Business Times
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/opinion/the-coming-republican-congress-will-trumpists-set-the-tone
The coming Republican Congress: Will Trumpists set the tone?
Tue, Oct 25, 2022
IT FELT good for the Democrats as long as they lasted, those rising hopes that despite the political and economic environment, including raging inflation and an unpopular Democratic president, they may still have a chance to remain in control of Congress, or at least of the US Senate, after the upcoming midterm elections.
There were indications that some independent (and perhaps Republican) voters would punish the GOP in November in a backlash against the decision by the conservatives-controlled US Supreme Court to overturn abortion rights, or in protest against Republican candidates who agree with the Trumpist notion that President Joe Biden had stolen the 2020 election.
But in almost all the opinion polls that have been taken in the final weeks of the contest for the control of Congress, the Republicans now maintain an advantage and are gaining electoral momentum, as the price at the pump, aka inflation, has become the dominant concern of the majority of American voters. The proverbial independent voter may not have liked the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion, but what really piques her is the huge bill she has had to pay for her groceries.
Indeed, according to the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 49 per cent of those surveyed planned to vote for a Republican to represent them in Congress, with 45 per cent intending to go with a Democrat.
Similarly, according to an October Gallup poll, 51 per cent of American adults now trust the Republicans more with the economy, compared to 41 per cent who pin their hopes on the Democrats.
At the same time, the New York Times/Siena College poll also suggested that 44 per cent of likely voters point to economic concerns as the most important issue that would determine their vote, and that two-thirds of them favour Republican candidates. The Gallup poll indicates that only 9 per cent of Americans regard abortion as their main concern.
Another issue that favours Republicans is the rising crime in large urban centres such as New York City, Chicago and San Francisco that are controlled by Democrats. Voters count on Republicans to do a better job in dealing with crime.
The Republicans now seem to have a 10 per cent edge among independent voters, according to the New York Times/Siena College poll, and one of the most remarkable findings of the poll is that women who identify as independent voters and who in September favoured the Democrats by 14 points, now prefer Republican candidates by 18 points. Moreover, some pollsters warn that the advantage that Republicans now enjoy among likely voters may be wider than the four per cent that this poll indicated.
Studies of the results of both the 2016 and 2020 US elections as well as the 2016 Brexit referendum in Britain suggest that the current system employed by pollsters tends to underestimate by one to two percentage points the electoral power of uneducated right-wing voters. That explains why the election of President Donald Trump and the passage of Brexit or the narrow margin of support for President Biden came as surprises to so many people.
From that perspective, opinion polls that show Republican candidates with narrowing leads over their Democratic rivals in six crucial Senate races should be treated with a grain of salt.
Hence it’s more likely than not that Republican JD Vance would beat Democrat Tim Ryan in the Ohio Senate race, and that notwithstanding the personal scandals that have plagued his campaign, Republican candidate and football legend Herschel Walker would probably beat Senator and Baptist preacher Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate race, while Republican Senator Ron Johnson is expected to survive the challenge from Democrat Mandela Barnes.
In Nevada, there are some signs that Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto could lose to her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, while the bet is that Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, will keep his seat after the race in Arizona.
The most interesting race is taking place in Pennsylvania, where a Republican-held seat is pitting Republican candidate and media star Mehmet Oz (popularly known as Dr Oz) against Democrat John Fetterman. If Fetterman, who now holds a narrow lead, wins the race, he would be able to counter-balance the potential Republican victory in Georgia and ensure that the Democrats would continue to control the Senate.
But if Oz wins the race in Pennsylvania, a state that President Biden had won in 2020, that could spell the Democrats’ worst nightmare – a red (Republican) tsunami that could turn both the House of Representatives and the Senate into GOP hands.
Taking into consideration the conservative majority in the Supreme Court, a Republican-controlled Congress, with California Republican Kevin McCarthy expected to be elected the Speaker of the House, and Senator Mitch McConnell becoming the Senate Majority Leader, the GOP would be in the position to set the nation’s legislative and policy agenda and make it close to impossible for President Biden to advance any major initiatives at home and possibly abroad in the next two years.
McCarthy has stressed that when he becomes House Speaker, his party – operating under the banner of “Commitment to America” and against the agenda of the “socialist” and woke Democrats – would cut wasteful spending, advance tax cuts and deregulation, provide more resources to the police force, and, let’s not forget, ban transgender women from competing in female sports.
But Representative McCarthy – who during his political career has been seen as a moderate conservative Republican – would now be under the pressure of the expanding wing of Trump fans, including many lawmakers endorsed by the former president, who want their party to engage full-time in disrupting the legislative and policy process in Washington.
For some of these hard-core Trumpists, the Supreme Court’s ruling was not enough, and they want to make sure that women do not have access to contraception. They demand that Congress launch investigations into the claims of corrupt activities involving the business deals of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and toy with the idea of opening impeachment proceedings against the Democratic White House occupant.
It goes without saying that the Republicans would shut down the inquiry into the events relating to the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol and other investigations into Trump’s alleged misconduct in office.
But even if they take over the Senate, the Republicans would not have the 61 votes needed to override a filibuster by the Democrats which would place constraints on their ability to advance any radical legislation.
And as a centrist Republican and a critic of Trump, Senator McConnell, if elected as Majority Leader, is expected to nominate moderate Republican lawmakers to chair the powerful Senate committees.
But if the Republicans control the Senate in addition to the House, they could try to use their legislative power to mess around with the American and global economies, by threatening, for example, to refuse to authorise the debt ceiling, the borrowing needed to finance the US debt.
The Republicans tried to do that in 2011 when they used the debt ceiling as an extortion threat against then President Barack Obama to force him to accept their fiscal programme.
While that plot eventually failed, the more radical 2022 Republican lawmakers could try it again, a move that would hurt the credibility of the US and devastate the global financial markets.
And then there is growing Republican attachment to the Trumpist nationalist and isolationist foreign policy. When it comes to China, the expectation is that a Republican congress would mount growing pressure on President Biden to alter US policy towards Taiwan by increasing military aid to the island and moving toward establishing diplomatic ties with Taipei, a move that would enjoy support from some Democrats. The goal of the Republicans would be to portray President Biden as being “weak on China”.
At the same time, there are concerns among members of the foreign establishment in Washington that the level of US support for Ukraine would be in danger if the GOP gets control of the House; some of its isolationist members would call for reassessing US policy towards Ukraine and Russia.
Hence in April, 10 House Republicans voted against a bill allowing the Biden administration to more easily lend military equipment to Ukraine, and 57 House Republicans voted “no” on the nearly US$40 billion aid package to Ukraine.
“I think that people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank cheque to Ukraine,” House Minority Leader McCarthy said recently. “They just won’t do it.”
The comments led Representative Liz Cheney from Wyoming, the top Republican critic of Trump, to speculate that Representative McCarthy was positioning himself as “the leader of the pro-Putin wing” of the Republican Party, reflecting here concerns that Trump’s friendship with the Russian leader may impact the GOP’s position on Ukraine.