Pelosi Will Lead Obamateam to Cooperate with Republicans in the House

And won’t that be a scene!

Jennifer Rubin wrote the following article, “It’s all about Pelosi”, at Commentary:

“Republicans are gleeful. Sober Democrats are horrified. But many liberal columnists — the very ones who cheered on ObamaCare, ignored and disparaged the Tea Party, and rooted for Obama in 2008 — are rushing to defend her. It’s all about Nancy Pelosi. In more ways than one.

Those defending her effort to remain the House Democrats’ leader seem as obsessively indifferent as she is to the meaning of the midterm elections. We are told, “She’s losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.” That, as Bill Clinton would say, depends on the meaning of “well.” If “well” is piling up a mound of red ink with nothing to show for it, she did well. If decimating her own caucus is “well,” then she’s second to none. If passing a hugely unpopular health-care bill that has already proved to be more fiscally irresponsible than anyone would let on, she is a superstar.

Now, of course, the left is obliged to defend her. She pushed the agenda for which they rooted and embodies the statist liberalism they adore. But Americans plainly hate that agenda, and the economy remains in the doldrums, in large part because that agenda has freaked out employers. If a politician advances neither the public good nor her party’s interests, isn’t it time to give her the boot? The left would rather have a “historic accomplishment” quite likely wiped out in the next few years than it would a viable governing majority. Republicans reply, “Way to go!”

There is another school of thought on the left. We have to indulge her, we are told, because she is so darn admirable. She ignored the voters, ridiculed the Tea Party, refused to hold a vote on the Bush tax cuts, and recognized that the voters punished her party because those jobs, jobs, jobs never emerged. So naturally, they insist, we should let her stay. They realize that it might not be the best thing for the party, but gosh, what a spunky gal she is. It has become a “boost Nancy’s self-esteem” movement on the left. Swell for her, not so hot for a Democratic Party struggling to assure the public that it “gets” the message the voters are sending.

Others point to the “unfairness” of allowing Harry Reid to keep his job while Pelosi is, her non-deluded colleagues hope, hustled offstage. To that I can only say, “Take it up with Chuck Schumer.” He’s apparently not nervy enough to make a play for Reid’s post. And, Reid’s defenders would argue, at least he didn’t lose the majority for his caucus like Nancy did for hers.

Unless the rump leftist caucus comes down with a case of common sense, Pelosi is likely to remain atop the House Democratic caucus. Even more troubling for Democrats who aspire to pull out of their party’s tailspin, the “Damn the voters, full speed ahead!” mentality may also dominate the White House’s thinking. If so, the tsunami of 2012 will make 2010’s results look like a ripple.

Despite Financial Scandal Caused by Democrats, Calilfornia Elects More Democrats

The “Golden State” Still Doesn’t Get It

The midterm elections turned into a sweeping repudiation of the Democrats’ failed status quo — except, that is, in California, says Investor’s Business Daily (IBD).

With the exception of the governor’s office, California has been a virtual one-party state since the 1960s.  Now, thanks to decades of antibusiness policies promulgated by a series of left-leaning legislatures, its economy and finances are a mess, and it is hemorrhaging jobs, businesses and productive entrepreneurs to other states.

How bad has it gotten in the erstwhile Golden State?  Consider:

• Some 2.3 million Californians are without jobs, for a 12.4 percent unemployment rate — one of the highest in the country.
• From 2001 to 2010, factory jobs plummeted from 1.87 million to 1.23 million — a loss of 34 percent of the state’s industrial base.
• With just 12 percent of the U.S. population, California has almost a third of the nation’s welfare recipients; meanwhile, 15.3 percent of all Californians live in poverty.
• The state budget gap for 2009-2010 was $45.5 billion, or 53 percent of total state spending — the largest in any state’s history.
• Unfunded pension liabilities for California’s state and public employees may be as much as $500 billion — roughly 17 percent of the nation’s total $3 trillion at the state and local level.

