play hard ball to the maximum and constantly use the pulpit of the presidency to lay blame for obstruction at the feet of the House GOP and let them bear the consequences in 2014. Here are some article excerpts:
At first glance, the results of the 2012 election look like a return to the status quo: President Obama was reelected, Democrats retained the Senate, and Republicans held on to the House. But don’t be fooled. The political dynamic of the next four years will be almost exactly the opposite of the last four.
During Obama’s first term, and particularly in the last two years, the Republican Party had most of the leverage. The GOP’s willingness to reject stimulus, default on the debt, and sabotage the nation’s credit rating—threats that shook financial markets—often put the White House at the mercy of the opposition.
In Obama’s second term, leverage will shift to the Democrats on almost every issue of importance. And that shift has already begun.
From his efforts to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, close the carried-interest deduction, and enact the Buffett Rule, Obama failed in every attempt to generate higher tax revenue to pay for new spending and reduce the deficit. Obama confronted a Republican party determined to starve government and convinced that its path back to power lay in engineering his failure. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Republicans mostly held the line.
Now comes the payoff. The expiration of those cuts and the automatic reductions set to take effect at year’s end—the so-called fiscal cliff—mean that Obama and the Democrats can gain a huge source of new revenue by doing nothing at all. Republican priorities are the ones suddenly in peril. The combination of tax increases on the rich, higher capital-gains taxes, and sharp cuts in defense spending have congressional Republicans deeply worried. To mitigate these, they’ll have to bargain.
Despite their post-election tough talk, Republican leaders have dealt themselves a lousy hand. Obama can propose a “middle-class tax cut” for the 98 percent of American households earning less than $250,000 a year—while letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more—and dare the Republicans to block it. If they do, everyone’s taxes will rise on Jan. 1. . . . . Democratic leaders in Congress believe the public furor would be too intense for Republicans to withstand for long. Going over the cliff would also weaken the Republicans’ greatest point of leverage: renewing their threat to default on the national debt.
Right now, the Treasury expects to hit the debt ceiling in February. But if the cliff can’t be avoided, tax rates will rise and government coffers will swell, delaying the date of default—thus diminishing the Republicans’ advantage.
[L]everage has shifted from Republicans to Democrats. “The message of this election is twofold,” says Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “Americans want us to come together around a balanced compromise. And the major issue surrounding the fiscal cliff that was litigated in the election was revenues—voters clearly sided with us. The president made it a campaign issue, and he won.”
Where this tension could hurt Republicans most in Obama’s second term is on immigration, the other big issue sure to come to the fore in the next two years. . . . . Obama could see coming, as any poll-watcher could, the demographic tidal wave that swamped Republicans on Nov. 6.
Republicans have become prisoners of demography, helpless to break free from the nativism of their activist base. . . . . Solving this problem and ending the party’s unconscionable voter suppression efforts stand as the Republicans’ two greatest challenges to broadening their appeal in the years ahead. For Democrats, the picture is brighter.
I sincerely hope that Obama and other Democrats hold tough and hold the feet of the GOP House to the fire. Use a blow torch, in fact.
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