»» Columnists

Never Mind The House – The Senate Has Become More Conservative

by Rachel Sklar | 7:10 am, November 3rd, 2010

» 18 comments

Joe Scarborough makes the point early on Morning Joe: “We’re all talking about the House right now – it is the Senate that has become more conservative, by so many degrees.”

The Democrats lost the House by a huge flip — Nate Silver called it at 243 seats, with a net gain of 65 for the GOP, in the biggest flip from one side to the other since 1948.

But as Scarborough points out, even though the headline is that the Dems get to hold the Senate — though certainly not that hard-won Senate majority (remember that?), the overall tone of the Senate has shifted right. Scarborough pointed out that West Virginia’s Joe Manchin was hardly a victory for the left, considering he basically ran as a conservative: “When you look at Manchin as the bright spot — and all these very conservative Republicans who won,” said Scarborough, it seemed clear that the Senate had shifted right, despite, as Silver pointed out, the Dems being “able to leg out a couple more wins than expected in the Senate.”

At this point even a victory for Lisa Murkowski, trending for the Alaska Senate, is being perceived as a victory for the left (and certainly against the Tea Party) — but Murkowski originally ran for the Republican nomination. There’s Rand Paul in Kentucky — the classic fringe-y Tea Party candidate — and Marco Rubio in Florida — the mainstream Tea Partier, who challenged Charlie Crist as a classic Republican with classic GOP bona fides — both backed by Jim DeMint, who reached out to the Tea Party from within the GOP machine early on, finding a new base of power there. The defeats of Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware speak to the fact that the fringes still face an uphill battle, but especially with respect to Angle, look how close they got.

But look at who was re-elected: North Carolina arch-conservative Richard Burr, who, as Mary Curtis of Politics Daily notes, “sided with the Republican leadership 94 percent of the time,” voted against health care and the stimulus, and has “voted to restrict access to abortion and against repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays.” (Speaking of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” its chances of being repealed just dropped considerably.) Meanwhile, there’s this headline: “Sen. Russ Feingold, liberal icon, loses seat in Wisconsin.” Fare thee well, Russ Feingold. You wouldn’t really fit in, anyway.

Still with all the focus going to the flip in the House — and the replacement of Speaker Nancy Pelosi with John Boehner — the Senate should not be overlooked as yet another obstacle that President Barack Obama will have to face going forward. The headline right now is “Republicans Take The House, Dems Keep The Senate” but upon closer inspection the lede may be buried indeed. I will leave the last word to Nate Silver: “I’m not trying to be a media critic here, but Republicans have some legitimate gripe with portrayals of the night as having been a split decision.”

Christine O'Donnell, Democrats Senate, Elections 2010, House Republicans, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Tea Party

Latin2

Meanwhile the Executive branch went Socialist in 2008 and far left.
Moderate

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy at Mediaite – mighty Obama has struck out.
Latin2

Moderate said:
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy at Mediaite – mighty Obama has struck out.

lol…SOOO true…LOL

You want to see something, something that Mediaite writers and other MSM never focus one and. this explains it all;

Look at this map;

http://www.politico.com/2010/maps/#/House/2010

1. Northern New Mexico, Eastern Oklahoma, Imperial County in California, eastern Utah, southwestern Texas, Broward County in Florida, and many of the whose little ‘blue spots’ on Politico’s map that went Democrat have some of the highest high school drop out rates, high crime rates in their states, high depressed real estate, the most poverty, and drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment, and children born into broken homes.

Proving that the areas that kept Democrats or voted for them are THE WORST OF THE WORST areas in the country and states that BROKE, but notice that Mediaite and other Liberal MSM NEVER touch that…you know why…because the truth hurts.
Latin2

Barack Obama was “fringe-y” extremest who hung out with PLO terrorist backers, domestic terrorists, racists, anti-Semitic, U.S. and western hating fringes, and Communists. The US Communist party BACKED all Democratic candidates and so did racist groups like the Nation of Islam and NBPP, and terrorist sympathizers and Mediaite writers CALL CONSERVATIVES FRINGE-Y…lol

talk about insane.
sarainitaly

Thanks for the recap Rachel! I was trying to make sense of it all, and this helps.
bealzebubba

It’s a good balance we need in DC. Too much leverage on the left or the right and the country will get pissy. Nobody wants a marxist government and nobody wants a totalitarian theocracy We might actually see stuff get done….unless the house intends to spend the next two years trying to push Obama out of office, in which case…second verse, same as the first.
The Real Royal King

Joe is tripping over his own hyperbole again. The West seems to have been firming up very nicely. Bennet has pulled back ahead, with votes still due in from suburban Denver and Boulder, some of his core constituencies. Murray has pulled back ahead with only partial results from King and Olympia counties which she seems to be carrying very, very nicely, indeed.

In Alaska, Miller is down by 7% to a pro-choice Republican.

How is this markedly more conservative?

To be sure, Feingold was a loss and Manchin is a much more conservative Democrat than most, but with the expected loss by O’Donnell and the dramatic fall by Angle, we are, at best, slightly more conservative in the Senate.

