The Road Not Taken: Forfeiting a Majority

The post-mortems are accumulating, but I think the obvious has to be stated: John McCain and his colleagues in the Gang of 14 cost the GOP its Senate majority while the conduct of a handful of corrupt House members gave that body's leadership the Democrats.

The first two paragraphs of my book Painting the Map Red --published in March of this year, read:

If you are a conservative Republican, as I am, you have a right to be worried. An overconfident and complacent Republican Party could be facing electoral disaster. Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, and a host of others could be looming in our future and undoing all the good we've tried to do.

It is break the glass and pull the alarm time for the Republican Party. The elections looming in November 2006 are shaping up to be disastrous for the GOP as the elections of 1994 were for the Democrats. Most GOP insiders seem unaware of the party's political peril. Some are resigned to a major defeat as the price we have to pay for a decade of consistent gains, which, they think, couldn't have gone on forever.

As cooler heads sort through the returns, they will see not a Democratic wave but a long series of bitter fights most of which were lost by very thin margins, the sort of margin that could have been overcome had there been greater purpose and energy arrayed on the GOP's side. The country did not fundamentally change from 2004, but the Republicans had to defend very difficult terrain in very adverse circumstances. Step by step over the past two years the GOP painted themselves into a corner from which there was no escape. Congressional leadership time and time again took the easy way out and declared truces with Democrats over issues, which ought not to have been compromised. The easy way led to Tuesday's result.

The criminal activities of Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and Mark Foley were anchors around every Republican neck, and the damaged leadership could not figure out that the only way to slip that weight was by staying in town and working around the clock on issue after issue. The long recesses and the unwillingness to confront the issues head on --remember the House's inexplicable refusal to condemn the New York Times by name in a resolution over the SWIFT program leak?-- conveyed a smugness about the majority which was rooted in redistricting's false assurance of invulnerability. Only on rare occasions would the Republicans set up the sort of debate that sharpened the contrast between the parties. In wartime, the public expects much more from its leaders than they received from the GOP.

On April 15, 2005 --less than three months after President Bush had begun a second term won in part because of his pledge to fight for sound judges-- Senator McCain appeared on Hardball and announced he would not support the "constitutional option" to end Democratic filibusters. Then, stunned by the furious reaction, the senator from Arizona cobbled together the Gang of 14 "compromise" that in fact destroyed the ability of the Republican Party to campaign on Democratic obstructionism while throwing many fine nominees under the bus. Now in the ruins of Tuesday there is an almost certain end to the slow but steady restoration of originalism to the bench. Had McCain not abandoned his party and then sabotaged its plans, there would have been an important debate and a crucial decision taken on how the Constitution operates. The result was the complete opposite. Yes, President Bush got his two nominees to SCOTUS through a 55-45 Senate, but the door is now closed, and the court still tilted left. A once-in-a-generation opportunity was lost.

A few months later there came a debate in the Senate over the Democrats' demand for a timetable for withdrawal for Iraq led to another half-measure: A Frist-Warner alternative that demanded quarterly reports on the war's progress, a move widely and correctly interpreted as a blow to the Administration’s Iraq policy. Fourteen Republicans voted against the Frist-Warner proposal --including Senator McCain-- and the press immediately understood that the half-measure was an early indicator of erosion in support for a policy of victory.

Then came the two leaks of national security secrets to the New York Times, and an utterly feckless response from both the Senate and the House. Not one hearing was held; not one subpoena delivered. A resolution condemning these deeply injurious actions passed the House but dared not name the New York Times. The Senate did not even vote on a non-binding resolution.

Nor did the Senate get around to confirming the president's authority to conduct warrantless surveillance of al Qaeda contacting its operatives in the United States. Weeks were taken up jamming the incoherent McCain-Kennedy immigration bill through the Judiciary Committee only to see it repudiated by the majority of Republicans, and the opportunity lost for a comprehensive bill that would have met the demand for security within a rational regularization of the illegal population already here.

