While the political pendulum swings, and no party should delude themselves with “permanent majority” talk, Dem’s have all the time they need. They’ve tried the high road of parliamentary politics, and Congressional Republicans have clearly demonstrated they will sacrifice American lives for their own petty power agenda. It’s not the first time conservatives have demonstrated their party-first politics (“nuclear option” anyone?), but it is time to let go of fantasies that the current conservative members of Congress will suddenly start voting for reasonable policy on its merits. It is simply not going to happen.

From the Whitehouse to the Senate and House, extending the legislative olive branch to R’s was gracious, honorable, and much more than they deserved post Bush 43. Now that the Republican hand is on the table, it’s time to get stuff done with or without them. Americans are dying or losing their homes or enduring any number of ills inherited from the last 30 years of bad policy and bad thinking. Regardless of who is to blame, we need to get the policy foundations laid so hard working Americans can proceed with fixing the problems. There are ways to get things done in Congress. Everyone knows this, and no one need apologize for doing the right thing and moving forward. Dems need to get it done via any and every available means necessary to save American lives from those who will otherwise hold Americans hostage to advance their own failed political quackery.

In 2009, Democrats made one big mistake: they let 60 seats – political calculus – take center stage. Now that no one need be misled by a magic number, roll up the sleeves and bring it, Dems.

1994, this aint.

Still, Connelly makes some interesting points: that the pundits on either side were going to interpret the election results into their pre-determined narratives. The Democrats lost Virginia and New Jersey, according to Markos and FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher, because they were not “liberal enough.” Yet according to FreedomWorks’ Dick Armey, the Republicans blamed the loss of New York’s upstate 23rd Congressional district on the faults of Constitution Party candidate Doug Hoffman who received support from the right-wing teabagger faction. This, despite the fact that the heavy influence provided by Armey and other outside interests effectively drove the Republican candidate out of the contest.

Connelly points out that incumbent Democrats kept their seats in favorable districts, such as John Garamendi’s seat near the San Francisco Bay area, questioning the anti-incumbency meme heading into the 2010 elections. Connelly also points out that anti-tax initiatives were defeated in the states of Washington and Maine, indicating that the results generated by the anti-tax teabaggers do not match the loudness of their rhetoric.

If there is an anti-incumbent trend in the 2010 elections, will the teabaggers’ cannibalization of Republican candidates nip in the bud this trend before it affects the composition of either the House or Senate? Who knows. Connelly is correct in that the 2010 elections will be decided by the ideologues on either side, and the losing side will blame everybody except themselves.

You Betcha! Also!

There’s still a long way to go before next year’s midterms, and a whole three years until the 2012 election. In addition, Congress is getting a much better approval rating now than they were in August when the Republicans had a free month to shit on the Democrat’s Health Care plans.

Once Health Care is out of the way in December (maybe early 2010?), the time between the next election in November will be enough for a strong jobs package and more stronger financial & banking regulation, tapping straight into the populist majority opinion and putting the Republicans in an even more awkward position. To kick off 2010, one of the best things the Republicans can do to hurt their numbers is to filibuster the Health Care Bill. This is certainly a case of the threat being far more ominous than the actual event. Doesn’t Machiavelli warn that once one goes to the extent of their power they no longer have it? A filibuster of health care legislation would be an admission that the GOP has no more options in its arsenal of opposition. The bill would still become law of course, as did Civil Rights following Strom Thurman’s 24+ hour long filibuster, but the Republicans would be seen as the obstructionists they truly are, without any alternative plan of their own, and wasting the people’s time & business, while the Democrats would be seen as fighting for the American people. The advantage goes to the Democrats if there is a GOP filibuster of Health Care Reform, which is arguably the most important domestic legislation since Social Security. And it will be seen live on C-Span.

In a Republican Party hoping to energize a rebound in 2010, having failed to stop Health Care Reform, Climate Control legislation, declining unemployment and possibly a few extra civil rights legislation like DADT & DOMA, it’ll be an uphill battle to even position themselves as competitive by November. Course this is where Palin comes in and why the teabaggers are so galvanized. Palin now represents her Party’s future — and the greatest danger it faces. Her intimate bond with the Republican grassroots has made her the indispensable woman, even if she provokes a visceral sense of revulsion from many independents and moderates. Other Republican frontrunners like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty have a debilitating problem to face in any race for the presidency: they are now viewed as inauthentic candidates by the movement — cardboard men in suits who are only pantomiming appeals to cultural resentment.

Max Blumenthal summarizes it up perfectly in his essay on “How Sarah Palin Made Herself Indispensable While Destroying the Republican Party“:

[In addition, primary candidates will have an even harder time criticizing her to make their case.] Palin is so well positioned as the darling of the movement that any criticism of her would be experienced by believers as a personal attack on them. In this way, their identification with her through the politics of personal fear is complete. Any Republican primary challenger assailing Palin will be seen as victimizing her, as channeling the attacks of the liberal elites, and possibly as having a secret liberal agenda. On the other hand, to embrace her is to risk losing the great American center.

For the 2010 mid-term elections, Palin’s endorsement is already a coveted commodity — as Mark Kirk’s desperate bid to secure it demonstrates. The more she is attacked, the more the Republican base adores her. As she sets out on her book tour, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune only propel her forward. Her influence on a party largely devoid of leadership is expanding. If she doesn’t prove to be the Party’s future queen, she may have positioned herself to be its future king-maker — and potentially its destroyer.

Go, Sarah, Go! You betcha! Also!

The repudiation of mainstream Republican politics in exchange for embracing the fringe is the strategic core of the strategy behind the anti- health care reform, anti-Obama tea parties.  Certain conservative politicians have embraced this rhetoric in an attempt to build up their bona fides, such as Texas Governor Rick Parry who, in a burst of anti-stimulus & anti-government spending speechifyin’, suggested that Texas jsut might secede from the United States. (Country first, let’s not forget.)  Even a political naif could observe that if the Republcian Party refuted the lunatic fringe tea-baggers, a Frankenstein monster out of their control would be created and unleashed, laying waste to the relevancy of the GOP.

And here we are, jsut a little over two months later, and that Grankenstein monster has rared its ugly.  After a long, hot summer that consisted of angry shouting at each other, the tea-baggers feel emboldened and now not only believe they represent the majority (even though more Americans believe in UFOs than oppose a public option for health care) but that they are also the “last, true” defenders of the Constitution.  According to a recent report from Politico, the tea-baggers- who have self-identified themselves as a “mob” on Twitter and in similar mediums, ignoring the connotations of ‘mob politics’- are drafting insurgent candidates to confront incumbent GOP Congressmen and Senators.  Somehow, although Republicans in Congress are decidedly lockstep and have increasingly drifted further and further to the right in the past two decades, some are just not mobbish and neanderthal enough to be supported by the tea-baggers in a primary.  A few of these GOP Congressmen are having to fend off inter-party challengers for the first time, protecting themselves in what would otherwise be “safe” gerrymandered district seats.

And my only reaction to this is: GREAT!  Other than a Presidential run by Sarah Palin, nothing can expedite the demise of the Republican Party as a relevant policial player than a bunch of ‘mob’-affiliated candidates making the case that they are worthy of Capitol Hill.  These tea-baggers may actively be trying to formualte themselves as the current version of the angry, anti-Irish immigrant “Know Nothing Party” from the nineteenth century (even proudly referring to Glenn Beck as ‘their’ idiot), but the fact remains that the Know Nothing Party had a political lifespan all of two years.  The tea-bagers should be lucky if their political relevancy lasts much beyond the 2010 election cycle.