Americans face prospect of status quo Congress

In this Sept. 21, 2012 file photo, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio meets with reporters on Capi­tol Hill in Wash­ing­ton. A bar­rage of neg­a­tive ads, more than $2 bil­lion in spend­ing and months of cam­paign stops come down to this real­ity: Amer­i­cans will wake up Wednes­day with likely the same divided Con­gress it had that past two years. Repub­li­cans are poised to keep their hold on the House, Democ­rats are most likely to nar­rowly hold the Sen­ate. (AP Photo/J. Scott Apple­white, File)

ALAN FRAM, DONNA CASSATA

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — A bar­rage of neg­a­tive ads, more than $2 bil­lion in spend­ing and end­less cam­paign stops all come down to this: Amer­i­cans likely will elect a Con­gress as divided as the one they’ve been rant­ing about for two years.

In Tuesday’s vot­ing, Repub­li­cans are poised to hold the 435-seat House, with Democ­rats expected to gain a small hand­ful of seats at best from roughly 60 com­pet­i­tive races but fall well short of the net 25 needed for the major­ity. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is poised to wield the gavel again.

Sen­ate Democ­rats are likely to main­tain their nar­row advan­tage as two Repub­li­can can­di­dates’ clumsy com­ments about rape and abor­tion could cost the GOP Indi­ana and damp­ens its prospects of win­ning Mis­souri — two major road­blocks in the Repub­li­can path to the majority.

Repub­li­cans hoped the math would work in their favor — Democ­rats are defend­ing 23 seats, the GOP 10 — but solid Demo­c­ra­tic recruits and the close pres­i­den­tial race, added to the GOP can­di­date stum­bles may ensure that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid remains major­ity leader.

“That’s extremely frus­trat­ing for what every­one thought was a Repub­li­can advan­tage,” Ron Bon­jean, a Repub­li­can con­sul­tant and for­mer top Capi­tol Hill aide, said of the devel­op­ments in Indi­ana and Missouri.

No mat­ter who wins the pres­i­dency — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama or Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney — the nation’s chief exec­u­tive will be deal­ing with a Con­gress no closer to bridg­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal chasm and show­ing no incli­na­tion to end the months of dys­func­tion. Tea party num­bers are cer­tain to tick up in the Sen­ate with Repub­li­can Ted Cruz heav­ily favored in Texas and Deb Fis­cher look­ing to grab the Nebraska seat.

In the House, the move­ment that pro­pelled the GOP to the major­ity in 2010 will be even more embold­ened even if a few of the big-name tea partiers lose.

Sal Russo, head of the Tea Party Express, likened the group to the anti-Vietnam War move­ment of the late 1960s and early 1970s that he said remade the Demo­c­ra­tic Party. He envi­sions the same with the GOP.

“In the sense that the anti-war move­ment brought out mil­lions of peo­ple that had not been involved in pol­i­tics and they became engaged in a mate­r­ial way,” Russo said in an inter­view as he headed to what he expects will be a vic­tory party for Cruz in Texas.

The Demo­c­ra­tic Party, he insists, has never been the same and nei­ther will the GOP after the influx of tea partiers.

When the Sen­ate votes are counted, mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats from Mass­a­chu­setts and Mon­tana could be gone, leav­ing the cham­ber with just a hand­ful of the law­mak­ers inclined to reach across the aisle. Repub­li­can Sen. Olympic Snowe of Maine decided to retire ear­lier this year, frus­trated with the par­ti­san grid­lock in Congress.

New England’s three other GOP sen­a­tors are New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, Maine’s Susan Collins and Mass­a­chu­setts’ Scott Brown, now an under­dog against Demo­c­rat Eliz­a­beth War­ren in a race for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat.

“The few Repub­li­cans who are in office in New Eng­land are an endan­gered species,” said vet­eran Demo­c­ra­tic strate­gist Dan Payne, who is work­ing for inde­pen­dent Angus King. “Their party has shifted so far to the right.”

King is favored to win the three-way race for Snowe’s seat.

A Bloomberg poll in Sep­tem­ber found that 55 per­cent of Amer­i­cans said Con­gress will con­tinue to be an imped­i­ment no mat­ter who is elected pres­i­dent. Just 32 per­cent said Con­gress would get the mes­sage and work together.

Demo­c­ra­tic strate­gist Steve McMa­hon said he wor­ries that with a divided Con­gress “we can prob­a­bly expect hyper par­ti­san­ship and grid­lock every­where. It seems like Amer­i­cans can expect more of the same.”

The other cer­tainty is nei­ther Obama nor Rom­ney will have much of a man­date based on the razor-thin pres­i­den­tial race and the like­li­hood that the major­ity party in the Sen­ate will be nowhere near a filibuster-proof majority.

“Nei­ther can­di­date will be able to claim that vot­ers endorsed a clear and spe­cific plan for bal­anc­ing the bud­get because nei­ther of them offered such a plan,” said John J. Pit­ney, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at Clare­mont McKenna College.

Repub­li­can strate­gist Terry Holt said a newly elected pres­i­dent who has the will could put their mark on pol­icy and make some sig­nif­i­cant changes.

“But there is so much ide­o­log­i­cal divi­sion that you will have to risk your polit­i­cal life to get some­thing done in the next Con­gress,” Holt said. “It is an all-or-nothing propo­si­tion by virtue of the divided nature of the coun­try. You have to stick your neck out if you’re to get any­thing done.”

Weeks before the Jan­u­ary inau­gu­ra­tion, Con­gress will have to decide what to do about a $607 bil­lion so-called fis­cal cliff: the com­bi­na­tion of expir­ing Bush-era tax cuts and auto­matic, across-the-board spend­ing reduc­tions to domes­tic and defense pro­grams. Econ­o­mists warn that no action will plunge the coun­try into another recession.

“At the end of the day, you have so many tick­ing time bombs,” said GOP strate­gist John Fee­hery. “Hav­ing just a com­plete grid­lock is not an accept­able solution.”

Con­gress may decide in the lame-duck ses­sion to delay the major deci­sions to early next year, espe­cially if Rom­ney wins the pres­i­dency. But they can’t put off eco­nomic deci­sions for too long.

“The road to fis­cal perdi­tion is a cul-de-sac,” Pit­ney said.

Posted by AP News on Nov 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.