The new Republican control of Congress will have positive benefits for the country and the conservative movement, so we don’t want to be too negative at this point.  And maybe things will get better when some of the new winners get to Washington in January.  We can’t expect to hear much from them yet.

However...we have to take stock of the leadership.

In the ancient Roman Republic, the subject of “rhetoric” was a key part of the curriculum for young aristocrats, who would be the next generation of rulers.  This is a little confusing to American ears, since the subject in the modern idiom connotes empty bombast.  But with the Republicans refusing to make their case in the public forum, we see the wisdom of the Romans.  While “rhetoric” in modern usage connotes empty posturing, its substantive meaning refers to convincing people by public argument.

Argument forms the predicate to action.  If there is a widely shared comity in political bodies, then it is possible that the political question devolves to policy alone.  But that is rarely true.  Certainly it has never really been the case in the U.S., except perhaps during World War II.  The early days of the U.S. were a pit of rancor and vitriol among political leaders, which is also the case today.

Now we have had a great Republican victory.  But the public sensibility is left-wing.  The MSM is essentially an arm of the Democratic Party, and even in its shrunken state, it sets the tone and terms of the public debate.  So Republicans coming to Washington do not enter an anodyne polemical environment.  It is a hostile one, and they will be well-advised to arm themselves in light of this fact.  They haven’t yet.

One of the changes that comes with Republican control of the Senate is the restoration of normal budgeting procedures.  Harry Reid’s Senate has not considered a budget since the Dems lost the House in 2010.  The government has been funded with continuing resolutions.  The significance of that is that a continuing resolution, as the name suggests, is “more of the same.”  In order to avoid a crisis, the Republicans have gone along with this process because of the intransigence of the Democratic Senate.

However, with the Republicans to be in control of the Senate, and with budget matters requiring only a simple majority, the country will return to normal budgeting processes.  Congress’s budget power is without limit.  All funds spent by the federal government must be approved by Congress.  That approval can be broad, as in a continuing resolution, or it can be specific down to individual salaries, which empowers Congress to define what money cannot be spent on as well as what it can be spent on.

Obama has never experienced this process.  He had Democratic majorities in both Houses during the first two years of his presidency, and then Harry Reid protected the spending gains made during those years by refusing to have the Senate participate in the budgeting process.

Obama’s ignorance of the Constitution and his own predilections will lead him to see the power of the purse as illegitimate.  He will say that it is, and at least part of the MSM will take his part.  Although a constitutional lecturer, Obama is ignorant of the basic tenets of the Constitution, which used to be taught in the 7^th grade.  During the passage of Obamacare, he observed that it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to overturn a federal law, when doing so has been the history of the Court.  A misstatement like that is equivalent to a physicist saying there is no such thing as the proton.  It is a mistake anybody reasonably conversant with the subject would never make.

Obama has said recently that if the Republicans in Congress are obdurate, he will govern on his own authority, mimicking in style if not in form the Enabling Act of 1933 that gave Hitler exclusive power as Reich chancellor to rule by decree, bypassing the Reichstag.  That did not turn out well for Germany.

All of this is to note that Washington, Obama, and the MSM are not prepared for a Republican assertion of congressional power via the power of the purse.  Very likely, this issue will arise before the end of the year as the Dems try to sucker the Republicans into another continuing resolution to last for fiscal 2015, which ends in September 2015.  That would give the Republicans only one year to accomplish anything before the next election.  Their refusal to pass such a resolution will trigger the issue of a government shutdown, as the government at that point will be operating without approved funds. 

In order to assert themselves on that issue, the Republicans need to be making their case now both in large general principles and for the power of the purse specifically, so they will have some account with the public to draw on as they are pictured as overly triumphalist as they go up against Obama, who, while a deplorable manager and even worse policy-maker, is the best of the beat at appearing in public.  The ridiculousness of his argument does not impinge on his public presence, and as we all know after Obamacare, as a liar, he is in Bill Clinton’s class, which is a very high standard indeed.

But the public will respond to the truth.  Congress does have the power of the purse.  It is right there in the Constitution.  How would the MSM deny a Republican assertion of this fact?  We won’t know if the Republicans refuse to assert it, presumably in fear of being too controversial.  How has that worked out in the past?

Both Thomas Sowell and David Horowitz, from very different perspectives, have expressed their bewilderment at the Republican cluelessness on the point of public argument.  Let’s hope that this time the Republicans can be chivvied into making their case.  Power and right are on their side.  But right converts into power only with the support of the public.

We live in hope.