Well, that depends on one very important prerequisite: Republicans actually regaining control of the U.S. Senate a week from Tuesday. Given the realities of early twenty-first century electoral politics in this country, that will never be a sure thing for the GOP, or even a fifty-fifty proposition. But the latest Rasmussen Reports polling indicates a net seven-seat pickup for the Good Guys/Gals, enough to send Harry (G)Reid and his band of extremist obstructionists back to the minority for the first time in nearly a decade. So let's take a page from the Larry Kudlow template and be blithering optimists. What would such a scenario make possible?
LK has some heady ideas:
[T]hen comes the big story: The beginning of a new conservative revolution.
The idea that nothing much will change if the GOP captures the whole Congress is just plain wrong. The politics and policies in Washington are about to change in a major way.
Obama may still be president. But he is going to be immediately confronted with a flood of new bills that will change the debate on tax reform, energy, healthcare, education, international trade, and regulations.
Obama will no longer be able to hide behind Harry Reid, who has stopped all voting on these matters. And Mitch McConnell, as Senate majority leader, will be able to move forward the reform ideas of his caucus and House policy leaders like Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling, Kevin Brady, and many others.
Obama’s head will spin with all the new paperwork on his desk. He may even have to cut back on his golf game.
More specifically:
First is optimism: We know what the problems are, we know what the solutions should be, and we can make these changes quickly. Second is a re-energized evangelism by the Republican Party for pro-growth, market-oriented, consumer-driven, pro-family policies.
“We all see this coming,” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan told me in a recent interview. “Energy and tax reform are going to be at the top of the list.” And House Financial Services chairman Jeb Hensarling told me, “It’s time to put up or shut up for tax reform. Fairer, flatter, simpler, so the American people will at last know what the GOP would do for economic growth to rescue the country from the worst recovery since World War II.
”Hensarling also emphasized the need to expand the energy revolution and to stop the massive overregulation that has stunted growth. “The regulatory red-tape burden, which violates the Founding Fathers’ Federalist paper 47 by diminishing the rule of law and increasing bureaucratic power in the executive branch at the expense of the constitutionally mandated legislative branch, has got to be stopped.”
Optimism. Building Keystone XL and maybe luring back the Canadians. Cutting the top corporate tax rate to 20%. Repealing ObamaCare, and sending healthcare back to the States altogether, where it belongs. Economic policies that are genuinely pro-growth and really will create real (i.e. private sector) jobs. Reining in the Regime's extraconstitutional rampaging. Restoring a prudent, survivable level of military funding, force size, and terminating the sodomization and foreignizing of the U.S. Armed Forces. Privatizing of all entitlement programs. Across-the-board deregulation. Ending the foreign-thinking occupation of the country and letting the American people breath freely again without being slapped for exhaling too much carbon dioxide. Resurrection the Old American Republic. "Fundamentally transforming" Obamerikastan back into America.
Absolutely none of which King Hussein will allow. The flurry of new paperwork hitting Old Resolute that Harry (G)Reid has been embargoing will simply become a flurry of vetoes coming right back at Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McConnell. But Mr. Kudlow is so carried away with Pollyanna-ism that he thinks enough Dems might cross the aisle to override Obama vetoes, and that some - he specified Angus King of Maine (fat chance) and Joe Manchin of West Virginia (maybe) - might even exchange their "D" jerseys for "R" jerseys.
That, of course, is how you give optimism a bad name. It's called "overpromising," a phenomenon we all should have learned to recognize coming out of the White House for going on six years. There's no sense in following in those footsteps. Morale is, after all, a function of expectations, and if people's expectations are managed at a reasonable level, a collective even keel is much easier to maintain. Besides, everybody should anticipate that Boehner and McConnell are going to become the Obamedia's Two Dark Lords of the Sith, just like Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole were depicted back in the 104th Congress, complete with their eeeeeevil "apprentices" like Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz (who will have a much higher profile as an almost guaranteed Senate committee or subcommittee chairman) Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, et al. The GOP Congress will be the "problem" and Barack Obama will be the "underdog" battling "heroically" against the "obstructionists" on behalf of the American people, with (maybe, maybe not) Elizabeth Warren waiting in the wings to take that "populist" baton.
Sorry, Larry, but I've been watching American politics too long, and seen way too many reverses, defeats, atrocities, screw jobs, and mockeries of justice, particularly over the past decade, to buy into so overly rosy a scenario as you paint here. Yes, the GOP looks like it's going to win pretty big on November 4th, and yes, Boehner and McConnell will do what they can, and a conservative agenda will be pushed hard (Contrary to "conventional wisdom," there has always been one; it just never gets any media attention and quietly dies at Dirty Harry's doorstep). But it isn't going anywhere, and the prospect of such an agenda becoming a viable party platform in the next election cycle (assuming O allows one) where the pendulum will be swinging back towards the Democrats is not promising. And then there is the brutal reality, unchangeable by any election result, no matter how big the "red" tide becomes, that Barack Obama has all the power, Congress has effectively none, and there's no way the latter is getting any of it back.
But you can't not love this line:
But the key here is that the GOP regains its footing as the party of optimism and growth. A new Republican Congress should message that they’re tired of obsessing about Obama’s mistakes. Everybody knows about those. The trick now is to focus on solutions. On change. On saying, “We can do this. We can fix this.” [emphases added]
"Hope and change". "Yes! We! Can!" How delicious would it be to turn these B.S. 2008 catch-phrases around and shove them right back in The One's insufferable puss?
When the chances of big victories are effectively zero, you have to take whatever small victories you can.
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