This has been building for decades.  In the end, only the voters of California can change things.  But on Tuesday, they opted for more of the same governance that will only make conditions worse, says IBD.

Source: “The ‘Golden State’ Still Doesn’t Get It,” Investor’s Business Daily, November 4, 2010.

For text:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/552810/201011041910/The-Golden-State-Still-Doesnt-Get-It.htm

The above article was published by the National Center for Policy Analysis

More on the National Endowment for the Humanities Scandal in Hawaii

Scott W. Johnson is following up on his article at PowerLine exposing the scandalous antiAmerican Conference meeting in July at the University of Hawaii:

“The American Legion’s Burn Pit blog has much more on the NEH-funded conference on the Pacific War at the East-West Center of University of Hawaii. The post is by the Legion’s Mark Seavey; please check it out.

I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this matter.

CORRECTION: Although I understand that the East-West Center was originally operated by the University of Hawaii under an agreement with the State Department, it is apparently an independent institution that receives substantial funding from the United States government. See the East-West Center Web site here for more information.”

---

California Taxes Americans $40,000,000 Per Day to Support Marxist Habits

The following is a Dick Morris Report article on the theft of tens of millions, soon to be hundreds of millions of dollars PER DAY, the Leftwing state of California is bilking from the American taxpayer:

“One of the first orders of business to come up in the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives will be the demand for bailouts of states where expenditures have been especially profligate – California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Connecticut.  Throughout 2009 and 2010, these states governments have stayed above water by repeated infusions of federal cash.  These one-shot stimulus payments must be repeated each year.  They are all non-recurring expenditures requiring separate annual appropriations.
   
The Republican House must say no and hold the line, stopping this raid on the federal Treasury.  The cry in the caucus must ring loud: “No More Bailouts!”

But, as the Republicans demand fiscal discipline and refuse to make the citizens of the other, more responsible states subsidize the wayward finances of California and New York, we need to focus on the union power that has forced states, localities, and school boards to raise taxes, borrow money, and – ultimately – to depend on federal bailouts.      These unions have forced contracts on their states, localities, and school boards which provide for ever higher wages, benefits, and pensions.  Even now, teachers are on strike in a suburb of Pittsburgh because they feel a 4.5% annual wage increase is inadequate!      The House must create a federal bankruptcy procedure for states that cannot make ends meet requiring, as happens in corporate bankruptcies, that the state governments abrogate all their union contracts.  The new state bankruptcy procedure should offer all states – and through them, their localities, counties, and school boards — the ability to reorganize their finances free of the demands and constraints of their union agreements.

This measure will return our state and local governments to the sovereignty of the people and take them away from the thug-ocracy of public employee unions.

When states like California and New York come to Washington begging for relief, they will threaten us with the closure of their schools and the release of their prison inmates if we deny them subsidy.  Liberals and President Obama will try to portray the battle as school children vs. niggardly Republican legislators.  

But the real fight will be between school children and citizens on the one hand and unions on the other.  The House must shape the issue so that it exposes the real cause of the state shortfalls: The excessive agreements public employee unions have won over the years.

The unions are about to fall prey to what Margaret Thatcher identified as the terminal drawback of socialism – that eventually one runs out of other people’s money!”

Comment:  It was reported today that California is borrowing $40,000,000 from the Obama government PER DAY to feed California’s treasury so Democrats there can buy more votes.       In other words the rest of the country is paying for the profligacy of California Obama Socialists and their marriage to the California State Workers Unions.   Those Unions paid tens of millions to elect Jerry Brown and  Gavin Newsom  Governor and Lt. Governor,   and reelect one of the lowest of lows in the U.S. Senate, Barbara Boxer.   These people will not stop spending when there are tens of millions of suckers like us whom Obama will nab for the payback. 

 There used to be trouble when folks in America were taxed without the people’s representation.  There will be trouble again. 

Obama must stop the leaking  of American money through the Marxist California sieve at $40 million a day or one penny a day.

