Ripple effect

WASHINGTON-What a difference 24 hours can make.

The day after an historic Republican victory in, of all places, the state that introduced the nation to the iconic Kennedy clan, the Wednesday morning quarterbacking began on Capitol Hill.

With Scott Brown's win to fill the U.S. Senate seat long-held by the late Edward Kennedy, a boulder-not a pebble-has been dumped into the congressional lake.

And the ripple effect may be felt here for a long time. Republicans hope that it leads to a tidal wave of change at this November's mid-term elections.

Wednesday marked the return of senators to Washington for the first time since their 7 a.m. Christmas Eve vote to pass an ambitious healthcare reform package. Then Democrats held court with celebratory press conferences featuring smiling lawmakers.

But today began with a Republican victory party-eight of the Senate's top GOP leaders took over the media stage before a packed room of reporters. They eagerly relished as Brown's victory removes the Democrats' filibuster-proof Senate supermajority. The new Senate calculus: Democrats 59 and Republicans 41.

The Democrats lost Massachusetts because they spent 2009 trying to "jam things" through Congress, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell repeated in his attempt to play political scientist. Noting Tuesday's unusually high turnout, McConnell called the result "about as clear of a message I've ever seen delivered in an election."

Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who had a lot to celebrate as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the Massachusetts victory and November's GOP wins in Virginia and New Jersey, all states that Obama captured in 2008, prove that the independent voters behind Obama's rise to the White House are now fleeing the Democratic brand.

As Republicans gloated, CNN's replays of Tuesday night's Boston victory party for Brown flashed on the big-screen TV that hung to the side of the Senate's media stage.

Exactly one year today it was a Democratic victory parade that dominated Washington. Then Obama's inauguration ceremony on the steps of the U.S. Capitol gripped the nation. But today, few of his fellow Democrats could be seen wandering the halls of the Capitol. Those who did, like Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, faced a swarm of reporters asking their take on the Democrats' first defeat of 2010.

When asked to evaluate Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, Boxer quickly pivoted to her own reelection effort. "My own race is very exciting," she said, signaling now that few congressional Democrats can take their job security lightly. "I think every state now is in play."

This is a stunning turn after the media spent most of last year churning out cover stories speculating on the death of the Republican Party. How did Democrats squander their dominance so fast? Republicans on Capitol Hill used one topic to sum up the key to Tuesday's election: healthcare. With a majority of Americans continuing to show their disproval of Democratic overhaul plans, Massachusetts voters had the first chance to go to the ballot box since the Senate passed its version of the bill. Now lawmakers from both parties are preaching a slow down approach, agreeing Wednesday that there should be no further action taken on the healthcare bill until Brown is seated in the Senate.

Lawmakers also acknowledged that voters seem angry at not just the health bill's specifics but also at the way it has been spoon-fed to America. Political leaders have relentlessly pushed their agenda forward using closed-door meetings and sweetheart deals despite growing public discomfort over the proposals and the procedures.

But voter frustration goes beyond healthcare. When one reporter asked the gathered Republican senators if Tuesday's result was a rejection of Democrat's big spending and big government strategies, the pressroom erupted in laughter over the obvious question.

"They chose to go left," McConnell, said in evaluating Democrats. "They misread the electorate in the ballot of '08. Maybe they will take this message and go in a different direction."

Or maybe no direction at all? In coming to grips with the fact that voters are proving that America remains a center-right nation, Democrats may spend the rest of 2010 shelving some of their more ambitious agendas in such arenas as climate change. Instead, they may suddenly become more moderate in the face of what has become their top priority- saving their own jobs this fall.