Republican malaise

townhall.com ^ | 3-4-04 | Robert Novak

[Fishface]

Republican malaise Robert Novak (back to web version) | Send March 4, 2004

WASHINGTON -- At 1 p.m. on Feb. 25, some 15 prominent Republicans invited to be surrogates in the coming presidential campaign gathered at Bush-Cheney headquarters in suburban Northern Virginia for a private briefing. Less than two hours earlier that day, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan detonated a political bombshell. To judge from the bland and uninformative briefing, nobody on the president's campaign team heard the explosion.

Former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, a Washington lawyer-lobbyist who last year resigned as figurehead chairman of the Republican National Committee to become figurehead chairman of Bush-Cheney '04, led the precisely orchestrated, one-hour briefing. He did not mention that Greenspan had just testified to Congress advocating reduced Social Security benefits. Racicot might be excused for being silent and unaware of the central banker's latest political mischief, since it also escaped the attention that morning of key Bush policymakers.

The invited advocates were handed a thick batch of talking points to ingest by the campaign's appropriately named chief of surrogates, Julie Cram. Nowhere in the handout did the forbidden words "Social Security" appear. "The president's opponents are against personal retirement accounts" is the closest the briefing material came to the dreaded subject. Many prospective surrogates left campaign headquarters profoundly depressed by the mediocre briefing and the material given them.

This fits the deepening malaise among Republicans in the capital. They are neither surprised nor terribly worried by polls that temporarily show George W. Bush trailing John Kerry. What worries the GOP faithful is the absence of firm leadership in their party either at the White House or on Capitol Hill.

The lack of a ready response to Greenspan, while Democrats quickly turned his comments into an indictment of President Bush's tax cuts, was not an isolated failing. Today, Republicans on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue seem to be going in opposite directions.

-- Disagreement between congressional Republicans and Bush over the size of the highway bill reflects mutual recriminations over runaway federal spending in general. While the president's aides are angered by the lawmakers' addiction to concrete, conservative lawmakers are furious that Bush's budget has preserved and actually increased federal funding for the arts.

-- Bush's call to make his tax cuts permanent and to repeal the estate tax for all time leaves Republicans in Congress perplexed about how they will be able to write a budget without a massive increase in the huge deficit that never will command a majority vote.

-- House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and his allies are bitter that they received no backing from the president and administration in their efforts to keep the independent 9-11 investigation from extending into the campaign season.

-- The president came out for a constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage without consulting congressional Republican leaders, which helps explain the unenthusiastic reception from his own party on Capitol Hill.

-- Congressional Republicans still have not recovered from the shock of the President's Economic Report extolling the outsourcing of industrial jobs -- good economics perhaps, bad politics definitely.

The disaffection is such that over the last two weeks, normally loyal Republicans -- actually including more than a few members of Congress -- are privately talking about political merits in the election of Sen. Kerry. Their reasoning goes like this: There is no way Democrats can win the House or Senate even if Bush loses. If Bush is re-elected, Democrats are likely to win both the House and Senate in a 2006 midterm rebound. If Kerry wins, Republicans will be able to bounce back with congressional gains in 2006.

To voice such heretical thoughts suggests that Republicans on Capitol Hill are more interested in maintaining the fruits of majority status first won in 1994 rather than in governing the country. A few thoughtful GOP lawmakers ponder the record of the first time in 40 years that the party has controlled both the executive and legislative branches, and conclude that record is deeply disappointing.

But incipient heresy also reflects shortcomings of the Bush political operation. Its emphasis has been on fund-raising and organization, with deficiencies in communicating and leadership. The president is in political trouble, and his disaffected supporters who should be backing him aggressively provide the evidence.

[Howlin]

It is your relative's responsibility to keep his position secret, and not blab it around at cocktail parties, as Joe Wilson did about his wife.

Exactly.

[catch]

"Lack of effective communication management" is an understatement! After eight years of being able to study from the Clinton White House masters on how to effectively combat the opposition with effective communications (setting aside their message), the Republicans apparently learned nothing!

They have been totally inept on both the WMD and jobs issues these past three months, with no effective and ubiquitous rebuttals or on-message surrogates to deliver it. We kept waiting for someone to say, "hey, Democrats like Kennedy and Kerry had access to the same intelligence as the President, through the Senate's oversight authority, and they both said before the war that Saddam had WMD...." And waiting, and waiting.


And now today, with the 9.11 families supposed complaints about the Bush TV ads - where are the rebuttals beyond Karen Hughes saying "oh, golly, the ads are not bad at all"?
Where are the hard-nosed Republicans asking, "where were these 9.11 families when Wes Clark and other candidates were playing politics with 9.11 during the primaries." Where are the Vietnam vets accusing Kerry of playing politics with the deaths of 50,000 troops? Or Iraqi servicemen accusing Kerry of playing politics with the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq?

The Rove team is supposed to be a major league outfit. So far this political season they have been strictly...well, yes - bush league.

[onyx]

I had the MA, not the F --- dang, I'm usually pretty quick with the F words.

[Fishface]

Yea I am young and I am referring strictly to the liberal hippies who have grown up to fund liberal causes and run for office as liberal politicians who give hack jobs to their liberal brother-in-laws.

I should have more specific. I meant no offense to those who have fought the good fight.

[AntiGuv]

Not to be snippy but, being a jerk, I can't resist. ;^) Exactly what part of "ahead of or tied with" was confusing?

[bayourod]

You might have just been kidding but I think there is truth in not acepting at face value what a registered democrat says.

