Step Carefully Over the Corpse . . . it Might Come Back!!

Tomorrow will usher in a new GOP majority in the House. That much appears to be certain. The only question is how big this victory will be for the GOP. Will it be 40 seats? Or as high as 75 seats, as some pundits are predicting. We will find out in very short order.

The danger begins Wednesday for the new GOP majority because it is pretty clear that the public is not so much giving the GOP a resounding victory as they are repudiating the short lived Big Government era of Barack Obama, Henry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. In other words, the GOP is seen as the solution to the Democrats. They better offer up some solutions, instead of just "saying no" as Nancy Reagan used to say.

When the Democrat leadership insisted on a really huge (a trillion counts are really huge) new entitlement program, when polling showed the majority of the American People were opposed to Obamacare, they should have known this would happen. When the stimulus did not reduce unemployment to 8%, as President Obama said it would . . . they should have known they would pay the price at the poll. When Democrat leadership continues, up to this very day, to insult the American People by trying to explain away the election losses they are about to suffer as having been bought and paid for by "special interests" when "special interests" are who put President Obama into power in the first place (I suppose the definition of "special interest" depends on whether or not they take a "special interest" in you), they are just asking to be defeated at the poll. This is all very predictable.

The real question comes on Wednesday. The GOP can come in with guns blazing, shut down the Government, repeal legislation, gridlock the machinery of Government . . . and then they, too, will suffer the consequences of their actions two years hence.

Or . . . they can swerve to the Center line and sit down and try to work out some of the pressing problems of today with the Democrat leaders. History suggests that it is possible to achieve great things when the Legislative branch is split, or at least in different hands than the Executive. Because the two parties are forced to work together. Neither will have a working majority. So, work together they must. Unless the GOP decides not to cooperate, in which case, they will be handed their pink slips in 2012, just as their Democrat predecessors are about to be.

Two years is a long time. Just ask President Obama. And that is exactly what President Obama is hoping. The GOP can easily prove themselves incompetent to lead in two years' time. GOP leadership is still non-existent. There is not yet a GOP leader who has shown the guts to stand up and clearly say that DADT must finally go. There is yet a GOP leader who has the nerve to stand up to the anti-choice wing and tell them they are wonderful people, but woefully out of touch with how the American People vote on this issue. There is yet to emerge a GOP leader willing to wrestle the reigns of power from the radio entertainers (and former Alaska Governors) who pretend to speak for the GOP, while raking in tens of millions of dollars a year entertaining people by saying outrageous things. Until such a leader emerges, the GOP will be rudderless and thrust this way and that way, depending on the news cycle.

Two years is plenty of time for John Boehner to mess things up in the House, turn himself into the most hated politician in the Land, as Nancy Pelosi did in very short order. He is capable of doing that, for sure. The real question the GOP must answer, after tomorrow is, "are there enough adults in the room" to bring about order in their chaotic house?

Let's hope so. Otherwise, the pendulum will swing back, they will be thrust from office once again, and we will have four more years of "Obama the Divider" and his class warfare rhetoric, which, quite frankly, has gotten very tiresome after two (short) years.

Woldy