What Are You Going to Do With a House Full of Mad Democrats?

When we gather here again one week from today we'll pretty much know what the 112th Congress will look like and how many Democrats will be coming back to D.C. on November 15 to clean out their offices and lay off their staff.  If the current polling holds true Washington will be full of angry Democrats.

The mood on Capitol Hill will be pretty tense.  Republicans will be stifling giggles of glee while trying to look appropriately sympathetic toward their Dem colleagues.  And Democrats will be making plans for legislative action during the "lame-duck" (or perhaps "dead-duck") session.  What will their attitude be?

I think we may see two different Dem approaches to the end-of-year session.  Both groups will be looking to get back at the person or persons they think responsible for their loss and depending on who they think that is, it will affect their votes.

There will be a number of veteran Dems who will suddenly find themselves out of office but will have future political plans.  I'm sure some of the them will be hoping to regain their seats in 2012, figuring this wave election won't carry the people that defeated them to another win in 2012 and they'll be vulnerable.  Some may have plans for other offices in their states.  I'm thinking the target of their ire will be President Obama and Nancy Pelosi.  Given that their votes during the lame-duck could come back to haunt them in future campaigns at least some of them will be reluctant to sign on to Crazy Nancy and Barry's lefty agenda.  They will help the GOP stop the craziness.

Others, especially the most far-left of the ousted legislators, will have vengeance in their eyes and their target will be the voters who pitched them out.  They'll vote for anything if they think the voters will hate it., and that is likely to include cap-and-tax legislation, taking away private elections from union members (card check), amnesty for illegal aliens, and restrictions on free political speech in the form of new campaign finance laws.

And let's not forget the Democrats who survive this election. They, too, will be split into two camps.  Those who barely survived may be reluctant to put their name on more voter-hated legislation since they will come up for election again in just two short years.  The Democrats in safe seats will feel bulletproof and they're likely to sign on to anything.

If we get a new GOP Senator or two in the lame-duck session (which could happen because a couple of Senate elections are special election which will result in the immediate seating of the winner), we should have enough Republicans to filibuster any of the really odorous stuff.  Hopefully we can keep the ladies of Maine (Snowe and Collins) as well as some of the departing GOP Senators (like Bennett and Voinovich) in line.  They tend to get squishy at times.  And some of the Red State Dem Senators facing election in two years (like Ben Nelson-NE) or with their eyes on higher office (like Evan Bayh-IN) also won't be keen to put their names on crazy stuff.

All-in-all I'm beginning to think the lame-duck session may not be as dangerous as previously thought.