And while the Senate twiddled away its days, crucial nominees to the federal appellate bench languished in the Judiciary Committee. The most important of them --Peter Keisler who remains nominated for the D.C. Circuit-- didn't even receive a vote because of indifference on the part of Chairman Specter.

(The National Review's Byron York wondered why the president didn't bring up the judges issue in the campaign until the last week, and then only in Montana. The reason was obvious: Senators DeWine and Chafee were struggling and any focus on the legacy of the Gang of 14 would doom DeWine's already dwindling chances while reminding the country of the retreat from principal in early '05.)

As summer became fall, the Administration and Senator Frist began a belated attempt to salvage the term. At exactly that moment Senators McCain and Graham threw down their still murky objections to the Administration’s proposals on the trial and treatment of terrorists. Precious days were lost as was momentum and clarity, the NSA program left unconfirmed (though still quite constitutional) and Keisler et al hung out to dry.

Throughout this two years the National Republican Senatorial Committee attempted to persuade an unpersuadable base that Lincoln Chafee was a Republican. For years Chafee has frustrated measure after measure, most recently the confirmation of John Bolton, even after Ahmadinejad threatened and Chavez insulted the United States from the UN stage. Chafee was a one-man wrecking crew on the NRSC finances, a drain of resources and energy, and a billboard for the idea that the Senate is first a club and only secondarily a body of legislators.

It is hard to conceive of how the past two years could have been managed worse on the Hill.

The presidential ambitions of three senators ended Tuesday night, though two of them will not face up to it.

The Republican Party sent them and their 52 colleagues to Washington D.C. to implement an agenda which could have been accomplished but that opportunity was frittered away.

The Republican Party raised the money and staffed the campaigns that had yielded a 55-45 seat majority, and the Republican Party expected the 55 to act like a majority. Confronted with obstruction, the Republicans first fretted and then caved on issue after issue. Had the 55 at least been seen to be trying --hard, and not in a senatorial kind of way-- Tuesday would have had a much different result. Independents, especially, might have seen why the majority mattered.

Will the GOP get back to a working majority again? Perhaps. And perhaps sooner than you think. The Democrats have at least six vulnerable senators running in 2008, while the situation looks pretty good for the GOP.

But the majority is not going to return unless the new minority leadership --however it is composed-- resolves to persuade the public, and to be firm in its convictions, not concerned for the praise of the Beltway-Manhattan media machine.

Hugh Hewitt is a law professor, broadcast journalist, and author of several books including Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority .

I'm 50 years old, Defiant. I've been to college, raised a family, and even homeschooled our children who are now grown, intelligent adults. Our eldest served in Iraq and is now a satellite communications expert. Our youngest is brilliant in the building industry.

I applaud you for helping your children with their homework, not giving them the answers unless they really can't figure it out, and even giving them some helpful hints along the way. However, I am not your child. I'm a grown woman on an adult forum who happened to miss an important sentence while reading an article. Your condescending tone was insulting.

I do not have a "problem" with "reading comprehension". If I am guilty of anything it is that I try to stay informed by reading so many news articles in one day that sometimes I read through it too quickly.

It might be helpful when conversing with other adults to take your daddy/teacher hat off and leave it at the door. :)

OK, Chena, don't get so worked up. I just told you to re-read it rather than explain the whole thing, figuring that you would see what you did as soon as you re-read the article, and you made it into a big battle. I'm sure you're a very smart, nice person who just skimmed and missed something on the first pass. No big thing. Now get some sleep, and tell me tomorrow how we're going to get through two years of the phrase "Speaker Pelosi".

IMHO, the American people haven't changed that much over the past 6 years. I don't witness a catharsis in American politics, and in many cases RINOS were replaced by simply mediocre liberal democratic socialists.

Unfortunately, I also haven't observed any real change amongst socialists in the US over the past 6 years, other than a proclivity to become even more unsatiated if they gain more power. Many conservatives fail to grasp that the upper class socialist continues to strive and scheme even when out of power. Their machinations were heinously exposed somewhat during the Clinton regieme. They periodically tip their hand when exposed to perceived victory.

