Conservatives Won, But Will They Make Use Of Their Power This Time Around?

Election night can feel a rush for conservatives, which makes sense: After a few years, those politicians who rejected the country’s history, attacked the police, weaponized science, and persecuted Christians and their children were finally sent packing.

It’s always good to get a little separation from something as destructive as the modern Democratic Party, but there’s one problem, and it’s what comes next?

Really. Most of us lived through Scott Brown’s special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Just two years after he’d been elected in a historic victory, President Barack Obama had launched his signature legislation to increase government control over health care, and the reaction to his (and the GOP’s) elitist overreaches had finally brought out a previously quiet base of Americans. If he won the election, Scott Brown would break Obama’s supermajority, and stop Obamacare from becoming law.

As the election approached, the excitement spread. My parents took a commercial flight a few days before Election Day where the pilot pranked the intercom system, asking a “Sen. Scott Brown to please come to the front of the plane” to raucous applause. When the day finally came, I was off at the D.C. bar I was working at, so flew home to vote and spend my last dollar sharing a room at the campaign’s hotel. “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night” blasted out of the speakers, while a smiling Gov. Mitt Romney gave television interviews from the ballroom risers.

I still have the issue of the arch-liberal Boston Globe announcing Brown’s win that night. I saved it because I thought he’d stopped Obamacare from becoming reality. And Brown did try! (At least on that issue.) The Republican Party, however, underestimated the lengths their political opponents would go to wield power and defeat their opponents. Twelve years later, Obamacare is still the law of the land and by now, not even talked about.

Ten months after the special election, Americans got another go at sending their men to Washington. The “tea party wave” was so strong, even the always-confident president appeared quiet and chastened, admitting to reporters his party had lost touch and taken “a shellacking.”

But he didn’t give up, eventually warning his opponents, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” before embarking on an ambitious agenda (that included remaking American citizenship) wielding solely executive power.

There was something to 2016, sure. A total outsider was elected president, and despite years of conspiracy theories, owed nothing to anyone. He’d serve as a wrecking ball, fighting the left on every front they opened, but by 2021, was gone. Just under two years on, Republicans are back. To what end?

Sure, neither Mitch McConnell nor Kevin McCarthy will be winning the presidency (a fact they’ll remind you of ad nauseum), but they will win the power of nominations and the power of the purse. How viciously will they wield the power they’ve been handed?

Will they halt the president’s extremely successful judicial nomination record? Halt it

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