By TOM GANTERT | THE CENTER SQUARE
California saved the day for Republicans, who took a majority of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives after media outlets projected California Republican Mike Garcia would win the 27th Congressional District.
CNN, Fox News, the New York Times and the Washington Post all reported the GOP took the House majority as of Wednesday night. With a handful of races still left to call, Republicans are projected to hold at least 218 seats, enough to secure majority control. Democrats had 210 seats as of Wednesday.
Alaska will be left out in the cold, with Congresswoman Mary Peltola, a freshman, in the minority. She is on track to win the two-year seat for Alaska’s only congressional position after more than 116,000 voters chose her in the Nov. 8 election, which is a ranked-choice system that won’t be decided until Nov. 23.
The New York Times tweeted, “Republicans seized a slender majority in the House of Representatives on Wednesday. It will reorder the balance of power in Washington and is expected to effectively give the party a veto on President [Joe] Biden’s agenda for the next two years.”
Conservatives celebrated.
“SO LONG, NANCY!” Fox News commentator Sean Hannity posted on Twitter.
Democrat Nancy Pelosi is the outgoing Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Speaker of the House has broad authority including the power to select who is appointed to which committees.
U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the current minority leader, is expected to lead the House but is facing some pushback from within his own party.
“Republicans just won back control of the House. This is a big deal,” Joe Walsh, a former GOP U.S. Congressman who ran for president in 2020, posted on Twitter. “The majority party in the House controls & dictates EVERYTHING. So the GOP will investigate EVERYTHING. They’ll disband the Jan 6th Committee on day 1 & launch an investigation of the Jan 6th Committee on day 2.”
Some supporters of Democrats said the GOP won control by gerrymandering.
Jon Cooper, a New York Democratic activist who was the Long Island chairman for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, tweeted Nov. 15: “If Republicans do end up winning the House by a RAZOR-THIN margin, that will ONLY have been due to extreme, partisan gerrymandering by the GOP – in TX, FL, OH and elsewhere. The GOP couldn’t win a fair fight.”
Democrats in Blue states such as Illinois also have been accused of gerrymandering their way to big election wins.
Tom Gantert worked at many daily newspapers including the Ann Arbor News, Lansing State Journal and USA Today. Gantert was the managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential for five years before joining The Center Square.
Celebrate? This election was the biggest case of political malpractice ever.
That idiot Hannity (GOP jock sniffer) and people like him should be demanding resignations of the entire GOP leadership.
Barely surviving a contest you should have obliterated the opposition should be a cause of shame. Not gloating and celebrating.
But it’s classic GOP. Vote for us! We’re incompetent!
And they do man like sheep being led to parched pastures while future generations become enslaved due as lack of budgetary self discipline. Total political tribalism…. And the talking heads are the worst.
Celebrate what? Conservatives don’t control the house….McCarthy does.
Excellent if depressing point, NtA.
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The Uniparty marches onward.
Now………House investigation committees into FBI misconduct, Hunter Biden, Steele Dossier, false Russian collusion, the January 6th Committee, and finally…….the new House Select Committee to impeach Joe Biden. Let the real games begin. Do it and don’t wait!!
They will have a few “show trial” hearings, but do nothing about it. They have the power to withdraw funding in the budget bill but McCarthy and McConnell are going to see to it that a omnibus budget will get passed now. Because McCarthy doesn’t actually want to do anything about your issues. Get the game yet?
Good summation. The GOP has this terrible affliction of wanting people to like them. Democrats don’t give a damn.
And now Kevin McCarthy’s career is over…he either doesn’t win the cherished Speaker role, or he becomes Speaker and he is unable to wrangle a fractious caucus of old school conservatives or the fire-brand MAGA Republicans. Not an enviable job and a rationale person would have to ask why he’d even want it. But alas, he definitely does and it doesn’t bode well for him with a majority of a likely 3-5 seats. How does he square the demands of the Freedom Caucus with the demands of the old school GOP/Swamp (depending on where you stand)? It doesn’t seem like the old school GOP (sometimes called RINOs) is going to want to run away with impeachment and investigations of Hunter Biden, but time will tell.
Celebrate? I’m not so sure that’s what Republicans ought to be doing since the outcome of the election was a very significant underperform for an opposition party to expect from a mid-term election.
