Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

Wednesday morn, cup o’ joe in hand, I turned to major news channels for post election analysis–CNN’s usual straight election reportage complete with views from Dems and Publicans, and Fox’s “fair and balanced” anaylsis limited to the things they could most crow about: Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

“Fox and Friends” is the lamest stab at truth-telling in the moral universe. Onscreen, from the left, we see the Big Dumb Doofus, the Little Beauty Queen, and The Other Guy–Fox‘s answer to The Other Tenor whose name nobody recalls. It is to them that Fox turns for probing analysis, and they in turn to series of individual commentators who answer softball questions. Their lock-step judgment: Obama’s in the tank and the GOP is flexing its whip. Good morning, America: for them, the spin is on.

Here’s what they failed to mention, let alone dwell on: that a host of Tea Party faves went down to defeat, and the future will be a very different world than was imagined before election Tuesday.

Let us speak, therefore, of what Fox would not–how Fiorina and Whitman in California; Angle in Nevada; O’Donnell in Delaware; McMahon in Connecticut and Paladino in New York are all headed for the showers, and Murkowski is a step away from sending Joe Brown there too, right up in Sarah Palin’s own Alaska. Oh, and another Tea Party darling, Ken Buck has lost Colorado.

Dear me, Carly the CEO fired by Hewlett Packard, will not be running anything in the Gold Rust state either, and Meg of eBay is $140 million poorer. We no longer have to suffer Sharron’s goofy visage or Christine’s witchy pronouncements. And thankfully there’s no having to endure future interviews with Linda, the maven of World Wrestling, fearing all the while that unwelcome questions might be met with her patented kick to the groin.

In other words, this will not be the wacky world some had feared and others had dearly hoped for. And don’t think GOP incumbents are not thanking their lucky stars. Imagine future party caucuses had those lame-brains won. Talk about gridlock. So there really is a God, though neither party knows much about it.

That the opposition wins midterms is the stuff of lore and we’ve survived them all. CNN is not crowing about the foregoing but they know the world is not about to change as much as is expected. Scott Brown is a shining example: how much have you heard about, or from, him lately? It was believed that the pickup-truck hunk and Cosmo centerfold was going to reform American politics but, as mentioned in this space right after his election, he would do no such thing–at the first Party caucus he would be told to shut up and get in line; after all, the Senate is made up of Seniority and Territory, and no newcomer is going to kick anybody down the stairs.

And here’s the real news: this country will listen to and entertain any and all notions that others put out there. But ever and always it is tending towards moderation, not extremism. That’s what Republicans had best keep foremost in mind. At the moment they are too far right of center and have an extremist bur under their saddle called the Tea Party. It will be no picnic for them twixt now and the year 1012.

If anything can be said about the American electorate, it’s that when it’s not being just fickle, it’s being fickler or plain fickle to the max. Now there will be someone else to blame and it’s not just the Democrats. It’s still about the economy and there’s no quick fix for it, and being a Party of No will no longer fly. What the tide washes in it also washes out.

Next House Speaker, John “Man-Tan” Boehner, has been touting his humble roots of late, but in truth he never had it all that bad any more than Frank Sinatra imagined he came from “mean streets” in Hoboken. Boehner’s also widely known as a lazy bones and by no means a tough guy. From here on he can no longer bark from the sidelines. No indeed, he’s in for a brawl now and he underestimates Obama at his peril.

As for me, I salivate at what’s to unfold. My pen is sharp and ready to comment on the next phase of the Washington Merry Go Round. No one of any political persuasion can be totally happy after last Tuesday because politics, like life, is always bittersweet.

But I still see the cup as half full, not half empty.