Election 2010 - So, where are we now?

...Not nearly as far as I'd hoped we'd be.

As I write this (Wednesday afternoon, 03 Nov 2010) the House appears to be 239 Republicans (for a gain of 60, so far), 185 Democrats, and 11 undecided.

That ain't chopped liver; legislation originates in the House, before being passed along to the Senate and eventually to the President's desk for signing. At the very least, after the new congress is seated in January, there will be enough Republicans to stop any new atrocities from being passed in the House.

Further, Republicans will now chair House committees. As this includes the House Ways and Means Committee, Republicans will now have a very big say on how much (or even if) certain legislation will be funded.

The Joker in this deck is, Will the Republicans actually exercise this power they have won?

We've been here before, after the GOP takeover in 1994; some Republicans then didn't seem to grasp that power sometimes has to actually be used. When Democrats were in charge of committees, they were, By God, IN CHARGE, and had no compunction whatever about running over and stomping flat anyone who got in their way. When the Republicans had their brief moment in the Sun, they seemed more anxious to "get along" with bastards who seldom (if ever) were inclined to reciprocate.

So, can anyone assure me, PLEASE, that we wont get a bunch of RINOs in charge of those committees? Especially the Ways and Means committee.

Another down side of our victory in the House (and not having a similar victory in the Senate) is that it guarantees that the Democrats will try (and probably succeed in) forcing some of their vilest legislation down our throats during the "lame duck" session before the new congress is sworn in; as afterward such legislation would probably never even make it out of the House. They've already threatened this, and it's now or never for them.

The only hope I see of avoiding this scenario is if the surviving Democrats, looking at what has just happened, decide they want no part of a kamikaze mission just to help the walking dead force their agenda upon us. That would seem to be "common sense". Unfortunately, it's been quite a long time since "common sense" and "Democrat" ever belonged in the same sentence.

I fear the next two and a half months will be "interesting", in the way the Chinese use the word in a curse.

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