From my latest at Darwin’s Fool:
Republicans won an impressive number of victories last night, including a larger and more conservative House majority and enough wins to give the GOP at least a 52-seat majority in the Senate. As Jeffrey Anderson and Robert Laszewski have noted, Republicans made ObamaCare a major issue in the election (the New York Times’ denials notwithstanding). Senate Republicans will fall several seats short of the 60-vote super-majority needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster of an ObamaCare-repeal bill, though. ObamaCare opponents are therefore debating whether and how Republicans could repeal some or all of the law via the Senate’s “budget reconciliation” process, which allows certain legislation to pass the Senate with only 51 votes. Some opponents have proposed getting around these difficulties by getting rid of the filibuster entirely. I think there’s a more prudent, targeted way Republicans could put ObamaCare repeal on the president’s desk, give Democrats a taste of their own majoritarian medicine, and convince Senate Democrats of the virtues of restoring the filibuster on legislation and judicial nominations.
It goes like this…