When Democrats scatter, the party loses

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So, the midterm election came and went. Republicans control Congress. Now what?

Our government has been divided for quite a while. It will remain so.

Fiscal conservatives have long won the day. Lawmakers no longer entertain the idea of raising taxes, even for the wealthiest of Americans, to balance the budget. The only acceptable spending plan is to cut, except, of course, when it comes to pork barrel spending.

GOP lawmakers have long spit on government regulation, while our Democratic representatives do little to nothing about it. And militarily, we are spread ever thinner, as we are forced to react to one hot spot after another around the globe. The hawks say we should carry a big stick and be willing to use it. The isolationists want nothing to do with rest of the world. Meanwhile, the negotiators, the peacemakers, are left by the wayside.

None of this will change now that Republicans have seized the Senate as well as the House.

To fire up the GOP’s base, Republicans, I predict, will pass a series of bills they know President Obama will veto –– e.g., to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. Then they will turn to their constituents and jeer, “You see, Obama is the obstructionist.”

Republicans employed the strategy perfectly this election cycle. Since 2008, when Obama first won office, their message has been one and the same: We will not negotiate with the president. Their hope was simple: Voters would eventually forget that Republicans were the refuseniks, and would instead blame the president for Washington’s rampant dysfunction.

Guess what? Eventually, that’s exactly what happened.

Remember when GOP lawmakers shut down the federal government for half a
month last year by refusing to fund its operations, all because they couldn’t repeal the ACA through normal channels? No one seems to recall that sorry episode in our government’s history these days.

Why? In the weeks and months before the midterm election, a terrible confluence of events unfolded, and the “optics,” as they say in Washington, were awful for the president –– and, hence, Democrats.

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