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4usnews:Sweeping
Republican victory Tuesday night that pulled the control of the House Democrats and a decrease in their Senate majority to the Congress will flow impatient, anti-Washington newcomers,many elected with the support Tea Party.
But when the class of the Republican Party in 2010 arrived on Capitol Hill, he is likely to be led by two decidedly old-school hands of Washington. The house, a 10-term Ohio Congressman John Boehner is expected, the success of the country’s first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. And in the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was first elected in 1984.
Democrats retained control of the Senate on Tuesday, the thin edge. win Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada helped his party to avoid the leadership battle between Charles Schumer of New York and Richard Durbin of Illinois.
There’s little argument that divided the Congress will present a President Obama with his biggest legislative challenge after two years of Democratic control. And Boehner is the public face of this problem.
In his speech, election night, Boehner stressed his humble roots of Ohio, rather than his 20 years in the capital, and said the country was “witnessing failure of Washington … failure of big government.” He said that if Obama is ready to “change course” Republicans “are willing to work with him.”
Earlier, in a telephone conversation in the collection of tea party, he said: “I’ll never let you down.”
Both Boehner, 60, and McConnell, 68, pledged to block the agenda of the president as he prepares to seek re-election. The Republicans promise to use their new clout to back the signature of health care legislation Obama to make permanent the tax cuts the Bush era, and reduce costs – although, as yet not clear.
Obama has appointed a news conference at 1 pm Wednesday, he is expected to signal how he will approach the new political reality that looks very similar to a deadlock. The White House was not telling on Tuesday night.
But serious problems also await Boehner and McConnell.
As two-over tactics corral the Caucasus, which have been pushed to the right of small government pressure Tea Party and elected by voters who expressed their deep disapproval of Congress?
“We’re in a very short leash here,” says Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. “We told people we would not only be better than the Democrats, but better than we were.”
Boehner Burden
When new members come home, Flake said Boehner will be “riding a tiger.” Dozens of new members to represent the “big room in theRepublican conference, and they want a serious commitment to deficit reduction.”
Some Republicans even threatened to force the government shutdown if spending is not cut.
Boehner task will require the balance of the real budget cuts – including for social purposes, like Social Security and Medicare – to the party to return to the White House in 2012.
Agenda? Attack on health care legislation – perhaps with the abolition of voting to satisfy the voters, and then a more serious attempt at through a process of appropriation. Effort to make permanent the Bush eratax cuts. And a number of proposals to reduce costs. But whether or not Boehner will strike the right programs with the impending presidential election remains a big question – and in his own collections, too.
Flake is among those who say it would be “very difficult to bring the budget into something close to balance, without touching those programs.
Back to the Future?
Much has been made of the parallels between this year and “Republican Revolution” of 1994. That’s when the party took over the house after 40 years of democratic rule. A Speaker Newt Gingrich engaged in a fight with President Clinton that led to the government shutdown.
Gingrich and the Republicans paid a political price for this battle. Clinton was reelected in 1996 and two years later, Gingrich was gone.
But some Republicans, including GOP strategist Vin Weber, former Minnesota congressman, say, compared to 94 does not hold.
“John was not Newt, Clinton and Obama did not,” said Weber, who describes Boehner as a “legislator of the legislator.”
“Do not think,” he says, “that [off] will play the same way.”
Economics was not pressing issue at present, the country was not at war, there was no movement Tea Party, and, as Weber says, individuals can not be more different.
Says Steven Gillon, a historian who wrote a book about the rivalry between Gingrich-Clinton called the Covenant: “Gingrich did not want to be just an orator, he wanted to be revolutionary, he is a bad case of hubris, and he overreached ..”
Boehner, Gillon said: “It is a tactic. He did not visionary, it is not a big thinker. But you should not be Speaker of the House.”
“And we still do not know how well Obama in the fight with the Republicans or split Congress.”
Fight or negotiate
Those who know Boehner said that he experienced infighter, but not one given to politics of personal destruction. He is methodical man who, after the fall of Gingrich – and his own dismissal from theRepublican leadership – is slowly climbed back to where he is today.
“He puts his head down, took the long view, and points to the target at a distance,” said Kevin Madden, Republican strategist and former spokesman for Boehner.
Boehner supporters point to the bipartisan work he did on “No Child Left Behind” legislation when he headed the House Committee on Education. But Gillon sees a lot of pressure forward to the speaker in waiting.
“When you are a new speaker, who will win the big electoral landslide against the president of the opposing party, it’s difficult juggling act,” Gillon says. “He will be under great pressure from his own party to a stalemate and make the president look bad -. Even if he has a bipartisan basis,”
Republicans, say the strategists will have to lead.
“People are mad as hell, and it is alarming for Democrats and Republicans to get our fiscal house in order,” said Janet Mullins Grissom, McConnell’s former chief of staff. “This Congress will pull the right, but I hope that somewhere out there we will move forward the economy,”
Gillon shares an anecdote about election night 1994, when someone told Gingrich about the election results.
There’s good news and bad news,” Gingrich said. “You are the speaker, but wait until you meet people you helped elect........
