The Senate GOP Will Be More Conservative

Officially the GOP gained six seats in the Senate but conservatives really gained eight.  Here's how:

• Three GOP moderates (or squishy libs) who started out with the 111th Congress are gone.  Arlen Specter (PA) defected to the Dems and then got beaten in the Dem primary.  Bob Bennett (UT) was beaten in the GOP primary, and George Voinovich (OH) retired.  They were replaced by three much more conservative Senators.
• The one trade-off is Mark Kirk in Illinois.  He's not a reliable conservative, and although he'll be with us on many issues, he can't be counted on all the time.  We might look at him as an even trade for Bennett.
• That leaves the Conservative Caucus plus eight.

This will be important in the battles to come.  When the Dems had 60 votes in the Senate we couldn't stop anything.  Fortunately, they usually stopped themselves with their inability to get everybody on board on some of the tougher votes, and they were also hamstrung by the frequent illnesses of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. 

The addition of Republican Scott Brown left them with 59 votes, meaning on the critical votes they had to be able to convince only one Republican in order to get cloture.  With the aforementioned Brown, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, the ladies of Maine, Bennett, Voinovich, or for awhile Specter, it wasn't that hard to find a Republican willing to compromise.

The 112th Congress will have only 53 in the Dem caucus (depending on who wins in Alaska) which means finding seven GOP Senators willing to compromise on liberal legislation will be very, very difficult.  The GOP will be calling the shots as far as anything that gets passed, and for that matter, any Obama nominations that need confirmation.  With fewer squishy moderates in the GOP caucus there will be less opportunity for the GOP to disappoint us.

And the GOP will get some help from Democrats.  Ben Nelson (D-NE) comes up for reelection in 2012 as does newly elected Joe Manchin (D-WV).  Nelson is from a fairly red state and his votes on Obamacare got him in a lot of trouble.  He'll be much more conservative these next two years.

And Manchin practically ran as Ronald Reagan.  If he strays from the conservatism he touted in the election he'll have big problems in 2012.

There will be a number of other red state Democrats who will be facing the voters in 2012.  Don't look for them to jump aboard all of Obama's liberal fantasies if they have hopes for staying in the Senate.

And there's another benefit to the new Congress - Obama will not be able to campaign against a "do-nothing Republican Congress" because the Dems will still own half of it.  In some ways I think Obama was hoping they'd lose the Senate too so he'd have a ready-made whipping boy for the 2012 election.

Although it was disappointing to see Harry Reid, Babs Boxer and Patty Murray survive their elections, having them in there will certainly make for some entertaining moments.