by Shankar Gupta
Washington Square News (New York U.)
U-Wire
If you listen to some of the liberal press, the results of the midterm election on Nov. 5 spelled the end of this country. Various columnists, pundits and talking heads predicted apocalypse following the national Republican Party takeover.
Now that the GOP controls the Congress and the presidency, they said, the conservatives are free to enact their nefarious agenda, and it will preceding the collapse of this country.
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Paul Krugman wrote in his New York Times column (Nov. 8) that "by the time the political pendulum swings, the damage will be irreparable. A ballooning federal debt . . . will have made it impossible to deal with the needs of an aging population. Years of unchecked crony capitalism will have destroyed faith in our financial markets. Unilateralist foreign policy will have left us without real allies. And most important of all, environmental neglect will have gone past the point of no return."
Michael Moore predicted before the elections that if Republicans made gains in the Senate and House, we would "pay a huge price for many years to come." But Democrats, take heart: It will not be so bad. The newly-Republican House and Senate will not reinstate segregation or abolish public schooling. They will not exempt CEOs from income taxes or send registered Democrats away to gulags for re-education. Although this shift in Congress is significant, it will not likely result in any drastic changes in public policy.
Republicans last controlled both the executive and legislative branches of government in 1953, when Dwight Eisenhower was president. According to David Greenberg's Slate Magazine article, "When Republicans Last Ruled the Earth," the GOP control over the presidency, House and Senate from 1953 to 1955 was characterized by "internecine fighting, a farrago of pro-business deals and anti-communist calamities and an ultimately slender record of accomplishment." The reason for this, Greenberg wrote, is that Ike spent much of his time trying to save the extreme end of his party from itself. Greenberg said this is similar to President George W. Bush's current situation: Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is much like Eisenhower's "modern Republicanism" in that they are both compromises with the party's ideologues.
As much as many Republicans would like to enact an extremely conservative agenda, it is likely that doing so would damage their chances in 2004 by alienating moderate voters. Therefore, in order to solidify their gains in 2002, the Republicans will most likely play toward the center and try to establish themselves as the majority party in the long term.
As much as Democratic prognosticators predict impending disaster at the hands of the Republican leadership, it will not actually happen. Chances are that for the next two years, the Republicans will avoid alienating moderate voters as much as possible, and govern close to the center.
