If there is one thing on which I wish I’d laid a bet over the past few years it’s that despite their successful strategy to make the economic recovery as weak as possible, the minute it started to substantially improve, the conservatives would be standing at the head of the line taking credit for it. It was as predictable as the sun coming up tomorrow that they would claim their obstructive tactics resulted in Morning in America. After all, it just rewarded them with a Republican majority in the Senate and enlarged their majority in the House so they must be on the right track, right?
Still, the Beltway wags insist that the new class of Republicans are the grown-ups who are coming to town determined to prove they can “govern.” What they mean by governance is a little vague but is generally assumed to require bipartisan comity and the president happily throwing back some Merlot (and possibly sharing a few puffs on a Marlboro) with John Boehner at the end of a tough day. And it means passing “meaningful legislation” in which both parties are proud and happy to hold hands and do the tough business that Americans all allegedly sent them to Washington to do. The Washington Post put it this way:
The incoming Senate majority leader has set a political goal for the next two years of overseeing a functioning, reasonable majority on Capitol Hill that scores some measured conservative wins, particularly against environmental regulations, but probably not big victories such as a full repeal of the health-care law.
McConnell’s priority is to set the stage for a potential GOP presidential victory in 2016. “I don’t want the American people to think that if they add a Republican president to a Republican Congress, that’s going to be a scary outcome. I want the American people to be comfortable with the fact that the Republican House and Senate is a responsible, right-of-center, governing majority,” the Kentucky Republican said in a broad interview just before Christmas in his Capitol office.Read More.Source: Salon/Heather Digby Parton