The “New Yorker” Folks Explain the Election Results

The pads of upper Manhattan and my ex-wife are filled with “The New Yorker” magazines.  Even to this day I find copies in closets and drawers here of the New Yorker from thirty and forty years ago.  I enjoyed them, too.   They were American magazines then, with a yearning for things French and English….but, I am not so sure they fit anymore.  They have gone international……pro UN, anti US.

Here is Hendrik Hertzberg’s article, “Electoral Dissonance”, analyzing last Tuesday’s big event.

“It was a historic defeat. The Democrats retained their Senate majority, now much reduced, only by the grace of the Tea Party, which, in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada, saddled Republicans with nominees so weighted with extremism and general bizarreness that they sank beneath the wave so many others rode. Come January, for only the second time in eight decades and the first in more than six, the House will have fewer than two hundred Democrats in it. And because Democrats also lost eleven governorships and control of nineteen state legislative chambers, the decennial festival of gerrymandering will put their congressional starting line for 2012 at least twenty seats farther back.

In 2008, a little more than fifty-three per cent of the electorate opted for Democratic candidates for the House; in 2010, a little less than fifty-three per cent opted for Republicans. But, if the mirror-image division was essentially equivalent, the electorates were not. The one that dealt Democrats the blow this year was dramatically smaller than the one that put them in office. In 2008, when a hundred and thirty million people cast votes in the Presidential election, a hundred and twenty million took the trouble to vote for a representative in Congress. In 2010, seventy-five million did so—forty-five million fewer, a huge drop-off. The members of this year’s truncated electorate were also whiter, markedly older, and more habitually Republican: if the franchise had been limited to them two years ago, last week’s exit polls suggest, John McCain would be President today.

With the votes tallied, the spin began: a procession of confident assertions about what “the American people”—meaning, in practical terms, the slice of the scaled-down midterm electorate that went one way in 2008 and the other in 2010—were “trying to say.” According to Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, “The message of Tuesday’s election was that the American people want both political parties to work together.” Mitch McConnell, the Republicans’ leader in the Senate, seemed to embrace the togetherness angle, but with fateful caveats. “The American people want us to put aside the left-wing wish list and work together,” he said. But, echoing his pre-election remark that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President,” he also said, “If our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health-spending bill, to end the bailouts, cut spending, and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things.”

As for “the American people” themselves, it seems clear enough that their rejection of the Democrats was, above all, an expression of angry anxiety about the ongoing economic firestorm. Though ignited and fanned by an out-of-control financial industry and its (mostly) conservative political and intellectual enablers, the fire has burned hottest since the 2008 Democratic sweep. By the time the flames reached their height, the arsonists had slunk off, and only the firemen were left for people to take out their ire on. The result is a kind of political cognitive dissonance. Frightened by joblessness, “the American people” rewarded the party that not only opposed the stimulus but also blocked the extension of unemployment benefits. Alarmed by a ballooning national debt, they rewarded the party that not only transformed budget surpluses into budget deficits but also proposes to inflate the debt by hundreds of billions with a permanent tax cut for the least needy two per cent. Frustrated by what they see as inaction, they rewarded the party that not only fought every effort to mitigate the crisis but also forced the watering down of whatever it couldn’t block.

Part of the Democrats’ political problem is that their defense, confusingly, depends on counterfactuals (without the actions they took in the face of fierce Republican opposition, the great slump would have metastasized into a Great Depression), deferred gratification (the health-care law’s benefits do not kick in fully until 2014), and counterintuitive propositions (the same hard times that force ordinary citizens to spend less money oblige the government—whose income, like theirs, is falling—to spend more). Another part of the problem, it must be said, is public ignorance. An illuminating Bloomberg poll, taken the week before the election, found that some two-thirds of likely voters believed that, under Obama and the Democrats, middle-class taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks under the Troubled Asset Relief Program are gone, never to be recovered. One might add to that list the public’s apparent conviction that illegal immigration is skyrocketing and that the health-care law will drive the deficit higher. Reality tells a different story. For ninety-five per cent of us, taxes are actually lower, cut by around four hundred dollars a year for individuals and twice that for families. (The stimulus provided other tax cuts for people of modest means, including a break for college tuition.) The economy has been growing, however feebly, for five straight quarters. Most of the TARP loans have been repaid and the rest soon will be, plus a modest profit for the Treasury. And the number of illegal immigrants fell by close to a million last year, thanks in part to more energetic border enforcement. The health-care law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says, will bring the deficit down.

