The politics of this year’s midterms currently favor the GOP, as Republicans continue to press their case against the epic disaster that is Obamacare. Expectations among the grass-roots run high that a Republican Congress can begin the process of rolling back Obama policies, beginning with the dreaded health care law.
A sobering reality check is in order.
Barring a political earthquake not seen since the 1934 elections, Republicans will fall short of securing a veto proof majority in both the House and Senate, prerequisites to counter an all but certain Obama veto of any changes to the Affordable Care Act.
In the House, Republicans would need 290 seats to override an Obama veto of legislation repealing Obamacare. According to RealClearPolitics, current polling shows the GOP maintaining its majority, 232-187, with 16 toss-up seats (13D/3R). However, even if you added in all the toss ups and then threw in the seats that currently lean Democratic, the GOP majority would be 258, 32 seats short of a veto-proof majority.
In the Senate, 67 seats are required to override a veto. Even if the GOP captured every single Democratic seat up for re-election – including the unlikely prospect of unseating Democrats in the very deep blue states of HI, DE, MA, IL, NJ, RI – the Republicans would still be one short of a veto-proof majority.
The harsh truth is that repeal and replacement of Obamacare will depend on the nation electing a Republican in 2016, along with a Republican Congress. But this should not be a reason for conservative despair or frustration, and certainly not a reason to weaken efforts to depose Harry Reid as Majority Leader and keep a Republican in the Speaker’s chair. Indeed the future of the nation is in play this November.
2012 was no ordinary election. Rather, it was the most important election in American history since 1864. Perhaps it was unrecognized at the time by voters who have since soured on Obama’s governance, but America crossed a cultural Rubicon in re-electing President Obama two years ago.
Had the nation elected Mitt Romney, the radical experiment in class warfare, redistribution of wealth, above all the expansion of government and the regulatory state – the intrusion of un-elected bureaucrats ever further into the lives of average Americans – would have been put to an end. In 2012 there was time to pull the progressive weeds out before the roots could take hold.
However, President Obama’s re-election bought four priceless additional years for the regulatory state – including but not limited to Obamacare – to take hold, fundamentally transforming broad swaths of American life beyond recognition.
Democrats may lament the lack of progress on President Obama’s legislative agenda in 2013 and ’14, and the precarious position of congressional Democrats in the midterms, but in the Executive branch, the “administrative state” is working overtime to prevent any future president from undoing what the Obama administration has launched, in increasingly brazen ways. Without a winning GOP strategy and winning candidates, the Obama progressive experiment will become the permanent, new normal, with its attendant impacts that diminish liberty and economic opportunity for all Americans.A midterm victory for Republicans is the critical first step in combating the institutionalization of Obamaism.
And though a GOP victory will not lead to the rapid rollback of Obama policies, it will serve as a crucial insurance policy for the nation in on thoroughly under appreciated area:
The Supreme Court.
True, the Roberts Court unwisely went out of its way to sanction Obamacare, essentially creating an argument to approve the law that was not even posited by the Solicitor General, charged with defending the law before the Court. But in the preponderance of cases where SCOTUS has made ruling during the Obama presidency, it has the Court that has put the brakes on Obama statism in favor of individual rights. This term alone, the Court will make major decisions regarding religious liberty and the power of the president to make recess appointments – both of which will likely go against the Administration. In short, SCOTUS is key to checking the ambitions of the President and his progressive allies.
But that judicial check on Obamaism is frail and tenuous.
The Court is currently deadlocked with four progressives and four conservatives, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the critical swing vote that makes up the regular 5-4 decisions. Not to put too fine a point on it, but a change in the Court’s composition would have a profound impact on national policy in the last two years of the Obama presidency.
The tenuousness of the Court’s political composition is compounded by its demographics. Chief Justice Roberts is the youngest conservative on the Court at 60. Justice Alito is 65 and Justice Thomas is 67. Justice Scalia, still razor-sharp in wit and intellect, is 79 as is the crucial swing vote, Justice Kennedy. On the progressive side, Justice Breyer is 77 and Justice Ginsburg is 82.
One would hope that conservatives on the Court – and here I also count Justice Kennedy – would commit to staying on the bench until their last breath rather than provide President Obama with an opportunity to change the Court’s balance. But if mortality were to interfere with the most ardent wishes of the Justices, a Republican Senate is the last hope of maintaining a judicial check on Obamaism.
Any new Justice must be confirmed by the Senate. Having dispensed with the filibuster (60 votes to proceed) for Executive branch appointments, it would be naïve to believe that Harry Reid would not do the same for SCOTUS appointments, particularly if such a vacancy would change the Court’s composition.
The only block to the Reid-inspired destruction of restrained power is a Republican Senate, and that is why it is crucial to the future of the Republic that the nation elect one in November. Not only is Republican majority in Congress the first tangible step back from 2012, it is the most valuable hedge to prevent the general collapse of institutional checks and balances on the explosive growth and power of government.
We wish all nine Justices a long and prosperous life. A Republican Senate will help ensure a long and prosperous future for the country, after the troubled, disappointing failure of the Obama presidency has passed from the stage.