Packer: Partisan Rancor Will Just Get Worse
George Packer writes:
The big news in Virginia was that Rick Boucher, a twenty-eight-year veteran Democratic congressman from the coal district to the west of the Fifth, lost his seat, too. That’s an indicator of a gale-force wind that Perriello was never likely to survive. Tonight is a stinging repudiation of Obama and the Democrats, even if they hold some of the Senate seats that the Tea Party appeared ready to claim. We’re living in a time of instant eras. Bush’s permanent Republican majority lasted six years. Obama’s new liberalism lasted two. I have to admit I miss Arthur Schlesinger’s cycles of history, which used to take around three decades to swing back. These days, as the woman with the Koch-employed husband said, “I’m so upset with the way things are going in Washington—changing every two years, trying to undo what the other party did. I don’t believe the economy would be any better if the Republicans were in control.” But we now know that analysis hardly moved anyone whose vote was up for grabs.
Yesterday, I ran into Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, who was campaigning with Perriello in Martinsville and Danville. When I interviewed him over the summer for my piece on the Senate, he had said that he expected the election of some moderate Republicans, like Mark Kirk of Illinois and Mike Castle of Delaware, who might be able to create more middle ground for bipartisanship. When I reminded him of this yesterday, Warner wouldn’t abandon the hope. How is it faring tonight? Not well—Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in the primary, Kirk is losing, and Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, and perhaps other Tea Party senators, are headed to Washington. I predict that there will not even be a gesture toward centrism and bipartisanship on the part of Republican leadership. They’re too scared, and too eager. Pace David Brooks, the level of extremism and partisanship I described will go up—way up. This midterm is the party’s first salvo in its first order of business, to end Obama’s Presidency. There will be little mercy and a great deal of rancor. Tomorrow we’ll find out how Obama sees the next two years. I see one of the ugliest political periods in my lifetime, which has seen a few.
