The GOP had also better look at Tuesday night’s map. The party took a huge Senate loss in Indiana, where the Tea Party defeated longtime Republican Sen. Dick Lugar in the hope of yanking the seat more to the right. Democrat Joe Donnelly won.
And Massachusetts’ Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who won Ted Kennedy’s seat in 2010 by campaigning almost exclusively against the president’s health reforms, lost Tuesday night to Democrat Elizabeth Warren.
The GOP needs to move more to the middle — not just to survive politically, but to help the president forge a way forward with the nation’s deep-rooted, fundamental problems. Compromise has to be a word that means cooperative agreement, rather than surrender. There’s no question the president also needs to move his party out of its stubborn corner with regard to Social Security and Medicare reforms. But particularly over the past two years, it has been the Republicans who have blocked progress.