In Tuesday’s congressional elections, the Republicans lost the House of Representatives and held the Senate. Of the three branches of the federal government, the Democrats regained control of half the legislative power – that is, one-sixth of official Washington. As in the 2016 elections, few people could predict the exact outcome of the 2018 midterms. The so-called “blue wave,” which the Democrats were championing, did not reach the Senate. However, the “red tsunami” of the Republicans passed by the House of Representatives.
What happened?
Behind the façade of the elections in 2018, the political stables became mutually cleared. In the Senate, Republicans were able to defeat the “insufficiently left” Democrats, and in the House of Representatives, the Democrats dealt with the “insufficiently right” RINOs and anti-Trumpists.
In other words, both the Democrats and the Republicans cleared their ranks with the hands of their political opponents.
As a result, polarization in Congress increased markedly. However, the polarization in Congress was massive even before that, so this would not change the main picture of Washington’s political life. It is unlikely that the parties will be able to work constructively with each other in the next two years.
On the surface, the 2018 elections vis-à-vis the House of Representatives looks like a Democratic victory. Judging by the number of conquered seats, this is true. However, the qualitative composition of the new House of Representatives is not at all the same as before, and this applies to both Democrats and Republicans.
This year, the second wave of purges hit Republicans who sympathize with Democrats and distance themselves from Trump (the first wave was in the 2016 elections). Now there is practically no one among the Republicans in Congress who would oppose the abolition of Obamacare, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico, or the reduction of taxes.
In other words, from January 2019, Republicans in the House of Representatives will be virtually indistinguishable from American conservatives.
If Democratic losers in the Senate paid for voting against Judge Kavanaugh, the Republican anti-Trumpists in the House of Representatives paid for failure to repeal Obamacare and flirting with Democrats regarding illegal immigration and open borders.
These anti-Trumpists were replaced mostly by socialists who hide under the banner of the Democrats. However, the minimal numerical advantage of the Democrats in the House of Representatives (about 10 out of 435) is not based on the socialists. It is based on newly elected centrist members of Congress, many of whom are Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and share the Republican position on illegal immigration and the Second Amendment. These Democrats have publicly distanced themselves from the far-left and toxic Nancy Pelosi, because, unlike other Democrats in Congress, they are patriots of America. Unfortunately, there are just a few such Democrats in Congress.
Also, Democrats quantitatively won the House of Representatives because of the massive retirement of 43 Republicans, most of whom openly opposed Trump. The statistical chances for re-election in the House are traditionally more than 90%. Therefore, if they remained in politics, these Republicans would have been guaranteed to keep the House of Representatives in their hands.
The behavior of these “Republicans” cannot even be called a betrayal, because there was little benefit from them as congressmen in a first place. Also, some of these Republican opponents of Trump announced their withdrawal from politics not at the beginning, but at the end of the election cycle, so the Republicans did not have enough time to find a suitable replacement for them.
As a result, the socialists who seized the Democratic Party of the USA many years ago, besides the new socialists and a small number of centrists, managed to add to their ranks new, ardent anti-Semites, young communists, and supporters of sharia law in America.
It seems that from January 2019, the Democrats in the House of Representatives will become virtually indistinguishable from the American communists.
After the elections of 2018, all of America saw the difference in the behavior of the supporters of the two parties again. After Democrats lost the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House in 2016, they periodically organized street riots, fought hysterically, and tried to force President Trump out of the White House by hook or by crook, while the Republicans will simply accept the loss of the House and go to work the next day.
[Originally published in American Thinker]