Unmistakable steps Forward

The NY Times editorially forecasts "An Invigorated Second Term," offering as proof:

The president’s victory was decisive, and many who didn’t support him nonetheless told pollsters that they agreed with his positions on taxes, health care and immigration.

George Will, though, writing on behalf of the decidedly un-Times crowd, is giddily dancing "The status quo" rag:

[V]oters ratified Republican control of the House, keeping in place those excoriated as obstructionists by the president the voters retained.

Those two sentences are lifted from two seemingly separate universes. Same election, same electorate, same issues, essentially the same pols, and yet the two Faiths--the Times' rather sedate liberalism and whatever it is George Will & Co.'s unstable ideology is calling itself these days--rematerialize in two differing eras with two entirely different interpretations as to what it all means.

The "conservative" Will (or so he fancies himself) seems to think the election was almost superfluous, a mere trifle, an expressed reconfirmation of gloriously radicalized gridlock, whereas the reformist Times seizes the profoundly traditional view of American society pulling together through a common ethos and consensual aims. My, how the orthodoxies have changed, which is to say, traded places.

But that's a different subject. The question here is, Which is reading the post-election circumstances right?

Even after "weighting" my argument for bias (it's going to take a while for us all to come down from the Age of Silver), Will's argument, I'd argue, is so inadmissible, it borders on the incomprehensible. The GOP House and its partisan-aligned state legislatures have been firewalling the former since 2010: redistricting, and not some national zeitgeist of status quo-ism, helped immensely in reseating the obstructionists--as did the power of incumbency and the electorate's exasperating habit of adoring their clown while detesting the two-ring circus of those 434 others.

Otherwise the country unmistakably moved forward. It positively hurled tea-partying wingnuts either from office or mere consideration--from West to Walsh and from Mourdock to Akin; in variously civilized locales it embraced the human right to marry a loved one of each human's choice; it even, here and there, smiled on some goofweed. What's more, it took repeated looks at Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's Gilded Age gobbledygook and said, resoundingly, No thanks, not again.

Now the real battle is joined. The election was but a preliminary. And my money is on the "invigorated" winners. 

Comments

[japa21]

So is mine. Of course, the ability of those on the Right to misread the meaning of election results is legendary.

What they miss, as you point out, is that the firebrands, leaders of the obstruction, mainly suffered defeats. So they read that to mean that continued obstructionist actions are favored by the electorate.

And mind you, this is not confined to the pundits, as it apparently is also the view of the Boehners, Cantors and McDonells of the GOP as well.

The irony may well be that the most reasonable, conciliatory and rationale response to the election was Romney's concession speech. Everything I have heard and read since then from the right represents a downward path.

[Robert Lipscomb]

Short Term:

Tax ceiling gets pushed down the road a year or less.

Bush tax cuts expire.

Post Inauguration:

Quick fix on tax rates (reduce for $250K or less) combined with passage of Obama's jobs plan.

(Remember the transportation bill was passed just prior to the conventions.

Medium Term:

Real estate and employment rates increasing rapidly as is Obama's political capital.

GOP Establishment is actively throwing Tea Partiers (especially culture warriors) under the bus.

Boehner, Reid and Obama reach a Grand Bargain that simultaneous rewrites the tax code with a heavy emphasis on deductions/credits) and on raising revenue while cutting spending.

This will include substantial cuts in all areas, but most importantly for Medicare, Medicaid and DoD. Obama will extract the right to reduce payments under Medicare rather than services (except those identified as redundant or unnecessary by the so-called "death panels".)

Late 2013/Early 2014

Economy and employment continues a fast-paced recovery. Obama's political capital does the same.

Major immigration reform as Establishment GOP tries to position itself with Lation community for the mid-term elections. (Drive bus back-and-forth ver Tea partiers and Culture Warriors).

Throughout his second term, Obama uses all available administrative tools to generate progressive regulations and directives.

2014 Mid-Term Election

House and Senate Dem canadiates (unlike 2010) run as Obama Democrats and take advantage of the targeted polling/messaging employed by Team Obama in 2012.

Pick up a few seats in House and solidify all the 2008 gains in the Senate.

[Peter G]

So I'm cruising Republican sites to see if there are any signs of an impending internal war (there were always battles) and sure enough the battlegrounds are being surveyed and maneuvering has begun. I probably should have paid more attention to this side of the political equation before but frankly it is terrible for the digestion. I never suspected the degree to which the hard right, as represented by,say, Redstate, despises the Republican party and its' leadership. So a campaign begins to secure the chairmanship of the Republican Study Committee to ensure that it is firmly in the hands of a paragon of conservative virtue by the name of Tom Graves. The apparent belief is that this will allow the hard right in congress to control the beliefs of their other members by setting forth even more rigid ideological. dogma to follow.

[Peter G]

Having read Will's dismal little piece, I will venture one observation about it. He wrote of Obama offering immigration reform as a rock on which the Republicans could again wreck themselves. That is foolish. If Obama owes his victory to any one group more than another. it would be the Hispanic vote. And they deserve the reward of having their legitimate concerns regarding immigration reform and the Dream Act become top shelf priorities.
Far from being a rock on which to founder, this would actually give the Republicans an opportunity to repair their self-inflicted demographic wounds. The most popular advice they are currently receiving from themselves is that they need to rebrand themselves. As if it was the dreck they were marketing that was the problem, and not their inherent nativism.
With their strongholds now in the House and the heaviest representation in the South, where coincidentally the Latino vote grows stronger daily,the Democrats are in a beautiful position to reward their latino supporters and do the Republicans a true favor. Make them rexamine their positions on immigration reform. Force the breach between the tea partiers and the more pragmatic Republicans. Redistricting shields can only hold for so long. Americans are still a mobile people and there is no way ultimately for the Republicans to shield themselves in their enclaves from this rapidly growing demographic group.

[Robert Lipscomb]

There are three competing priorities in the GOP: (1) culture wars; (2) no new taxes; and (3) balanced budget.

Numbers 2 and 3 will likely be in conflict and thereby those in the GOP who priortize either one over the other. Those whose priority is Number 1 will be seen as subordinate and maybe expendable by the other two.

Can anyone tell me how this plays out in Game Theory?

[Jim Milstein]

Yes, Robert,

If your premises are correct, the Rs destroy themselves, and the Ds win by default.