Of course, Ayn Rand Paul is the wildcard, but I would call his political outlook more erratic than conservative in the strict Republican sense. In fact, I think Paul is more of a headache for Chinless Mitch than for Reid.

Joe just loves to hear himself blabber so much that he doesn’t really stop to think.
the mad doctor

Joe Manchin will be seated for the Lame Duck session. He will be up for re-election in 2012. His every vote will be closely watched. DINO- indeed.
Judge Mental

Best possible result for the Republicans in terms of positioning for the 2012 presidential race. And let’s not forget the governors’ races, where the Republicans picked up at least ten. And the state houses. Beauty.
marcus.lewis

I’m more interested in 2012. I’m not sure who the GOP presidential candidate will be, but there choices are pretty slim. The house gets reelected every 2 years, and with Obama on the ticket—some of the newcomers in the House (especially those who ousted blue-dog dems) may just stay for 2 years. But for the next two years I’m excited. I hope that now the Republicans feel like they have something at stake in this congress, they will work to get something done. Its easy to be against everything (as dems did until 2006), but much harder to get important legislation through (2006-2010).

Good luck Boehner.
The_Reasonable_Lib

marcus.lewis said:
I’m more interested in 2012. I’m not sure who the GOP presidential candidate will be, but there choices are pretty slim. The house gets reelected every 2 years, and with Obama on the ticket—some of the newcomers in the House (especially those who ousted blue-dog dems) may just stay for 2 years. But for the next two years I’m excited. I hope that now the Republicans feel like they have something at stake in this congress, they will work to get something done. Its easy to be against everything (as dems did until 2006), but much harder to get important legislation through (2006-2010).

Good luck Boehner.

the best post i’ve seen in a while
Latin2

…and yet Mediaite HAS NOT WRITTEN A STORY ABOUT OBAMA’S SENATE SEAT going to the Republicans…now THAT is a big story…but I guess they just cannnnnn’t bare to write it…lol
dskfgjsdgfjsd

-ONLINE STORE—“ ==== ( http://simurl.com/newhow )

Christan Audigier bikini $23

Ed Hardy Bikini $23

Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15

ed hardy short_tank_woman $16

Sandal $32

christian louboutin $80

Sunglass $15

COACH_Necklace $27

handbag $33

AF tank woman $17

puma slipper woman $30

( http://simurl.com/newhow )
http://Race4Congress.com Magister

First of all…

Latin2 said:
…and yet Mediaite HAS NOT WRITTEN A STORY ABOUT OBAMA’S SENATE SEAT going to the Republicans…now THAT is a big story…but I guess they just cannnnnn’t bare to write it…lol

There’s only so many hours in a day and this was originally a media site, something Rachel sticks to a little closer to some of the others, so the fact that an article you may want hasn’t appeared does not necessarily indicate a bias.

As to your larger point, Kirk polled higher throughout most of the race, Giannoulias only found momentum in the past couple of weeks and I’ve long predicted in comments to this site and others that Kirk was likely to win.

Of course, he is a Republican, but most tea party adherents have referred to him as a RINO and you’d think his two public spats with Palin would hurt his cred with that wing of the Party. So yeah, it makes a good headline that Obama’s seat flipped, but it was a close race, it’s not a victory for the Tea Party or social conservatives (Rachel’s issue) and he’s likely to align himself more closely with Snowe, Brown and Graham, rather than Jim DeMint.

With that said and returning to the OP…

I tweeted last night and commented in a couple of places that Joe Lieberman is in the catbird’s seat. It wouldn’t help him with the Democrats and may damage his chances for re-election, but I wonder if he’ll caucus with the GOP.

Nonetheless, my analysis is that Manchin is something like a Democratic version of Collins and though Joe is right and some conservatives won, the real power will be in the middle.
VRWC Destruction Machine

The Real Royal King said:
Of course, Ayn Rand Paul is the wildcard, but I would call his political outlook more erratic than conservative in the strict Republican sense. In fact, I think Paul is more of a headache for Chinless Mitch than for Reid.

Paul’s victory is telling the establishment Republican’s, the Tea Party’s ideals they are here to take on the Washington establishment. Their endorsements won’t win every race, but they are a force to be reckoned with.

In 2008, people said the election was the end of the Republican Party. In 2010, people are probably are probably saying this is the end of theTea Party. The Tea Party is not about political parties. It is about a return to the principles stated in the Constitution be it through the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Neither party has a claim on the Constitution. Both parties are part of the same Washington culture. They are both elitists. It is possible to be pro-business and pro-working man at the same time since they both have a symbiotic relationship. They cannot exist as separate entitites.
J Baustian

There are seven or eight Democrat senators that might conceivably vote with the Republicans on budget issues, and possibly other issues. Manchin, Nelson, Baucus, Webb, Conrad, Casey, Hagan, Pryor, Landrieu, and maybe a couple others?

A serious effort to cut federal spending could get close to 60 votes.
Orion Antares

I don’t know about a shift toward conservatism but with Feingold’s loss there was certainly a shift toward MORE corruption…
moryoxon

Typical political writing by a typical Mediaite hack. Rachel Sklar “jumps the snark” every time she writes of conservatives.