Power surge: elections favor Republican party

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Dalton LaFerney / Senior Staff Writer

The balance of power favored Republicans on almost every level Tuesday night in the midterm elections.

The U.S. Senate will now be in the hands of Republicans, who ran excellent campaigns in West Virginia, Arkansas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Montana and Iowa. Six seats were needed to overtake the Senate, and voters chose seven on Election night — a testament to grassroots groups.

In his final two years in office, President Obama will look to establish his legacy with more progressive laws, but voters made that a little more difficult for him on Tuesday. Republicans on Capitol Hill will work to destroy his major achievements when both the Senate and Congress reconvene.

Led by House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the GOP has everything it needs for an assault on Obamacare, which will likely be its first priority.

Prepare for the president’s approval ratings to plummet even further, as the GOP has a collaborative agenda in both the House and Senate. The Democrats lost leverage this midterm, becoming more exposed to flanking GOP attacks.

The president no longer has the support he needs to pass legislation vital to his vision for America. Republicans have criticized Obama for his executive action on numerous issues and House conservatives threatened him earlier this year with a lawsuit, claiming he acted illegally on some issues.

Obama should be more cautious before using executive authority if progress is to be made. The president said Wednesday that he will cooperate with Republicans but will continue to act alone on immigration reform and action against the Islamic State.

To ensure his policies live on past his presidency, Obama will likely follow his predecessors and appoint more liberal justices to the Supreme Court, but the Senate approves those appointments, so the chance for Obama to establish a more liberal Supreme Court is all but impossible. Expect the Supreme Court to stay the same.

Obama should take the results of the election as a sign that Americans are unsatisfied. He needs to better establish relations with his colleagues across the aisle if he cares at all about his party’s chances in the upcoming presidential race. He doesn’t have much of a choice, because Republicans have a coordinated agenda for Washington; Obama will have to compromise.

Looking ahead to 2016, the race to the Oval Office took a wrong turn for Hillary Clinton, who is highly suspected to be the Democratic nominee. Republicans defeated Democrats on all fronts Tuesday, including in governor races. The better a party does winning governor seats in the midterms, the better its chances of winning the big prize two years after.

Clinton and the other potential Democratic candidates will now face a more momentous challenge in defeating the eager Republican candidates. Some of those likely GOP candidates are the same ones who struck the nation with grassroots fever. Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul can be thanked for their initiatives in the tea parties and could be rewarded in 2016.

With all the excitement, Republicans should get right to work. The party now has the majority in Washington, D.C. With that authority comes prodigious responsibility, and therefore will receive most of the blame from voters if problems aren’t met with solutions. Just as the GOP blamed Democrats for the political gridlock, Democrats now have an excuse for inaction.

Featured Illustration: A GOP logo sits atop the Capital Building in D.C. to signify GOP control of the Senate. Illustration by Edward Balusek – Visuals Editor. Source photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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