A TEA PARTY FOR THE GRAND OLD PARTY

Congressional and State Gubernatorial elections in the USA are a complex mixture, made even more interesting this time because of the “Tea Party” candidates of the righ. It can mean only one thing for Munguin’s Republic. Yes, I bottled out of writing anything myself and asked Danny to do a "Letter from America".

The Republicans had a party Tuesday night, and the Democrats just tried to put a brave face on things, as the votes were counted in the American midterm election. Voters went to the polls to elect the 112th US Congress, along with many state offices. With a few close races remaining to be decided, the Republicans will take majority control of the 435 member House of Representatives by a sizeable margin of approximately 242/193, a swing of 64 seats away from the Democrats. With three races left to be decided among the 37 contested Senate seats, the Republicans will take five to eight seats from the Democrats, leaving a thin Democratic majority as close as 51/49, if all three remaining seats go Republican. Republicans also took key state Governorships.

By any reckoning, this spells big trouble for Barack Obama’s legislative agenda as he enters the second half of his term and looks to the presidential election of 2012. He came to the presidency with a large reservoir of personal popularity, but with the wreckage of the George W. Bush administration all about him, and the immediate crisis of an economic crash looming. Not the least of his problems was the historically fractious nature of his own Democratic Party, which made large majorities in both houses of the 111th Congress somewhat illusory. Less obvious, but just as real, was his own relative political inexperience, and what would prove to be a largely ineffective White House political operation in dealing with a resurgent Republican Party, especially its so-called “Tea Party” faction determined to drive the party to the political right.

Nevertheless, Obama and the Congressional Democrats achieved the passage of major legislation to shore up the weakened economy and re-regulate Wall Street. Most important of all was the passage of his landmark health care reform bill, the signature political issue of his 2008 campaign, and a fitting contribution to the historic legacy of progressive Democratic social legislation stretching back to FDR.

All of this was accomplished in the face of implacable Republican opposition. Facing White House political ineptitude and divisions in the Democratic Congressional caucuses, the Republicans only had to become the “party of ‘No’” to achieve success. Their political tactic was as effective as it was transparently obvious. They would oppose everything, put forward no alternatives, watch things go to hell in a hand basket, and then blame Obama when the next election came around. This cynical political tactic was rewarded in spades with the counting of the votes Tuesday night.

A major political subtext of the midterm campaign was the success of many Tea Party-backed candidates over mainstream Republicans in the party primaries. But the general election results were more mixed for the Tea Party faction. Tea Party Republicans won high profile Senate races in Florida, Kentucky, and at least eight other states. The three Senate races left to be decided involve Tea Party candidates in Alaska, Colorado, and Washington State. On the other hand, the disastrous candidacy of Tea Party Republican Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate race cost the Republicans an almost certain Senate seat, as did the candidacy of Sharron Angle in Nevada, which saved the seat of Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader. The Senate race in Alaska remains to be decided, but involves the candidacy of popular incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski who mounted a write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary to a Tea Party insurgent backed by former Governor Sarah Palin. On balance, Tea Party Republicans made a creditable showing in the midterms, and they should be able to play a significant role in Republican politics going forward.

With the end of the midterms, the 2012 presidential campaign effectively begins with speeches and fundraising in 2011, in advance of the state primaries which begin early in 2012. Their midterm successes may have positioned Tea Party Republicans to advance one of their own to run against Obama. The most prominent “unannounced” Tea Party candidate is Sarah Palin, the current media darling who ran for Vice President on John McCain’s Republican ticket in 2008. Famously, it was then discovered that she doesn’t read newspapers, and frankly seems not to be all that bright. She does have a cutesy wink and a few political punch lines that are catnip to the right wing nut cases of the Tea Party. If she receives the Republican nomination, Obama should be able to make mincemeat of her. Surely she’s unlikely to be elected president. But then strange things do happen “only in America.”