Let’s hope there are no Murkowski wannabes in the House
Oh boy! I can’t wait for more endless war, unlimited illegal immigration, expansion of the bureaucracy, and constant media proclamation that things have never been better.
Did you all know that if the federal government cut the deficit to 0, and ran a $100,000,000,000 per year (that’s 100 billion, or less than what was given to Ukraine this year) it would take over 310 years to pay off the debt? That’s longer than America has been a country, and no one in charge seems to care.
“………it would take over 310 years to pay off the debt………”
My advice is to think hard before buying Treasury bonds, but that is exactly what somebody has been doing……….to the tune of $31 trillion. It might also be wise to wonder just who that somebody is, especially their citizenship status……….
“I can’t wait for more endless war, unlimited illegal immigration, expansion of the bureaucracy, and constant media proclamation that things have never been better.”
What, you want more after the last two years? Glutton for punishment…
There is more growth possible for Alaska, when conditions are unfavorable and Cold, Than when people are rolling in money and favorable attention. Use this time wisely to build the church here on alaska during a dry cold lonely season. Although we still have jobs needing be done. Currently anchorage mc’d’s at abbott,debarr, huffmun, sqenard and tudor closed all their lobby’s due to shortstaffed. We need parents getting their teens off tictoc dreaming about fame and fortune, the homeless take a shower, and bored 20+ year old adults to get a job we do have. There are few community building opportunities for anchorage people to gather and sit around people of different cliques. Mc’d’s and kriner’s are at least 2 places you never know who’ll your meet. I talked to an anchorage youth pastor of a private school, we could at least get our private schooled 15-18working 4 hours afterschool 2-4 days a week at mc’d’s. They should bring a friend.
Speaker of the House McCarthy isn’t something to celebrate, either.
I will be willing to bet nobody is going to jail or will have to give back the laundered money. There will be Committees to make them feel good but nothing will change just more corruption crime and lies from the politicians.
A one seat majority is not very sustainable. Unless the party picks up more from the remaining five undecided seats (Peltola’s seat is still considered open, but we all know how that’s going to turn out), the majority can easily flip back to the other side with one or two retirements or resignations.
Great, now a list from the people to-do:
1. Impeach Biden
2. Reinstate Trump
3. Eliminate the Democratic party as illegitimate.
Easy three step process to returning us to free and fair elections.
Won’t happen even though all of us know what needs to happen. I am with you on this.
The only people celebrating after this travesty of a sham of an election are all the voting fraud deniers, who are (not so) secretly gloating, while repeating shrieking “Pay no attention to those thousands of men behind the curtain!”.
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Between all the outright fraud, and the many local and statewide elections that are now tainted and gamed by leftist-serving shenanigans such as rank choice voting, mail-in voting, and ballot harvesting, our national elections have now largely lost all integrity, and all legitimacy.
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Oh, but I know, “We must defend our democrazy!”
People seem to forget that we gained an unprecedented 14 House seats two years ago so this year’s election builds on that to a majority. That’s a good thing. Nancy had a slim majority and got things done so the Republicans should be able to block the Biden agenda and hold substantive hearings, particularly on the Biden family and their influence peddling. In two years the Senate map looks far better for the Republicans and we should win the White House with the right candidate.
Don’t be insulting. The GOP is guilty of epic political malpractice.
They lost-lost-13% of GOP voters to Democrats. The alleged independents broke for the party in power which almost never happens. In a collapsing economy, spiraling crime, no borders, and a raging drug crisis.
And you want to go “what about last time”? You can kiss where I sit, frankly.
Only Republicans would go “hey! We didn’t completely blow it!” If you clowns were in business you’d be fired en mass for ineptitude.
And so many of you actually wonder why Trump still resonates.
Celebrate?
First they jinx themselves, encouraging Republicans to stay home on Nov 8, and now they celebrate this slim non-win.
I guess politics (and journalism) does attract low IQ people.
Anybody interested in starting a ballot proposition to repeal Rank Choice Voting? Interested parties should start ASAP to get rid of this scam and bring back party affiliation and primaries (closed).
Why not bring back party affiliation, improve free association rights, replace ranked choice voting with something better like approval voting or range voting, but at the same time abolish party primaries? That seems to me to be a much better approach, that’s better for everyone.
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