Yesterday the new GOP House and Senate leadership provided an assessment of the midterm elections and the Republican landslide victory during a press conference on Capitol Hill.
“We're determined to stop the agenda Americans have rejected and to turn the ship around. We'll work with the administration when they agree with the people and confront them when they don't,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “This election yesterday was clearly a referendum on the administration and the Democratic majority here in the Congress. Ignoring the voters and their wishes, as you could see during the entire two-year period, produces predictable results.”
The GOP made historic gains in the House on Tuesday, with a net gain of 60 seats, and the leadership has said they are going to follow the will of the voters by cutting spending and taxes.
In 2008 the voters put their support behind the Democrat’s agenda which included health care reform, cap-and-trade legislation and a stimulus package, among other things. Put into perspective, the 21 seat Republican majority seems less drastic when compared to the 81 seat majority the Democrats held before the midterms.
In January of 2009, just two months after the presidential election, the 111th Congress set to work on an $800 billion stimulus package. A Pew survey showed that 57% of Americans felt that the stimulus package was a good idea, only 22% opposed it. Yet, the Republicans voted as a block against the package.
On Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell touched on the health care legislation passed earlier this year. “The health care bill in my view is, sort of, a metaphor for the government excess that we witnessed over the last two years,” McConnell said.
Though President Obama’s health care legislation was not as widely accepted as the stimulus package but at the time of passage more Americans favored (48%) the overhaul, than those who opposed it (31%). Again, nearly every Republican opposed the bill.
The Republican's change of heart and strategy is puzzling, but less so considering McConnell’s statement to the National Journal last week when he said, “"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
"The time to go along and get along is over," Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.
The GOP’s leadership’s rhetoric is troubling. It’s not only an obstructionist approach to lawmaking, but one that ignores the needs and wishes of the American people in the pursuit of power. This may be the cold, hard reality of politics, but the idealist in me likes to hope there are still some Jefferson Smith’s in Washington
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| (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) |
