Republicans assume a share of power

What happened

A new Republican majority took control of the House of Representatives this week with a show of fealty to the Constitution and promises to cut spending, repeal President Obama’s health-care-reform plan, and aggressively roll back environmental regulations. Speaker of the House John Boehner began laying symbolic markers for what’s likely to be a session of trench warfare against Democrats in the White House and the Senate majority. Republicans retreated from their vow to cut $100 billion from the current budget, saying they would seek $60 billion in cuts to bring 2011 spending down to the 2008 level. “The people voted to end business as usual,” Boehner said. “And today we begin carrying out their instructions.”

In coming weeks, GOP House leaders plan to call for a largely symbolic vote to repeal the Democrats’ health-care plan, despite little chance of success in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and promised to do everything possible to impede the legislation’s implementation and funding. President Obama said he expected Republicans to “play to their base for a certain period of time” before joining him in the tasks of government and job creation.

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What the editorials said

This week’s GOP ascendance marks “perhaps the sharpest ideological shift in the House in 80 years,” said The Wall Street Journal. Yet despite the deficit-cutting fervor of Tea Party activists, GOP leaders should “keep the political and policy focus on promoting economic growth and private job creation.” Thanks to Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s failures, the public is giving Republicans another chance to lead on the economy. They’ll squander that chance if they turn into “mere deficit scolds.”

Let the cheap “theatrics” begin, said The New York Times. With their staged reading of the Constitution, Republicans have cast themselves as the chosen few who know the “true meaning of the text.” The equally symbolic vote to repeal the Democrats’ health-care law, meanwhile, is “the legislative equivalent of an obscene gesture,” said the Financial Times, and hardly bodes well for comity. The White House and Republicans are now stuck with each other, and unless they act like adults, “everything that is wrong with Washington is about to get worse.”

What the columnists said

“The binge is over,” said Rich Lowry in National Review. The new GOP majority is genuinely determined to “deliver on its promise to limit government. Nearly 90 members of the Republican caucus are freshmen, shaped in the crucible of the Tea Party.” A big test will come by March 4, when funding for the government runs out, requiring the debt ceiling to be raised to avoid shutting down the government. But Republican zeal for spending cuts must be matched by “strategic canny”; they must beware repeating the shutdown “debacle” that haunted Newt Gingrich and the GOP in the 1990s.

Many pitfalls await the new House majority, said Matt Bai in The New York Times. Tea Party activists will expect them to make good on their promises to make a big dent in spending and the deficit. But polls show that when it comes to specific programs, “sizable majorities” of voters are opposed to making any sacrifice whatsoever. “The only thing voters like less than a gushing federal spigot is being forced to shut it off.”

Before addressing specific programs, said Roger Pilon in The Wall Street Journal, the GOP should restore adherence to the Constitution. It will take years to roll back Obama’s arrogant intrusion into health care, energy policy, and private industry, but by demanding that all policies and legislation have a Constitutional basis, Republicans can begin to usher in a “new age of limited government.” Fine—let’s have that grand debate, said E.J. Dionne in The New Republic online. Now that Republicans have a share of power, they will be forced “to show their policy and philosophical cards.” With the Tea Party pushing them from the right, and 62 GOP House members representing swing districts won by Obama, the Republicans’ balancing act “will be one of the best stories of the next two years.”