Polarization
A few of the Gilded Age Senates were more polarized than the 110th and 111th Senate, though I suspect that the polarization figure will increase in the 112th Senate: five new Republicans (Ayotte, Portman, Lee, Blunt, and Rubio) are more conservative than their GOP predecessors, while two moderate Democrats (Bayh and Dorgan) retired. In any case, the more troubling development in the Senate is the de facto constitutional-amendment-by-procedure, in which the proliferation of the filibuster has created a body that for the first time in American history requires a super-majority to pass all but the most routine legislation.
In the next two years—and, if Barack Obama is re-elected, probably the next six years—divided government in Washington will blunt some of the polarized environment’s impact. But at the state level, the 2010 elections made one-party rule more common than divided government, and left all-Republican rule in a handful of states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine) more often thought of as Democratic.
As a result, some pretty hard-line policies might be coming from “blue” states. That’s especially true of my home state of Maine, where a tea-party governor, Paul LePage, is back in the news for telling the NAACP to “kiss my butt” after the organization (justifiably) criticized him for refusing to attend either of the organization’s traditional Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events. In a blistering editorial, the generally moderate Portand Press-Herald termed it “our right to expect [LePage] to represent all Mainers, not just his supporters, when conducting official state business.” But, with firm majorities in both houses of the legislature, LePage has little short-term reason to blunt his rhetoric.