Commenter “physicsguy” remarks:

I read yesterday that the GOP reps are getting very annoyed with their brethren in the Senate. And, I think they’re correct. Look at where it has all broken down”¦in the Senate. And in particular we can point directly to McCain, and the ladies from Maine and Alaska. Sad how 4 people can totally derail an entire country.

I’m not sure who the 4 people are. I only count 3: McCain, Collins, and Murkowski (Olympia Snowe used to be another, but she’s long gone from the Senate). But anyway, it doesn’t matter if it’s 3 or 4 (although in a tight race, that small difference can make all the difference in the world); the principle is the same.

The GOP reps aren’t the only ones getting annoyed. This annoyance has been going on for as long as I’ve been blogging, and probably longer. I share it.

However, I also see it somewhat differently, at the same time. I know, for example, that Maine is a purple-to-blue state. Every now and then there’s a big surprise from Mainers—that Paul LePage ever became governor there is a total shock to most Mainers I know, for example. I truly doubt anyone to the right of Collins could be elected senator there, but whether I’m correct or not about that theory (LePage’s governorship argues that I might be wrong), Susan Collins and Maine have been joined at the hip for twenty years. In 2014 she was re-elected with over 68% of the vote; in 2008 her total was over 61%. In other words, unless she wants to retire from the Senate, Collins isn’t going anywhere. She apparently suits the people of Maine quite well.

So although Collins—and McCain of Arizona, and Murkowski of Alaska, are indeed moderate Republicans, or RINOs, or mavericks, or back-stabbers, or whatever you want to call them, they represent an actual wing of the GOP and the desires of their constituents. But—and here is the actual point of this post—one of the main reasons these people wield so much power is that the GOP margin in the Senate is so small.

A fifty-two vote majority isn’t much in the Senate. It means that to prevail without Democratic votes (and usually the GOP must function without the help of any Democrats) there must be near-unanimity in the party. Even a couple of moderates (or any sort of outlier) are going to have a great deal of power because the GOP majority is so tiny. And senators love power, and most of them are going to milk that power for all it’s worth, trying to get concessions for their states and basking in the glow of their fame. After all, going along with the pack doesn’t get you many headlines, does it? And these people—especially Collins, with whom I’m most familiar—really are moderate politically, so it’s not as though they’re compromising many of their own principles to vote against the more conservative wing of the GOP.

If the GOP wants to avoid this problem, the only solution is to get a bigger majority in the Senate. That’s the reality as I see it.

Take a look at the history of party control of the Senate. I arbitrarily chose a starting date of 1951, the 82nd Congress, and studied the composition of the senates after that. The pattern is crystal clear. Democrats controlled the Senate far more often, sometimes widely and sometimes narrowly. They also controlled it widely far more often, and with far greater margins. For many years, for example, during the entire decade of the 60s and for much of the 70s, their margins were huge (often over 60 and even close to 70).

Not only has the GOP been the minority party in the Senate far more often than the Democrats have, but the GOP majorities (already few and far between) have been far smaller than those the Democrats have enjoyed. A big big majority for the Republicans—the biggest since 1951, as far as I can see—has been 55. And that august figure was achieved by the GOP only a few times.

The GOP in the Senate is frustrating for a number of reasons. The first is that their numbers have usually been small. The second is that even when they have a majority it’s been a small one, subject to pressure by “mavericks” and moderates. The third is that even when in power, the leaders don’t seem to be able to effectively pressure those mavericks and moderates right back (one suspects the Democrats would somehow be able to do it if the situation were reversed).

The fourth frustration isn’t really about the GOP in the Senate, it’s about the Senate itself. The Senate is a place of many rules—some of which seem designed to stifle the passage of legislation—and it is also a place of many swelled heads. The reasons for the latter aren’t always clear, but they have something to do with the smaller size of the Senate relative to the House, the fact that senators are elected from larger areas (the state) than members of the House, and that they stay for a much longer term. Therefore they have much less need to be responsive to the people. This was by design of the Framers, but they also said that senators should be elected by state legislatures rather than by popular vote. In 1914 that was changed to the present system, which seems to me to represent the worst of both worlds.