aknowledgeableperson wrote:
What might not be a bad situation would be to have the Republicans take control of the House, say by just a very slim majority, and the Senate be split 50/50. The Republicans could not stay as the party of NO unless it wanted a repeat of '95 which was bad for them, and we will find out who really walks the walk about bipartisanship.
After the past two years, though, I'm not super confident that we'd see cooperation. I think from a perspective purely of getting things done, we need either for the Dems to retain both majorities or for the GOP to take a majority in both houses. I think Obama and a GOP Congress will have an easier time cooperating than a split Congress would have reaching a consensus on anything to send to Obama in the first place. Obama and a GOP Congress would both sort of have each other over a barrel because the GOP wants to have something to show for its majority, there's a lot of stuff they'd like to do, and obviously Obama can simply veto it if he doesn't like it, but Obama also needs the GOP to pass things that he wants to sign into law. The GOP hasn't shown any willingness to cooperate or compromise over the past two years, and I think taking a majority in the House is just going to validate that strategy in their eyes. At the same time, any legislative failures can be pinned on the Dem Senate that won't play ball with them. I think in a split Congress it's going to have to be the Dems who blink if there's going to be any cooperation. And maybe they will, through the years of GOP majority they were never as obstinate and inflexible and downright childish as the GOP has been the past couple years. But I do think it'll be on them to make a move toward bipartisanship, and I don't think there's any guarantee that they will. We might just end up facing two years of gridlock. For those who think that's a good thing, it'll be fine, but to get anything passed, split Congress might end up being the worst case scenario.
One thing that's already in question is the Bush tax cuts. The Dems want to extend them for all but the wealthiest two percent, the GOP wants to extend them for everyone, and now there was an article in the New York Times or on Reuters or somewhere the other day that people are increasingly beginning to expect that they're just going to expire completely because nothing is going to get done to keep them going. If they can't learn to compromise, everybody's going to lose. I'm not exactly unbiased when I say this, I mean as a real liberal I'm predisposed to merely dislike the Dems but totally despise the GOP, but based on the past two years I kind of get the feeling the GOP is more willing to take a lose/lose solution than the Dems are. I feel like they'd do it almost just to spite the Dems, but in fairness it would actually be a fairly shrewd political move too -- the Dems are already seen as the party of "tax and spend" and the Republicans have done a great job stoking that fire that past two years, to the extent that most people think Obama has raised their taxes already, when in fact he's actually lowered them. Watch the tax cuts expire and see how much trouble the GOP has convincing the electorate that Obama just hiked up their taxes even while the economy is still sputtering. I like your rosier view and hope it actually comes to pass, but I think with a split Congress things could get ugly (uglier, I suppose, it's not exactly pretty right now).
