Jonathan Martin: What Will The Senate Be Like In 2011?

Jonathan Martin: What Will The Senate Be Like In 2011?
By David Mixner
Copyright By David Mixner
Jun 24 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/06/jonathan-martin-what-will-the-senate-be-like-in-2011-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29


Senate Many (including yours truly) have made projections of the possible numbers of Republicans and Democrats, but Jonathan Martin of Politico provides a first-rate glimpse of what kind of Senate we might have starting in 2011. In "Gauging the Senate Scenario in 2011," Martin does not paint a hopeful picture. With the Tea Party revolution in the Republican party and increasing polarization it could be a wild and unpredictable ride.

Martin writes in his important article:

"Tuesday's nomination of Mike Lee for the Senate by Utah Republicans served up yet another reminder about what this tumultuous and unpredictable election year might mean for next year’s Congress: The decorous and staid U.S. Senate could get a lot rowdier in 2011.

Lee, a 38-year-old conservative lawyer who enjoyed support from tea party activists, is all but certain to fill the seat of 76-year-old Sen. Robert Bennett, the sober institutionalist and senator’s son who failed to even make his party’s primary ballot after three terms.

The transition from septuagenarian Bennett to Lee, who is younger than anyone else currently in the chamber, may be the most vivid illustration of how the next Senate could veer further from its clubby and collegial tradition, but it’s hardly the only example.

A handful of other Republicans fueled by tea party activists might also end up in the Senate, intent on doing more than carving their names in the desks and sampling the dining room’s famous bean soup.

They owe little to the establishment—party leaders largely opposed their candidacies—and much to the fear-for-my-country movement from which they emerge. Many of them haven’t followed the timeworn paths to elected office.

Perhaps most important, they aren’t expecting to come to the capital to go along so they can get along. They are non-conformists who tend to chafe at authority, with both Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada making names for themselves by bucking the established order."

Later Martin makes the inevitable past historical comparisons

"The new and unlikely faces that could populate the Senate next year reflect the fury of an electorate that is scornful of the political status quo and hungry for change. And at a time of serious churning among voters, it’s easier for politicians who don’t look and sound like the usual models to get elected.

2010 won’t mark the first election cycle that a collection of unlikely individuals joined the chamber of Clay and Webster.

“It's 1980 all over again,” said Rutgers University professor and Senate scholar Ross Baker. “Paula Hawkins, Jeremiah Denton, John East, Steve Symms—the Four Horsemen of the Reagan Apocalypse ride again. A rebellious electorate embraces crackpots and crackpots with certificates of election make public policy.”

As voters directed their anger toward President Jimmy Carter in 1980 by electing Ronald Reagan, they also ushered in a class of senators mostly remembered for, well, being swept in by Carter and Reagan. Among the list that helped the GOP capture the Senate majority that year: Hawkins of Florida, Denton of Alabama, East of North Carolina and Symms of Idaho.

Their presence – and the departure of such Democratic stalwarts as Idaho’s Frank Church, South Dakota’s George McGovern, Washington’s Warren Magnuson and Indiana’s Birch Bayh – underlined that the new right was on the ascent.

But even though these and the other Reagan Revolutionaries came to Washington intent on overthrowing what they saw as a crumbling citadel of liberalism, they didn’t ultimately succeed in storming the tower."

Martin quotes former Senator John Breaux....

"Still, some longtime Senate-watchers fret about this year’s crop of potential senators, noting that comity in the body is already far worse now than it was 30 years ago.

“What we’re seeing is that the mood of the public tends to generate extremists on both sides now,” lamented former Sen. John Breaux, a centrist Democrat from Louisiana. “People that want to come to Washington to burn the barn down as opposed to fixing the system.”

Breaux, who is now a powerful lobbyist, said the self-styled outsiders would discover how difficult it is to change the body once they get inside.

“Should they get there, they’re going to find out they’re in a distinct minority of a minority in terms of wanting to do away with the current system,” he predicted. “They’ll find out that you cannot change overnight a system of government we’ve had for over 200 years.”