Today, Republicans control the House of Representatives 242-193. Democrats hold the Senate, 53-47 (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont).
Most House-watchers expect the Republicans to lose seats, but not enough to forfeit control. The mid-range scenario projects losses of between seven and 11 for the GOP. Losses on that scale would not jeopardize Republican control. They would, however, imply the defeat of almost all the more moderate conservatives in the Republican caucus. If Barack Obama wins re-election, he’ll meet a House even more hostile and intransigent than the House that nearly pushed the United States into default on its obligations in the summer of 2011.
The Senate outlook is even grimmer for Republicans. Earlier in the year, Republicans hoped they might win both the presidency and the Senate, restoring their post-9/11 united control of all three elected branches of government. Now it seems more probable that the Democrats will expand their Senate majority, most likely by picking up Republican held Senate seats in Massachusetts and Indiana, and holding once seemingly vulnerable Democratic seats in Virginia and Missouri.
How? Why?
The short answer is: The Tea Party struck again.
Indiana, for example, should have been an easy Republican hold. One of the most Republican states outside the South, Indiana has elected only three Democrats to the U.S. Senate since World War II, two of them the father-and-son succession of Birch Bayh and Evan Bayh. The seat open in 2012 had been held by Richard Lugar, a senator best known for his work to secure loose Soviet-era nuclear materials. Lugar won his last race, in 2006, with 87% of the vote.
But Lugar was growing old and — worse — had co-operated too much with President Obama. A Tea Party Republican named Richard Mourdock launched a primary challenge against Lugar, and won. Mourdock then proceeded to share his ideas with the broader Indiana electorate, including this one: “I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
Those words were pronounced in the heat of a televised debate. Mourdock later clarified that he did not mean to say that rape is intended by God; only that rape-caused pregnancies are intended by God. The clarification did not help, to say the least, and Mourdock now badly trails his conservative Democratic opponent.
Mourdock was not the only Republican candidate to expatiate on the subject of rape. In Missouri, Democrats had been resigned to a likely loss by Claire McCaskill, in trouble for — among other things — using campaign funds to charter private jets. However, Republicans however nominated a pro-life crusader named Todd Akin, who became world-famous when he told a television interviewer that a woman could not become pregnant from a “legitimate rape.” (Akin later elaborated that he opposed a rape exception for abortion in part because women might lie about rape. McCaskill was saved.
In Virginia, Republicans re-nominated George Allen, who had lost in 2006 after he was caught on video deriding a non-white reporter as “macaca over there.” Nobody quite knew what “macaca” meant, but it did not sound good in the mouth of a politician famous for his pro-Confederate enthusiasm. A more adroit politician than Mourdock and Akin, Allen has kept out of trouble in 2012, but he’s an increasingly poor fit for a state whose fastest-growing population centers are filling with highly educated knowledge workers.
In 2010, Scott Brown won an upset victory to serve the balance of the term of the late Senator Kennedy. Massachusetts is a liberal state, but it often elects Republican governors to police its notorious free-spending state legislature. Could an attractive and appealing moderate hold a Senate seat? Perhaps — until Warren tightened the race with a withering series of attack ads reminding Massachusetts voters that however nice a guy Scott Brown was, a vote for Brown was a vote to turn control of the Senate over to the party that also nominated Mourdock, Akin and Allen. The race is close, but local observers expect a Warren win.
In 2010, Tea Party candidates cost the GOP control of the Senate by throwing away four otherwise winnable seats: Colorado, Connecticut Delaware and Nevada. Now in 2012, Tea Party Republicanism looks likely to enlarge the Democratic margin even further.
If so, more mainstream Republicans will be left after Tuesday to ponder this question: Have we learned our lesson yet?
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: David Frum
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