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Greg Sheridan

Republicans cruel Barack Obama’s finale

THE empire struck back. Republicans have had a barnstorming, landslide election victory in US mid-term congressional elections, taking control of the Senate and extending their control of the House of Representatives.

Republicans won at least seven Senate seats from the Democrats, and will likely win another in a run-off, with a couple still undecided. They needed to gain six for a Senate majority.

In the house, the Republicans gained at least 10 seats with several undecided. They could match the scale of their historic house majority in 1946.

Mid-term elections are generally bad for the party that controls the presidency. But this was a catastrophe for Barack Obama’s Democrats.

Republicans pitched the race as a referendum on the Obama presidency. With two-thirds of Americans believing their country is on the wrong track, this was a devastating electoral strategy.

Democrats countered by distancing themselves from Obama, concentrating on local issues and portraying the Republicans as plutocrats. In the biggest way, this didn’t work.

Obama now faces a frustrating final two years in which he may need to exercise the presidential veto to protect his unpopular healthcare package.

The results are not likely to see a major shift in US foreign policy. The Republicans will want a more decisive brand of US leadership internationally.

Obama has suffered from looking disengaged and at times almost feckless. For Australia, one of the most important consequences of the election is that it cements an implacable congressional majority against any US carbon tax or emissions trading scheme.

The US joins Canada, Japan and Australia — and of course the entire developing world — in rejecting a carbon tax or ETS as the primary national response to climate change.

The congressional elections have other important consequences for Australia as well. In the wake of the Democrat devastation, the White House ­nominated trade agreements as one area where it could probably find bipartisan agreement with Republicans.

The President will soon embark on a major Asian trip that will take him to APEC, the East Asia Summit and the G20 summit in Brisbane.

White House officials and US diplomats across Asia had been assuring America’s friends and allies that once the mid-term elections were finished, the President would put real political muscle behind getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal completed. This is critical in itself to liberalise regional trade and provide momentum for renewed economic growth.

However it is also critical to US credibility in the region, especially after Washington has run a strong campaign to convince allies such as Australia and South Korea not to join China’s new regional infrastructure bank.

Republicans are substantially more pro-free trade than Democrats so the congressional elections should improve the TPP’s prospects, so long as Obama handles congress with a modicum of competence.

That Republicans won this election by quashing the Tea Party and running mainstream sensible candidates reinforces this. The new Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, represents the broad, sensible centre of the Republican Party.

On the other hand, the recent bitterness of US politics militates against any bipartisan co-operation. Republicans will believe their presidential prospects in 2016 will be strengthened if Obama’s last two years are regarded as a total failure. Similarly Democrats will not want the Republican congress to be able to claim too many substantial achievements either.

There is some irony that Democrats were smashed so heavily when the US economy is recovering, with economic growth accelerating and unemployment falling. But many of the new jobs are low paid.

Obama could never live up to the emotionalism, hype, hysteria and transcendent expectation of his election in 2008. Finally, Icarus fell to earth.

Read related topics:Barack Obama

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/greg-sheridan/republicans-cruel-barack-obamas-finale/news-story/f59c89e943eadf4effdc740900edb4f3