Midterm election season is, for many, mercifully approaching the finish line. Looking ahead to 2015, if poll averages are correct and Republicans do take control of the Senate — Vox.com’s average of several sites puts it at a 68 percent chance of happening — what can Americans expect?
More of the same — of the wildly unpopular grind — is entirely possible. “After all, we have divided government now, and we will still have divided government if Republicans go from 45 senators to 51. Obama will still be in the White House, and the House of Representatives will still belong to the GOP,” Molly Ball writes for The Atlantic.
But perhaps surprisingly, many observers suggest that we could alternatively expect quite a lot — at least by the standards of the past few years, i.e., a “sinkhole of inaction,” in the words of Howard Fineman. And many point to election year 2016 as the motivating factor.
“Regaining the Senate would finally give the G.O.P. the opportunity, going into 2016, to demonstrate its capacity to govern,” Charles Krauthammer writes at The Washington Post.
And the White House, according to reporting from Edward-Isaac Dovere at Politico, also sees some 2016 leverage, pointing to the Repubilcan senators up for re-election that year.
“As bad as the electoral map for Democrats is this year, the map for Republicans in 2016 is even worse,” Mr. Dovere writes. The vulnerable Republican senators “would be under pressure to move toward the middle and be the bridge to larger deals with a caucus eager to show it can get things done.”
For the Republicans, Mr. Krauthammer urges them to enact a bold “reform agenda” and “dare the president to veto it. Show the country what you stand for. Then take it to the nation in 2016.” This could include tax reform (corporate and individual), border security, energy deregulation and health care.
Others have pointed to potential areas of deal making like trade pacts, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and infrastructure — at least the Keystone XL pipeline.
The theory being, according Ms. Ball, that “Republicans will stop the Obama agenda by proposing their own agenda — one that’s realistic and palatable enough that Obama will agree to it.”
And at the center of any deal making — assuming he wins his re-election race and becomes majority leader — is Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky senator emphasized this aspect in a recent debate with his Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes: “There have been three major bipartisan agreements during the Obama years between Republicans and Democrats,” Mr. McConnell said. “The vice president and I have negotiated every one of them” (these were the 2010 deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, the 2011 deal to raise the debt ceiling and fiscal-cliff deal of 2013).
George Will at The Washington Post sees Mr. McConnell’s role as central to what he sees as the restoration of the Senate to its rightful place in the Washington firmament: “In January, in the most statesmanlike Senate speech in years, McConnell explained how, under Republican leadership, the Senate would be restored as the creator of consensus:
“An executive order can’t [create consensus]. The fiat of a nine-person court can’t do it. A raucous and precarious partisan majority in the House can’t do it. The only institution that can make stable and enduring laws is the one we have in which all 50 states are represented equally, and where every single senator has a say in the laws that we pass.”
Yet other observers do not see Mr. McConnell and his leadership with quite the same glow. Jonathan Chait at New York magazine has seen the same speeches as Mr. Will — particular Mr. McConnell’s view of Senate rule changes under Harry Reid, the current majority leader — but does not find them nearly as convincingly sanguine. He writes: “The source of McConnell’s apparent indignation is changes made to Senate rules by Reid. The Democratic leader has made it hard for Republicans to amend legislation, forcing them into up-or-down votes on bills of Reid’s choosing. And more provocative, he eliminated the filibuster on federal court nominations and executive branch appointments. McConnell claims he will undo this, restoring the Senate to its grandeur.”
It is possible McConnell actually believes this, Mr. Chait says, but “there is almost no chance he will follow through on it.” He writes, “The reason the majority party likes to control what bills and amendments can come to the floor is that it prefers to highlight issues where it holds a political advantage and obscure issues where their opponents do.”
Annie Lowrey, also at New York magazine, sees much less “creator of consensus” and much more manager of conflict between parties. She sees Republicans unable to pass legislation — Democrats could filibuster in the Senate or the president could veto any bill — without compromise. But there’s still a way for Republicans to get their priorities onto President Obama’s desk, she writes: “They can attach them to budget legislation and pass it through a process immune to the filibuster known as ‘reconciliation.’
“President Obama is faced with the choice of approving a budget larded with Republican priorities he hates, or using his veto power — and thus potentially shutting down the government or even precipitating another debt-ceiling crisis,” Ms. Lowrey says.
Steven Mufson at The Washington Post also sees partisan strife: “The Republican plan for next year isn’t about congressional harmony but is mainly aimed at discrediting the Obama record, defining a new conservative vision, and building an appealing Republican platform for the 2016 presidential election.”
Ms. Lowrey concludes: “The next two years might look a lot like the last two years, with legislating grinding to a halt and the occasional shutdown or debt-ceiling scare. Democrats and Republicans agree on very little. There is scant evidence of anyone pivoting to the center. The choke points shift, but persist.”
Some observers on the right don’t disagree with this but of course see it in a different light. Erick Erickson at Red State says, “The G.O.P. would be wise to target Obamacare for destruction and begin, finally, investigating the Obama Administration’s attempts to politicize all aspects of the federal bureaucracy.
“Voters distrust big government,” he adds. “Republicans should, assuming they win the Senate, begin exposing all the ills of Barack Obama’s big government.”
Hugh Hewitt at Washington Examiner urges Republicans to act with true urgency and boldness if they win the Senate. “Pass the G.O.P. budget on day one, having negotiated its particulars between House and Senate GOP in November and December.
“On day two, both Houses should pass a Defense Appropriations bill adequate to the pressing needs of the Pentagon — again negotiated between House and Senate during the two months between elections and the new Congress convening — and send it to the president, defining by deeds what makes the new G.O.P. Congress different from either divided government or the 2007 to 2010 years of Pelosi-Reid.”
Yet should Republicans get ambitious, Ms. Ball sees an additional obstacle: “The biggest obstacle will be Republicans themselves — chiefly the restive conservatives in the House, who have prevented consideration of bipartisan legislation approved by the Senate on issues like immigration and who have often prevented the party from doing what’s in its own political interest (see: government shutdown).”
But first, Election Day, when questions of which party controls what are answered — or at least hopefully answered, unless it goes into overtime.