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My Audio Story
November 12th, 2010 by Gustav
FINAL Obama facing Republican House
check out Prof’s opinions and backgrounds…
SCRIPT
Last week, the Republican Party regained some major legislative clout in this year’s off-year election. President Obama now has to work on policy differences to get the progress people just not yet saw happening.
For the first time since the 107th congress and the first Bush administration, the President has to face an opposition controlled House of Representatives.
This year’s elections might be a great indicator of what might or what might not be accomplished in the next two years.
Before the elections, former president Bill Clinton said he thinks, if Republicans take over the House, Obama’s chances for reelection might improve.
Political Science student Seth McCauley agrees:
I think the Republican’s new responsibility is going to create a new nationwide perspective. I think once the public sees both parties fail they’ll realize they may have been a little harsh on Obama in the first place, and may be willing to grant him a second term.
The US Senate remains Democratic, but only has a slight majority over the republicans.
The big debate was whether Obama would lose his grip over the House, and in fact he did. The Republicans took control over the House of Representatives and now have about 50 more seats than the democrats.
Patrick McKinlay is a professor for political science. He commented on the reasons for this situation:
I think that the Republicans were able to tap into some major discontent with the economy.
It is traditional that the president’s party will lose seats in an off-year election.
Parties usually lose votes and seats because of a low overall approval rate of the current administration. The debate about health care, troops, and the economy helped Republicans stir the pot.
History and Politics professor Kathleen Green confirms:
Clearly for the first couple years the strategy was to oppose anything that Obama was behind for political reasons because it’s paid off.
Probably the worst-case scenario would be that nothing gets done in a very serious economic times.
However, Green holds some hope:
Some dove of peace could descend from above and the democrats and republicans could work together.
That might be very difficult to attain, as newly proposed bills usually end up in a gridlock.
McKinlay elaborates:
We may see some very sharp contrast. But of course that’s gonna make it hard because you need 60 votes to get anything done in the senate.
Everybody says they want compromise, but there haven’t been any tangible rewards for compromise, whereas the voter seem to be rewarding people who take extreme views.
In 2006, Bush faced an almost equivalent situation when the Democrats won the majority of the house by about 7 million votes. Consequently, Nancy Pelosi emerged as the speaker of the house.
John Boehner is currently leader of the minority house. He is poised to take over Pelosi’s role after the Congress convenes on January third.
On the chances of the new government, McKinlay said:
We might see a lot of contentious politics, but not a lot of policy.
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