U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, began the new year by expressing confidence that the United States will overcome war, recession and double-digit unemployment in 2010. And during the GOP’s weekly radio address on Jan. 2, the Senate’s top Republican somewhat surprisingly predicted the new year will see the nation’s leaders unite for the common good despite sometimes sharp political disagreements.
To be sure, there is something about the start of a new year that makes many of us think that we somehow will be different on Jan. 1 than we were on Dec. 31, and in that regard, we hope McConnell’s confidence about the new attitude in Congress is right on the money. More cooperation and less political grandstanding in Washington certainly would improve the nation’s mood and likely lead to better government.
That being said, one must wonder from where McConnell gets his confidence. Certainly it is not based on the experience of 2009. If anything, the partisan political bickering that has hampered this nation for most of the last decade became even worse during Barack Obama’s first year as president.
With the Democrats holding majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the party’s strategy was to virtually ignore the GOP minority and approve major pieces of legislation on virtually straight-line party votes. Meanwhile, the Republicans became the party of “aginners.”
Thus, with McConnell leading the way in the Senate, we learned what the GOP was against in 2009 (virtually everything the Democrats proposed), but very little about what the party supported. It was as though the Republican Party had completely forgotten the strategy that had helped it gain control of Congress in 1994 when it offered its own legislative agenda — the Contract with America — to counter the agenda of the Democrats. In 2009, the Republicans simply opposed the Democratic initiatives on everything from health care to energy to economic recovery without offering any alternatives of their own.
Will things be different this year? Despite McConnell’s confidence, don’t count on it. This is an election year, and the top goal of the GOP will be to win enough seats in Congress in November to regain control of either the House or Senate or both. Working with Democrats is not on the agenda.
“The new year always brings with it new hope and a spirit of optimism — qualities that have exemplified our nation fro the very start,” McConnell said during his brief address.
Those are nice words, but we suspect that is all they are — words without any real meaning. Based on past experiences and the fact this 2010 is an election year, it is unrealistic wishful thinking to hope for a new spirit of cooperation in 2010.
