Day: November 3, 2014
It Doesn’t Matter Who Controls the Senate
The legislative dynamics in Washington are very simple. Gridlock exists because Obama and House Republicans cannot agree on legislation. If Obama and the House could agree on legislation, their deal would be approved by a Democratic-controlled Senate or by a Republican-controlled Senate. There are no plausible circumstances in which the Senate would block a deal struck between the House and Obama, because, whichever party controls the Senate, its ideological center will sit comfortably inside in the enormous space between Obama and the House Republicans. Ergo, the party that controls the Senate has no impact on legislative outcomes.
— Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine.
GOP Not Content with Winning, Wants to Drown Democrats
A wave just doesn’t happen. Waves happen when every single member of a cause or a movement comes together. This is our time, we need to crush it and push their heads under over and over and over again until they cannot breathe anymore.
— New Hampshire GOP Chairman Jennifer Horn, quoted by NH Journal, on defeating Democrats in the midterm elections.
Where Are These ‘Democrats’ at Election Time?
51%
Of people who either aren’t registered to vote or are unlikely to vote in the 2014 midterm elections favor or lean toward the Democrats, while 30% favor or lean toward the Republicans — a 21-point gap, a new Pew Research study shows.
Ted Cruz Puts Impeachment Back on the Table
Republicans appear likely to win the Senate and thus control of Congress tomorrow, despite the fact that their leaders, House Speaker John Boehner and prospective Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have rigorously avoided revealing their party’s plans for governing the nation over the next two years. Stepping into this void of leadership, Sen. Ted Cruz, the Canadian-born Texan who, as chair of the Senate’s ad hoc ad hoc Klown Kar Caucus, led the Republicans’ unpopular shutdown of the government, set out his agenda for a GOP-controlled 114th Congress in an interview with the Washington Post yesterday.
His top priority, Cruz said, would be non-stop hearings on President Obama, “looking at the abuse of power, the executive abuse, the regulatory abuse, the lawlessness that sadly has pervaded this administration.”
In other words, impeachment.