But why don’t “the American people” know these things? Could it be because the President and his party did not try, or try hard enough, to tell them? Obama’s still loyal supporters—his “base”—are, most of them, disappointed and depressed. This year, more Democratic candidates seemed to apologize for the health-care law—notwithstanding its imperfections, their party’s greatest accomplishment in generations, the fulfillment of a century-long dream—than to proclaim it. Compromise, timidity, and the ugliness of the legislative process—not all of it unavoidable—have exacted a steep toll. Even Obama’s temperament has become a political liability. In 2008, his calm was a synergistic counterpoint to the joyous excitement of the throngs that packed his rallies. In the tidy, quiet isolation of the White House, his serene rationality has felt to many like detachment, even indifference. For him and for the country, the next two years look awfully bleak. Capitol Hill will be like Hamburger Hill, a noisy wasteland of sanguinary stalemate. There will be no more transformative legislation; it will be all Obama can do simply to protect health-care reform from sabotage. The economy, like the climate, will be left to fend for itself. And the world will watch, wonder, and worry.”

Comment:  I certainly like the idea of the climate fending for itself.  Folks from Manhattan and the New Yorker magazine don’t seem to be out door people.   Gardening in cement IS difficult.  I doubt they have graduated from university with much knowledge of anything beyond being a Lefty in business and government.  

The climate will be what the climate will be despite leftwing propaganda to tax Americans on a political scare  to further its Marxist cause.

I also root for  the end of Obama’s transformative legislating.  If the poshpad people of upper Manhattan want Marxism and forced equality, they should be reminded that the equality of the poshpads isn’t the equality Marxist or his political children exactly  have in mind.

Huffington Post on Gay Voting Habits

News from the Huffington Post:                

“Republicans made significant inroads among gay and lesbian voters in the midterm elections, with national exit polls for the House races showing that the GOP captured 31 percent of the vote of this group this year, compared to 19 percent in 2008.

The change from the last midterm elections in 2006 was not quite as large but an increase nevertheless. In 2006, 24 percent supported Republicans. Democrats’ share of the gay vote rose from 75 percent in 2006 to 80 percent in 2008 and then dropped to 68 percent in 2010. Each year, approximately 3 percent of voters identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

“I have been very concerned over these last two years that the connection between the gay rights community and the Democratic Party is in danger of being broken, because I think expectations were set so high as a result of the 2008 election, and people are extremely disappointed,” said Richard Socarides, a former assistant to President Clinton and senior White House adviser on gay rights.

Socarides said that the gay community recognizes President Obama has many pressing issues to juggle, but there’s nevertheless frustration on his LGBT strategy.

“The president articulated in the early summer of 2009, when he had that event at the White House on the 40th anniversary of [the] Stonewall [rebellion] and had a couple of hundred people in the White House — he said, essentially, give me two terms, and at the end of eight years, I will have accomplished for you what I said I would,” said Socarides. “I think that some people come out of that as, we’re not prepared to wait. And some people thought it was a bad strategy because they thought it was going to get harder not easier. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see this change coming in Congress a long time ago. So, I think that we as Democrats have a lot of explaining to do.”

More conservatives have been speaking out in favor of gay rights as the issue becomes more mainstream amongst the general public, and Republicans perhaps sense some vulnerability and dissatisfaction with Democrats.

Of course, one of the central figures pushing for marriage equality is conservative attorney Ted Olson who, along with David Boies, argued the case seeking to overturn California’s Prop. 8, which bans same-sex marriage. Former Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman made headlines recently when he came out as a gay man and signed on to help raise  the marriage equality fight.

