Until around the time Todd Akin blew up his Senate race, the conventional wisdom in campaign world was that if Romney won, he’d carry the House and the Senate as well. That supposition underlay the GOP’s entire substantive agenda from tax reform to entitlement cuts to repealing key provisions of Obamacare. You can’t circumvent the filibuster without controlling the budget process and you can’t control the budget process without controlling both chambers of Congress.

It turns out that CW was wrong. If Romney had won, he’d have had to contend with a Democratically controlled Senate. That means no tax rate cuts for the rich, no Medicare privatization, no Medicaid cuts, etc. etc. Read More

Washington is now focused on the political dance between President Obama and key Senate Republicans over immigration reform. The overwhelming assumption is that immigration will happen, certainly in this Congress and likely this calendar year. The question is just how the politics gets massaged. But what if none of this is right and immigration reform cannot happen unless and until Democrats retake control of the House. Read More

Newsflash: There’s still a Republican Party. The chairman of the committee that will have to move an immigration reform bill through the House has flatly ruled out any ‘path to citizenship.’