Congress: Will fiscal cliff, election results lead partisans to stand down?
Post-election, the GOP-led House still sees its mandate as tax-hike prevention. Obama and the Democrats still want to raise taxes for the wealthy. But if they don't work together, the looming 'fiscal cliff' – which no one wants to see – may doom them all.
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Matt Kibbe, president of the major tea party group FreedomWorks, is not one of those.
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“While some talking heads will try to forecast the results of tonight’s election as an inevitable repeat of the last four years, I strongly disagree. Because of this election cycle and the rise of the freedom movement, the political conversation has fundamentally changed,” he wrote on the Fox News website after the election results were known. “In fact, Democrats and establishment Republicans alike discovered in this election cycle that their ticket to victory was through speaking the traditional ‘Tea Party’ language of spending and entitlement reform, tax relief and the need for a serious plan to debt reduction.”
That warning to those contemplating running for Congress (or up for reelection in 2014) may be heard and heeded by some lawmakers (particularly Republicans feeling vulnerable), but not by all,
Politico detects a “newly strengthened liberal wing” in the US Senate, including just-elected Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Chris Murphy in Connecticut, and reelected Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Meanwhile, several centrists in the Senate’s Democratic caucus – Joseph Lieberman, Jim Webb, and Kent Conrad – are retiring.
At the same time, Politico notes “an array of moderates who will certainly be targeted in red states in 2014, such as Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Max Baucus of Montana.”
In other words, Democrats may control the Senate, but it’s unclear whether Senator Reid can get them to march off together. Some Democrats in the House reportedly are miffed at Obama for not giving them more help during the campaign, and – depending especially on how Congress deals with debt and deficit difficulties – they’re not necessarily immune from tea party pressure.
Obama may have won a clear victory, but he’s still a lame duck as of Wednesday.
Recipe for gridlock? Perhaps, but that fiscal cliff continues to loom.
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