The Log Cabin Republicans have also been taking on a more visible role, bringing the suit arguing that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is unconstitutional. R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, is proud of the fact that 12 of the 17 candidates the group endorsed went on to win their races. He said he believes that the reason Republicans performed better with the gay community in this election is because of the focus on the economy rather than social issues.

“Yes, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed, so we can have open service,” said Cooper. “But if people can’t pay their bills or there is concern about their investments, then there could be some overriding points there.”

“We want Republicans who respect individual liberty and individual responsibility and champion that as conservatives,” he added. “So that’s the ideal, right? But knowing there are members of the party that don’t fall under that definition — or, as I like to say, we’re working on them — our guidance was, during this campaign cycle, if you have nothing nice to say about the gay community, say nothing at all. Just shut up. And talk about issues that do affect all Americans, like the economy. Everyone needs a job — doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight.”

Darlene Nipper, deputy executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, agreed that the struggling economy and larger political trends likely played a major role.

“There is enormous fear and frustration among people all across the nation, and a factor is a rocky, stalled economy and high unemployment rate,” said Nipper. “When the party in power doesn’t seem to be making it better, some people make their anger known at the ballot box. Is that the case here? It’s tough to know for sure without people actually saying why they voted the way they did.”

Socarides also said that some people who identify as gay may have been “voting more on economic issues rather than rights issues.”

Among Republican elected officials, there has so far been basically no activity. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) attended a fundraising event for the Log Cabin Republicans in September, but received flack from the religious right for doing so. Besides this move, Republicans have shown little interest in making gay rights a major part of their agenda, and one of the few Republicans supporting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) — Rep. Charles Djou (Hawaii) — lost his seat on Tuesday.

Cooper, who had just returned from meetings on Capitol Hill before speaking with The Huffington Post on Thursday, had more hope for progress. He said that Republican leadership staff had told him the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would likely be taken up during the lame-duck session in the House, although the calendar had not yet been set. He added that his group was pitching ENDA — which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity — to Republicans as a “pro-jobs piece of legislation.”

“No one should be denied access to employment,” said Cooper, “and that is a conservative talking point. I think we may have some opportunity there to gain some potential support or votes we haven’t had in the past. And of course it helps we have some folks who are already in Congress, who are incumbent, who will help message that.”

In the next Congress, he said the Log Cabin Republicans would be pushing a tax equity bill, to be introduced by Republican members. He also expected more Republicans and conservative Democrats to support the 2011 defense authorization bill — which contains a provision to repeal DADT — when it comes up, since the Pentagon will soon be finishing its review of the implications of open service for gays and lesbians.

UPDATE, 2:33 p.m.: Several readers have written in to point out that the sample size of gay, lesbian and bisexual voters for this poll was small. Liz Goodwin of The Upshot spoke with Hunter College Professor Ken Sherrill, who studies the gay electorate and said that after reviewing the full data, there was “a disproportionate drop in Democratic support among LGB voters compared to Hispanic, black, and young voters.” “Though the sample size is still very small and thus there’s a large margin of error, Sherrill now says the drop may be attributed to ‘dissatisfaction with the pace of change on LGB rights over the past two years,’” added Goodwin.

The Log Cabin Republicans have also been taking on a more visible role, bringing the suit arguing that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is unconstitutional. R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, is proud of the fact that 12 of the 17 candidates the group endorsed went on to win their races. He said he believes that the reason Republicans performed better with the gay community in this election is because of the focus on the economy rather than social issues.

“Yes, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed, so we can have open service,” said Cooper. “But if people can’t pay their bills or there is concern about their investments, then there could be some overriding points there.”

“We want Republicans who respect individual liberty and individual responsibility and champion that as conservatives,” he added. “So that’s the ideal, right? But knowing there are members of the party that don’t fall under that definition — or, as I like to say, we’re working on them — our guidance was, during this campaign cycle, if you have nothing nice to say about the gay community, say nothing at all. Just shut up. And talk about issues that do affect all Americans, like the economy. Everyone needs a job — doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight.”

