It's still relatively early on Election Night but it's pretty clear that the House has gone GOP and that the Senate will feature such luminaries as Rand Paul and Joe Miller, with Sharron Angle thrown in for the Trifecta of Batshit Crazy. The next two years promise little in the way of achievement and much in the way of cynical political theater; those who imagine the sound of articles of impeachment being drafted instead hear the opening of a desk drawer in which said articles have lain since Election Night 2008. With the minor delay of changing the House rules to allow bills and subpoenas composed in red crayon, the next order of business should be a flood of hearings and fishing expeditions which will expose the statistically likely indiscretions as existential threats to the Republic. I am not the first to suggest that the resulting GOP supernova in 2012 will not have been worth it.
The biggest story of this election cycle is also the most clearly false. The so-called Tea Party movement is nothing but the co-opting of selfish scared people by Republican activists and funding. Any other depiction is based on wishful thinking by all parties enabled by the news media, who do have a point: Fat dorks in tricorner hats and Sansabelt knee breeches (white Rockports optional) are a compelling visual.
Thank you, good night, and God bless the United States of America, 'cause man, was that one messy sneeze.
Update 11/3: OK, Angle didn't make it, but substitute Club for Corporations stalwart Pat Toomey in the above.
4 comments:
Angle lost -- and it looks like Miller will lose, too. But the fact that these people got so many votes (ditto O'Donnell, who got over 123,000 votes) is scary enough.
Rubio won. I didn't expect that one for some reason. And yes, the number of votes for some of the various folks is a bit scary.
I can't help but notice that, if it hadn't been for the Tea Party crowd, the Republicans would be riding a truly historical election that would have taken the Senate as well as the House. If they hadn't managed to find the one person in Nevada that would lose to Reid, to take out the one Republican in Delaware that would win handily, and to put up other batsh*t crazy loons in Connecticut and Colorado, they wouldn't even have needed Lieberman to do a hypocritical switch in time.
Well done, there. The Republican agenda is going to be interesting - fiscal conservatism, protect defense spending, Medicare and Medicaid, privatize social security and tax cuts for all (but most especially for the wealthy). I can't be the only person to notice that this is an incoherent policy combination.
John C.
And one final note: in Boehner's acceptance speech, he was quick to essentially say "well, nothing is going to be our fault anyway since the President sets the agenda." Remember 2008, when nothing was the Republicans' fault because the Democrats controlled the House? At least this combination is merely sleazy and hypocritical rather than incoherent.
This is a particularly Olbermann like Rant from Dave S. Or maybe maddow. I am at trial. Cannot fully comment but when your policies drive red ink and also maintain high unemployment you have to suffer the consequences. Pat Toomey is a terrific conservative. He is neither nutty nor unprincipled. The tea party provided the energy for this election and probably lost the seats of Nevada and Delaware for the Republicans but the gains everywhere else would have been impossible without these folks. You can only think them crazy if the American Founding and a limited Federal Government is now deemed crazy. Perhaps by Jon Stewart and the terrorist supporter he had sing at his rally but not by the vast majority of the American people. Also, any suggestion that the media is pro-Tea Party can only be greeted by calls of mood modifying drugs being applied to the suggestor.
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