"For Republicans, the hard part is about to begin" (Dana Milbank). Plus, the Borowitz Report reads the exit polls

"Isn't this political ad wonderfully false and misleading?"

" 'I really think it's time for a change,' said Carol Foyler, a memory-loss sufferer who cast her vote this morning in Iowa City. 'I just feel in my gut that if these people were in charge they'd do a really amazing job with the economy.'

"Harland Dorrinson, who voted in Akron, Ohio, and who has no memory of anything that happened before 2013, said his main concern was a terrorist attack on American soil.

" 'I really think we need to put a party in charge that won't ever let something like that happen,' he said."

-- from yesterday's Borowitz Report, "Exit Polls Indicate
Nation Suffering from Severe Memory Loss"

"Because Republicans didn't run on an agenda other than antipathy toward all things Obama, they created a policy vacuum -- and it's about to be filled by a swirl of competing, and contradictory, proposals."

-- Dana Milbank, in his Washington Post column today,
"For Republicans, the hard part is about to begin"

by Ken

As is my general practice on Election Nights, last night I arranged to have plans in the outside world to keep me safely insulated from the madness. Then when I got home I rigorously protected that insulation. There would be ample time to get caught up on the carnage, and a few minutes with the radio this morning did that trick.

(Parenthetical note: The irony of my Election Night outside activity this year was an unplanned irony. While the country was wrapping up an election that apparently marked the final takeover of total lies, such that no statement could be entered in the official election "dialogue" that wasn't untrue, I had scheduled a class on fact-checking. Hey, it was just the luck of the calendar. Whether the people responsible for the scheduling of the class had anything in mind by it, I'm not in a position to say.)

Somewhere in there I had a modest epiphany: that the purpose of American elections, the reason we hold them, beyond just habit, is to learn incorrect lessons. This is nothing new, you'll probably say. Haven't we been doing that, like, forever? Well, sure, but note that I'm speaking of the purpose of American elections. In the past, learning the wrong lessons has merely been a happy byproduct. Now it seems to me the overriding goal.

For Democrats, in the face of the sweep by a party of dedicated Lying Scumbags, the obvious wrong lesson to be learned is: We didn't move hard enough or far enough into Lying Scumbagland.

For Republicans, who certainly earned the right to crow, the lesson is: Up yours, suckuhs!

And victorious Republicans are hardly likely to be in a mood to listen to what Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank had on his mind at 11:19pm last night, when his column for today, "For Republicans, the hard part is about to begin," was posted online, beginning (lotsa links onsite):

During political campaigns, candidates usually tell voters what they would do if elected. But Sen. Mitch McConnell had a different idea.

“This is not the time to lay out an agenda,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters four days before Election Day.

A week or so before that, the man who would be the next Senate majority leader provided more details of his theory. “It’s never a good idea to tell the other side what the first play is going to be.”

No, but it might be a good idea to tell the voters what you’re up to.

Republicans won control of the Senate late Tuesday night and padded their majority in the House, giving the party unified control of Congress for the first time in eight years. And McConnell, who won reelection with ease, is positioned to become leader of a new Senate majority.

It was enough, electorally, for Republicans to say they were against whatever President Obama was for. Preliminary exit polls found that 32 percent of voters were registering displeasure with Obama, versus 20 percent who were expressing support.

But now comes the hard part. Because Republicans didn’t run on an agenda other than antipathy toward all things Obama, they created a policy vacuum — and it’s about to be filled by a swirl of competing, and contradictory, proposals.

I'm not sure this is quite as all-encompassing a problem for Republicans as Dana suggests. We have to bear in mind that do-nothing government isn't an entirely unattractive or unwelcome outcome for many of them. Even for many who don't believe in it as an article of faith, it qualifies as a No. 2 option.

Nevertheless, as Dana says:

Republicans find themselves with neither a consensus program nor a clear hierarchy among congressional leaders, the half-dozen aspiring presidential candidates in Congress and the various governors and former officeholders who also think they should be the party’s 2016 standard-bearer. Republicans have set themselves up for chaos, if not outright fratricide.

Congressional leaders will be pulled in opposite directions by would-be presidential contender Ted Cruz (Tex.) and his expanded band of Senate ideologues (who would like to abolish the IRS, the EPA and the Education Department, chip away at banking regulations and hold umpteen more votes on eliminating Obamacare) and by the large number of vulnerable Republicans who will be on the ballot in 2016 (and would like to see the next Congress achieve tangible progress).

It's true that there are a lot of Senate Republicans who are serious about their crackpot agendas, but, while allowing for that apprehension Dana notes being felt by those "vulnerable Republicans who will be on the ballot in 2016," failing to enact crackpot right-wing agendas isn't necessarily the end of the world for modern-day Republicans. Feeling thwarted by the forces of liberal darkness is a large part of who a lot of them are.