Darlene Nipper, deputy executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, agreed that the struggling economy and larger political trends likely played a major role.

“There is enormous fear and frustration among people all across the nation, and a factor is a rocky, stalled economy and high unemployment rate,” said Nipper. “When the party in power doesn’t seem to be making it better, some people make their anger known at the ballot box. Is that the case here? It’s tough to know for sure without people actually saying why they voted the way they did.”

Socarides also said that some people who identify as gay may have been “voting more on economic issues rather than rights issues.”

Among Republican elected officials, there has so far been basically no activity. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) attended a fundraising event for the Log Cabin Republicans in September, but received flack from the religious right for doing so. Besides this move, Republicans have shown little interest in making gay rights a major part of their agenda, and one of the few Republicans supporting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) — Rep. Charles Djou (Hawaii) — lost his seat on Tuesday.

Cooper, who had just returned from meetings on Capitol Hill before speaking with The Huffington Post on Thursday, had more hope for progress. He said that Republican leadership staff had told him the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would likely be taken up during the lame-duck session in the House, although the calendar had not yet been set. He added that his group was pitching ENDA — which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity — to Republicans as a “pro-jobs piece of legislation.”

“No one should be denied access to employment,” said Cooper, “and that is a conservative talking point. I think we may have some opportunity there to gain some potential support or votes we haven’t had in the past. And of course it helps we have some folks who are already in Congress, who are incumbent, who will help message that.”

In the next Congress, he said the Log Cabin Republicans would be pushing a tax equity bill, to be introduced by Republican members. He also expected more Republicans and conservative Democrats to support the 2011 defense authorization bill — which contains a provision to repeal DADT — when it comes up, since the Pentagon will soon be finishing its review of the implications of open service for gays and lesbians.

UPDATE, 2:33 p.m.: Several readers have written in to point out that the sample size of gay, lesbian and bisexual voters for this poll was small. Liz Goodwin of The Upshot spoke with Hunter College Professor Ken Sherrill, who studies the gay electorate and said that after reviewing the full data, there was “a disproportionate drop in Democratic support among LGB voters compared to Hispanic, black, and young voters.” “Though the sample size is still very small and thus there’s a large margin of error, Sherrill now says the drop may be attributed to ‘dissatisfaction with the pace of change on LGB rights over the past two years,’” added Goodwin.”

(My thanks to Cole, Prager fan in California for the news from Huffington Post.)

Comment:  All of the above is from the victimhood crowd at  Huffington Post and its cohorts.  We can notice by the urgent UPDATE that the Gay Study activists, propaganda divisions, are not satisfied with the article….even from Huffington Post.   Making politics out of how and why one  is attracted to another is an interesting, but touchy maneuver in human life.  We need broader societal reasons to help us individuals guide ourselves in these matters, but politicizing them makes the issues coarse and vulgar.   I am as private as I can be regarding my sensual proclivities, but politics these days, makes that very difficult.   As a gay man, no one from Huffington Post or anywhere else has ever asked me how I vote…..and, better yet, why.  

I find the gay political and social  community and the ‘values’ it has pushed on the country, as a whole, and its history of the past 30 years,  repelling to me as a civilized person.   I can attest to the many sacrifices and the isolation the confusion regarding ones sexual attractions cause.  Yet, despite this, I would not change my life one degree of 360 degrees in ones life experiences.  I am who I am, and have been very, very lucky to be so.

Sex is important in life.  Sorry, lefties, it is not as important has ones expression of human character.

The luckiest of that luck is that I was born and raised before the gay crap became tea time and Washington time politics.   I was allowed to find my way through life as a pioneer looking for clarity and meaning.  My old maid school teachers helped me do just that.  They taught me a yearning for knowledge.

 Perhaps this is why I find Dennis Prager so intellectually valuable.   I found a thought mate.

