The unpopularity of President Barack Obama and his foreign policy strategy have put Democrats in a very bad situation on Tuesday night, and led to a severe loss in the Capitol Hill. However, it was a “good night” for the Republicans who successfully managed to win the house of senate with at least 52 seats and maintained their majority on the House of Representatives.
Practically, this means the end of Obama’s roll in the congress, as republicans will make sure to oppose any of the President’s policies, suggestions or bills, and it means that they will impose their agenda on him and his party.
Remarkably, the Republican Party spent over $4 billion on their campaign to defeat their opponents. The campaign is considered to be one of the most expensive campaigns that has been invested on a midterm elections in the United States’ history.
Republicans now have the opportunity to implement their agenda though I am afraid they still do not have one; thanks to the lack of the leadership and to the major division within their party (the tea party the conservatives and the independents).
However, we see that this victory and this expensive campaign was driven by lobbies’ interests and priorities to expedite the issuance of legislative laws for the Keystone XL pipelines, as well as passing bills on rolling back air quality regulations for oil refineries and expanding drilling in both federal lands and waters.
It is also expected that republicans’ top priority agenda will be focusing on cutting off ways on Obama to pass an immigration reform and will work on repealing Obamacare by relying on the fact that non-citizens are of benefit and that the money of the Americans is being spent on others.
Tough obstacles will not only face the President’s internal policy agenda but also his foreign policy one. We think that republicans will work on implementing more sanctions on Iran and might push toward a more military intervention in Syria especially after the negotiations in the pentagon that leaked earlier on the possibilities of hitting Assad regime’s military bases in Syria.
Democrats are not screwed yet, though!
According to a recent poll, 38% of the voters thought republican leaders would have positive impact, while Obama’s popularity reached 40% at its lowest these days. In addition to the fact, that Democrats’ candidates refused to invite Obama to their campaigns to be able to differentiate themselves from the “unpopular” President and make a whole new stream that offers new ideas and agendas to satisfy the people’s needs.
Besides, Obama’s internal policy was not that bad compared to the disastrous situation that he inherited from George Bush’s administration! The economy has been noticeably improving, the unemployment rate reached its lowest score at 5.9%, and the health care system helped over Ten-million people so far!
Therefore, I think that the Americans still have more confidence in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party and especially with the rise of the popularity of Hilary Clinton who tried so hard in her book to convince people that she opposed Obama in so many areas and especially his foreign policy.
As a result, I think that republicans are ready now to close the doors that Obama was working on opening, such as the Iranian agreement, war on ISIL, and the immigration reform and the president will still have a chance until the end of this year to push forward any of the above affairs.
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Sarah
01 September 2014
كــمــشــة حـــبــــر 