[Howlin]

MOST of us are here fighting the good fight.

[bayourod]

You might have just been kidding but I think there is some truth in not accepting at face value what a registered democrat says, especially what he says about his registration.

[King Black Robe]

Okay, I apologize sinkspur. Maybe it's just the posts I've read. LOL! I'm wrong on the rare ocassion.

[mrsmith]

Perhaps it was good judgment to poorly organize it to draw out the debate.

The immigration reform issue is IMHO a better example of your point. Though the manner of it's unorganized introduction might have also been intentional to have it as an election season wedge issue between the Dems' union and immigrant voters, that requires more speculating than I'm comfortable with.

[Coop]

You're apparently not paying attention, because the rebuttals are there. Or maybe you just expect the media will treat those rebuttals the same way they treated the Clinton crew's rebuttals?

[Howlin]

I'm wrong on the rare ocassion.

Just like me. :-)

But at least you and I are big enough to admit it.......*snicker*

[Coop]

Exactly what part of "ahead of or tied with" was confusing?

None, hence the "...not exactly correct..."

Remember, your reply was to this: Only the obviously liberal polls show Kerry ahead of Bush.

I don't think the polls show Kerry ahead of Bush at all. I certainly could have worded it better, but that was my point.

Honestly, after all this press coverage and the constant hammering Bush has taken, I think Kerry's gotta be bummed he's doing this poorly in the match-ups. Just MHO.

And to be particular, I seem to recall a recent non-Rasmussen poll showing a Bush lead (though still a statistical tie). Let me see if I can dig it up.

[GraniteStateConservative]

How likley is it that the GOP Congress would approve a budget (and budget deficits) as large as Bush's were it to come from Kerry?

[AntiGuv]

I would say the likelihood is infinitesimal.

[GraniteStateConservative]

MR. RUSSERT: One of the places he tried to do that was on a constitutional amendment to ban same- sex marriage. The president went to the nation and said, "This is what we need." Let me show you the response from Republicans in Congress. Here's John McCain. "The Constitution should"--only--"be as a last resort amended. ...we should find out whether the Defense of Marriage Act works or not. ... Let me give you a little `straight talk,' it's not going to pass by two-thirds vote in both houses. It's not going to do that."

Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "said he would prefer to leave the issue to the states--even if that meant leaving states the option of allowing gay marriages--as long as opposing states were not required to acknowledge"--these--"unions."

Tom DeLay, leader in the House for the Republicans, "This is so important we're not going to take a knee-jerk reaction to this." "Constitutional amendment--I believe"--"is the ultimate remedy left for the Congress. ... We are looking at other ways of doing it."

And David Dreier, who's chairman of the House Rules Committee, Republican, "I believe that this should go through the courts ... We're at a point where it's not necessary, from my perspective."

---

The US Constitution places many obstacles in the path of proposed amendments, including the requirement that each house of Congress approve the amendment by a 2/3 vote and that 3/4 of the states ratify it by similar votes. That said, it takes just 34 votes in the US Senate to kill the proposed amendment to ban gay marriage endorsed by President Bush. It now appears that there are well more than 34 Senators on record as saying they will not support a constitutional amendment. Many are opponents of same-sex mariage, but they either oppose the concept of placing an issue like this in the US Constitution or maintain an amendment isn't currently needed. Don't believe us? You can look their names up in online searches of news stories. Here are the names of the 48 announced amendment opponents (or those saying that leaning strongly against the amendment):


Lamar Alexander (R-TN), George Allen (R-VA), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Joe Biden (D-DE), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), John Breaux (D-LA), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Tom Carper (D-DE), Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Jon Corzine (D-NJ), Tom Daschle (D-SD), Mark Dayton (D-MN), Chris Dodd (D-CT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), John Edwards (D-NC), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bob Graham (D-FL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Jim Jeffords (I-VT), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), John Kerry (D-MA), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Dick Lugar (R-IN), John McCain (R-AZ), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Patty Murray (D-WA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Harry Reid (D-NV), Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), John Warner (R-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Dems who have yet to announce their views -- but are likely to oppose the amendment -- include some traditional liberals like Dan Akaka (D-HI), Dan Inouye (D-HI), and Carl Levin (D-MI). Even some uncomitted Republicans who would be expected to support it seem to be leaning against the amendment. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) -- a conservative who says he strongly opposes gay marriage -- said he was "very cool to the idea of an amendment."

[AntiGuv]

Yes, but ... I did not reply directly to the implication that only the "obviously liberal polls" show Kerry ahead of Bush. For all I know, the initial poster considers all polls "obviously liberal" or considers any poll that shows Kerry ahead of Bush a priori "obviously liberal" or whatever.

What I did reply to was the intended inference of the original post that: some polls show Kerry ahead of Bush whereas other polls show Bush ahead of Kerry, and it is only those "obviously liberal" polls that show Kerry ahead of Bush, whereas all objective and otherwise not "obviously liberal" polls show Bush ahead of Kerry.

My statement was to suggest that all but one poll shows Kerry ahead of or tied with Bush, and therefore to dismiss all the rest for whatever reason because their results disagree with one's preference may be unwise.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Then why did the CIA request a formal investigation?

[King Black Robe]

Nope. The public wants it and it will happen. Check out what Frist said yesterday. When these guys have to actually place a vote for or against, they are going to do what they did in 1996.

[oceanview]

we may have legislative gridlock, but Kerry can do plenty to destroy the country as president just by controlling the executive branch and the military.