 

George Will on Democrats Having “Leprosy, not Cholera”

George Will of the Washington Post wrote the following article called ”Democrats in Denial”.

“When Alexander Pope was on his deathbed, his doctor assured him that his breathing, pulse and other vital signs were improving. “Here I am,” Pope said to a friend, “dying of a hundred good symptoms.”

Some Democrats read the election returns as symptoms of health because things could have been worse: “Happily, we have leprosy, not cholera.” But embracing the fallacy of false alternatives is not a step toward recuperation. Neither is continuing the attitude that Democrats adopted when passing Obamacare and that foretold their unhappy election: “No compromise with the voters!”

For the second time in 24 months, Barack Obama has been at the epicenter of a historic election, this time with voters reconsidering the first one. For the third time in four years, they have emphatically complained. Democrats gained a total of 54 House seats in 2006 and 2008, but after Tuesday are in a net deficit over the past three cycles.

On Oct. 1, Nancy Pelosi, referring to Republicans, said, “I would rather be where we are than where they are.” Now she is where they were – in the minority in the House. The Democrats’ House caucus will be smaller and more homogenously liberal. Their Senate caucus will be leavened by one freshman who got there by strongly criticizing the defining aspects of Obama’s agenda (Joe Manchin of West Virginia) and another who endorsed an important part of George W. Bush’s (Chris Coons of Delaware, who endorsed extension of all the Bush tax cuts).

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had 40 or 41 senators in his caucus, he usually had 40 or 41 votes when he felt he urgently needed them. Beginning in January, with at least 46 senators, he will always have 41 votes when he really wants them.

So, speculation about whether Obama will “change course” is surreal. Whether or not he adheres to his agenda of relentless expansion of government (e.g., cap-and-trade) and promiscuous rewards for Democratic constituencies (e.g., trying to stimulate the economy with trickle-down government spending that sustains unionized public employees), remember: The iceberg was indifferent to the Titanic’s course. And now, possessing House committee gavels and subpoena power, Republican chairmen will be able to limit Obama’s ability to use the “permanent government” – the bureaucracy – to accomplish through regulation what he cannot achieve through legislation.

Congressional supremacy was the Framers’ preference and expectation: The Constitution’s Article I concerns the legislative branch. As Georgetown University’s George Carey notes, the Framers “regarded Congress as the mainspring of the constitutional system.” It “possesses virtually all the powers delegated to the national government” and “can ‘discipline’ the other branches through its impeachment and removal powers.” But the protean power of the modern presidency, combined with Congress’s often invertebrate nature, means that, as John Boehner said Tuesday, “It’s the president who sets the agenda for our government.”

Synthetic indignation is to Washington what steel once was to Pittsburgh – the city’s defining commodity – so there was theatrical disapproval when McConnell said “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Presidential supremacy makes this any opposition’s priority. And what do the indignant think Obama considers the single most important thing he wants to achieve, if not a second term?

National Democrats’ desperate effort to defeat Marco Rubio in Florida’s Senate race culminated in their Clintonian dissembling about their attempts to force their party’s nominee to leave the race and support the independent candidacy of Plasticman, a.k.a. Gov. Charlie Crist. This maneuver reprised Democratic fury against Clarence Thomas 19 years ago, when an African American conservative was an affront to the Democratic Party’s sense of entitlement regarding African Americans’ support. Today, two Hispanic Republicans – Rubio and Gov.-elect Susana Martinez of New Mexico – threaten Democratic hopes for similar sway over America’s largest and fastest-growing minority.

Finally, give a thought to a subject almost no one has wanted to talk about this autumn. The nation is in the 10th year of its longest war and in what has been for American forces the deadliest year of that war. Do not assume that all freshman Republicans will support the current strategy and objectives – whatever they are – in Afghanistan.

The flavorful ingredients in the simmering stew that is the Tea Party impulse include a dash of the foreign policy skepticism associated with the Robert Taft tradition of conservatism. The Ohio senator died in 1953; the need for his prudence did not.”