Can a GOP midterm win stop an Obama regulatory assault?

While the conservative world is beside itself giddy with an anticipated landslide in November, and “hope” has re’sprung eternal for a floundering Sharron Angle in Nevada, the burning question on my mind has been just what effect a GOP Congress – likely at best a slim majority – will have in the last two years of an Obama term, and stopping an agenda already well underway?

The answer to that will be just how much of a majority the GOP can pull off.

At the forefront is the ugly reality of the Obama agenda. “Change” has already been quite successful with this POTUS and his supermajority legislators. The foundation of “change” has been laid with the passage of Obama’care and financial reform…. tho neither has done whit to raise the proffered campaign slogan bandied about – “hope”. Simultaneously, that “change” has burdened current and future generations with so much debt that even Moody’s Mark Zandi is noting the rising probability of a double dip recession, just a few short months after avering the “recovery” would “remain intact”.

We’re a few months out from the midterms, and much can happen. I’m not one to put a happy face on polls this early in the season… or any poll, for that matter. One thing I’m certain we can expect…. there will be no GOP supermajority. This means we can forget legislative correction. Repeal of the onerous and fiscally debilitating legislation, put into place by devious hook and crook methods or partisan majorities (generally aided by three GOPers), have no chance of being nipped in the bud without a veto proof majority.

But I can envision two nightmares come true from a GOP takeover.

The first is a Clintonesque sequel. Obama wins a second term as he takes credit for a GOP Congress, reining in the big spending. Not because they will spend less, mind you… but because for the first time in four years, they will have the power to stop the even higher spending penchant of the Democrats. Forcing Obama to the center with a fiscally responsible Congress makes a truly less than a mediocre POTUS shine just via reflection. Of course, when it comes to 2012 talking points, we all know a Dem Congress gets a pass for over spending if there’s a GOP president they can blame. And if there’s a Dem president, they are quick to take credit for any fiscal restraint shown by a GOP Congress.

While the latter scenario has been true (i.e. Clinton accolades for GOP fiscal successes in the 90s) – the former (the oxymoron of a fiscally responsible GOP Congress) has skipped a generation in reality.

It is true, historically, that the US economically fares better when the GOP is in charge of purse strings and a Dem holding down the Oval Office swivel chair. But we can all agree that today’s GOP is not the conservative GOP of Reagan’s days. Nor is Obama your typical Dem POTUS. Does his narcissistic personality crave the power of second term more than the one-term legacy of taking the ship of the USA into a socialist U-turn?

And therein lies the worry…. Will a GOP midterm win of one or both chambers saddle us with another four years of Obama? And, can a GOP win thwart the Obama agenda during the remaining lame duck years? The same agenda for which Obama has admitted he is willing to be a one term President in order to achieve?

My fears are that, at best, a fiscally responsible GOP Congress will only be able to slow the fully loaded log truck, approaching red light at the bottom of a 2 mile long, 6% grade hill… not stop it.

Yesterday Jon Ward at Daily Caller echoed my second quiet nightmare that keeps resurfacing…. with the past legislation already passed, who needs legislation or Congress now to continue? With healthcare and financial “reform” passed, plus a ga’zillion zeros after our debt numbers to use to put the fear of god into voters, Obama’s agenda can be accomplished by unilateral regulations from here to the end of his term.

More simply put, Obama has potential to easily bypass a politically hamstrung Congress.

EPA has been ready, willing and chomping at the bit to regulate CO2 since late last year. Without a doubt, we will find the armaggedon-that-wasn’t…. aka the Deepwater Horizon oil spill… a fertile well of propaganda that will be reopened at regular intervals to add another need push to the agenda.

We’ve already seen that Obama’care isn’t the deficit reducer it was touted to be since the devil is in the regulation details. Barney Frank’s financial reform will be the same. And both regulations have, again, shifted power formerly in the hands of an elected Congress to appointed civil servants in sundry, newly created, federal agencies. Appointees that hang around in these same federal agencies long after the appointing POTUS has left.

Karl Rove shines a small flashlight at the end of the tunnel.

But Karl Rove, who advised former President Bush throughout a presidency dominated by questions about executive powers, said that while “the president’s field of action in foreign affairs is broad, it is much more limited and at risk of congressional restraint in the domestic arena.”

This, Rove said in an e-mail, is where Republican control of the House would be a big deal.

“Rules can be overturned or blocked by congressional action. They can be tied up or sued in court. Agencies can be defunded or their budgets crimped. Executive branch officials outside the White House can be called before Congress to explain,” he said.

Vin Weber, an influential Republican lobbyist, notes that the GOP – confident of major gains – are already plotting their confrontation over regulatory reform.

“If you really want to fight the regulatory approach, the money bills originate in the House of Representatives. You simply put language in the money bill for whatever agency is doing the regulating, saying, ‘No money in this bill shall be used to implement regulation xyz,’” Weber said. “ The president can decide to sign the bill or not sign the bill, but that’s the kind of confrontation you’ll have if the administration gets too aggressive in its regulatory approach.”

“Also, hauling people up to testify, that’s going to happen anyway,” he said.

This is absolutely true… any bill can prohibit funding the Obama agenda already implemented, if not already funded in the original legislation. But it’s unlikely that Obama’s going to sign a bill that halts his legacy agenda. This leaves us two options as a means of defense.

The GOP would have to have a veto proof majority to override the Presidential rejection, or….

… we have a very uncomfortable dependence on the Blue Dog Democrats, breaking ranks with the rigor mortis grip Pelosi/Reid have over them.

A veto proof majority isn’t something I see in the cards. Historically they don’t roll around that often. Which means strategically, we need to plan for the latter – working with the Blue Dogs.

For Blue Dogs to change directions and climb aboard the GOP “change” bandwagon, they will have to be adamantly opposed to changes they supported in the prior Congress… or their quest for continued power has to override their convictions. Or put another way, they will have to put their finger in the air on constituent polls, and vote the direction the winds of public opinion blow.

Certainly gaining a more balanced governance in the chambers of Congress will be a step forward. But after that, we are at the mercy of Blue Dogs, their quest for continued power, and ever on watch for the mounds of regulations that will be created in the meeting rooms of federal agencies in order to slow… even if not stop… the Obama agenda.