[oraltyrap]

LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4516385.story

The political center, where swing voters reside and compromise happens, is suddenly a much smaller part of the Washington landscape.

The clearest indication of the growing partisan gap was Tuesday's rout of the Blue Dog caucus, a group of moderate and conservative Democrats who urged the party to adopt a more business-friendly and fiscally conservative agenda. Fewer than half of its 54 members will be returning next year after incumbents were ousted in Pennsylvania, Ohio and a few Democratic pocketsof the Deep South. Their absence will likely push the 190 or so remaining House Democrats even further left.

On the Republican side, the victory of dozens of insurgents backed by the "tea party" movement means the emboldened GOP majority will be even more conservative and confrontational than the one that harried President Obama over the last two years.

These lawmakers, and the legion of activists who plan to monitor their performance, have called for drastic changes, including eliminating the Department of Education, privatizing parts of Social Security and repealing the healthcare law just now starting to take effect.

Extensive polling, including thousands of voter interviews conducted Tuesday, shows that neither party is well regarded. The election was the third in a row in which 20 or more House seats changed hands, a level of upheaval unseen in more than half a century; these days, voters seem willing to discard unwanted politicians like so much used tissue.

But that hasn't stopped both sides from claiming to speak for a majority of Americans. A mandate is in the eye of the beholder, and Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, an online conservative network, seemed to speak for many when she suggested compromise was a good thing — so long as others were doing the compromising.

[kranfid]

The issue is what point do you compromise from. If Richard wants to flush $20 billion more that we flushed last year and my starting point is flushing the same amount that we flushed last year and we compromise on flushing "only" $10 billion more. From the point of view of people who are against flushing any money at all it is a near worthless compromise. Like we "saved" $10 billion from being flushed "whatever"? From my point of view we need to start at a point where we are actually flushing away less every year and compromise with the pro-money flushers means a 5% decrease in flushing money rather than a 10% decrease.

As far as being toward the center the leadership of the establishment Republican party Boehner and McConnell are much closer to the center if not at the center than the leadership of the Dems Obama, Pelosi and Reid. In my opinion moderate Republicans are the center if you don't believe that just look at all the Dems running as essentially as moderate GOP candidates. Manchin in WV, Sestak in PA. Fortunately, this time as many voters weren't fooled by this tactic.

[Grizli]

Losing half of the Blue Dogs should send a message to all Democrats to vote thier conscience. Some of them believed if they voted the "right" way, the GOP wouldn't target them. They were wrong.

[Toivaluadiora]

But, Paul, the infusion of so many Tea Party types, who seem to be as conservative as Pelosi is liberal, doesn't bode well for compromise of any kind, nor will it make it easy for the Republican leadership to accomplish anything, as they'll have to battle the extremists on both sides of the aisle.

The problem for Boehner will be to figure out how to mollify the shrill voices on the right in order to get anything through that will pass in the Senate and survive a veto.

[ssupermegatone]

It'll be interesting to see if Boehner has the leadership chops to pull it off. He's got a large number of freshmen that think they're operating under a mandate to get rid of most government agencies and privatize Medicare and Social Security and start tinkering with Constitutional amendments that they don't like. They want to shut down the government just to prove they can.

If he can't get some compromises out of them, the biggest gridlock on Congress will be inside the Republican caucus itself.