Meanwhile, solid Republican control of both houses of Congress gives them the opportunity to steer everything that has to go through Congress away from the paths of sanity and decency and closer to their various worlds of dementia and indecency, and to stick it to the president and the country they loathe so deeply.

Given Republicans' 2014 "plethora of platitudes posing as an agenda," Dana writes,

it’s no surprise exit polls found no mandate for Republicans. Only 41 percent of voters had a positive view of Obama, but only 38 percent had a positive view of Republican leaders in Congress. The economy was by far the dominant issue in voters’ minds (70 percent thought it in bad shape), and Obamacare didn’t seem to be a major factor: Forty-seven percent thought the law went too far, but 48 percent thought it either didn’t go far enough or was about right.

And this, Dana says, "gives no advantage to either side in the Republicans’ internecine struggle."

On one side will be Cruz, who told The Post’s Sebastian Payne this week that the first order of business for a GOP Senate should be launching more hearings into President Obama’s “abuse of power.” He’s also pushing an effort to use parliamentary maneuvers to repeal Obamacare with a simple majority — the sort of provocation that would quickly return Washington to government-shutdown crises. Cruz, in a USA Today op-ed, also said he wants to pursue a flat tax, kill the Export-Import Bank, audit the Fed and block comprehensive immigration reform.

On the opposite side is Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a George W. Bush administration veteran who wants to “come to the table” with Obama on wide-ranging energy legislation, free-trade deals, bipartisan tax reform and a return to responsible budgeting rather than stopgap spending bills. For this to happen, Portman notes in National Review, “all we are missing is leadership.”

Ah yes, leadership. This is a good point. If there's one advantage Republicans have over Democrats, it's their talent, even genius, for followership. But there's no doubt that followers need leaders. And is likely Senate Majority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell, who may even face a leadership challenge right out of the gate from the "Ted from Alberta" wing of the party, likely to fill the role any better than House Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner has been doing? As Sunny John has learned all too painfully, it's not easy leading a caucus split between crackpots and ultra-crackpots.

And without leadership among Senate Republicans, says Dana,

it’s every Republican for himself. Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rand Paul (Ky.), prospective presidential candidates both, have dueling tax plans. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, reports Politico’s Jake Sherman, “seems willing to pass small-bore bills on issues ranging from energy to health care to taxes.” By contrast, Heritage Action, which influences congressional conservatives, wants the opposite: Republicans should “focus on the big things” such as repealing Obamacare, rather than finding common ground on spending bills.

That’s the consequence of an agenda-free campaign: a majority without a mission.

I suppose voters had a point that the Senate and House Democrats they replaced yesterday with Republicans were part of the problem in Washington. But they were by no means the largest part of the problem. Not only are the Republicans they're sending to Washington in those Democrats' place the least qualified people on the planet to do anything about ISIL or ebola, or anything else on this planet. A gut-churningly large number of them are, thanks to the mainstreaming of ideological insanity, truly horrible humans. Which doesn't bode well for merely carrying on the nation's business, let alone trying to steer the country toward what the men who wrote and signed our Declaration of Independence envisioned it could be.


THE BOROWITZ REPORT READS THE EXIT POLLS

November 4, 2014
EXIT POLLS INDICATE NATION SUFFERING FROM SEVERE MEMORY LOSS



By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- Exit polls conducted across the country on Election Day indicate a nation suffering from severe memory loss, those who conducted the polls confirmed Tuesday night.

According to the polls, Americans who cast their votes today had a difficult time remembering events that occurred as recently as six years ago, while many seemed to be solid only on things that have happened in the past ten days.

While experts were unable to explain the epidemic of memory loss that appears to have gripped the nation, interviews with Americans after they cast their votes suggest that their near total obliviousness to anything that happened as recently as October may have influenced their decisions.

“I really think it’s time for a change,” said Carol Foyler, a memory-loss sufferer who cast her vote this morning in Iowa City. “I just feel in my gut that if these people were in charge they’d do a really amazing job with the economy.”

Harland Dorrinson, who voted in Akron, Ohio, and who has no memory of anything that happened before 2013, said his main concern was a terrorist attack on American soil.

“I really think we need to put a party in charge that won’t ever let something like that happen,” he said.

In Texas, exit polls showed strong support for George P. Bush, who was running for the Republican nomination for Texas land commissioner. “George Bush sounds like the name of someone who would be really good at running things,” said one voter.

The national exit polls revealed an electorate deeply fearful of a number of threats, including ISIS, Ebola, and, oh, what was that other thing?

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