IMHO, the Rummy resignation will help tip their hand from a temprary satiation from election night. The mechanics of our government haven't fundamentally changed more than how it would have responded with the populous in its same state of mind.

If one is searching for improvements, then focus on how the public might be better led, informed, and allowed to better select and develop elected officials to best represent our interests.

We have many who belive the vote will hinder the WOT. A better solution to the WOT is to better inform the common man of what exactly the threat is, and how to best develop a common intuition of the actual threat from terrorism.

If it is Islam, then stop ignoring God and act faithfully through Him in our administration and leadership of the nation.

Let God through faith in Christ handle the situation by our proper execution, guidance and selection of our elected authority as always we remain in faith through Him. Then regardless the outcome, it will still be in accordance with His plan and irregardless the temporal consequence, we will still have performed a good work worthy of His blessing, now or future and eternally rewarded.

In all the posts on FR in the last 2 weeks about Iraq yours is the most well stated and actually gives us a solution that the Republicans can grab ahold of instead of running away like they have been.

How in the world Bush allowed the "quagmire", no WMD's nonsense and Iraq/Afghan are not the same war, to get by is in part do to the MSM but also a failure to speak to the American people. Not only his failure but all the Senators and Congressmen who should have been carrying the message home week after week instead of waiting till the last month.

That isn't even getting into all the other domestic policies either. Also all the things they did do domestically for the country they were not loud enough about their accomplishments. Two conservative justices, partial-birth abortion ban, ban of federally funded embryonic stem cell research, the tax cuts and how they helped the economy and actually brought in more revenue to halve the spending debt...

The list goes on and on but they never talked about it. Instead they allowed the Dems to frame the discussion and the MSM to drown them out.

We need someone who can get on message, stay on message and lead the Republican party to victory in '08. Then follow through with the message and spread the message of that success to the American people.

Everyone knows why that didn't happen with Bush. I like him but we all know he is not a good public speaker and that has hurt the conservative cause more than most of us care to admit.

"Oh, if only we had your independence of thought, we too could be free of the evil stench of republicanism! Tell us more, Mr. Majic."

I'll tell you this: your taunt would carry more weight if any of the current Republican leadership actually carried the stench of Republicanism on them.

I could vote for that, if for no other reason than the fact that it would be the first true Republican ticket offered by the GOP in fourteen years.

Seriously. Want people to vote Republican? Run Republicans! :^P

I am who I claim to be; you aren't.

I can't speak for the entire GOP, so don't attempt to stick me with that.

Would you like me to stick YOU with the entire plethora of KOOKS and CRAZIES which is the Libertarian Party? If you're such a Libertarian and too much of an "independent a thinker" ( whatever that oh so self important, petulant piece of drivel is supposed to mean ) to be accepted by the GOP ( and how do you know THAT? LOL ), then clean up the political party you belong to and stop grumbling about another, which you hold yourself too far above, to join and help.

And my challenge to you, is to grow up. Decide what it is that you want to fight for and go fight; join the fray and stop being just an idle complainer.

You sound like the animals in the children's' story "THE LITTLE RED HEN". Which has nothing at all to do with Communism. :-)

Please don't take what I have said the wrong way. I am not trying to chase you off. You are being somewhat reasonable, but also, somewhat childish. The GOP is NOT monolithic and you might fit in just fine. :-)

I beg to differ, Defiant. You did not just tell me to re-read it. You wrote to me, "Did you read it again and still not understand? If so, let me know, and I will type an explanation. Slowwwwwly."

Then you, Defiant, also said, "When I help my kids with their homework, I don't give them the answers. They won't learn if I do. Instead, I tell them if they were right or wrong. Sometimes I give them little hints. When they get it right on their own, they are better for it. I was just doing the same for you, encouraging you to do better at reading comprehension so in the future you wouldn't have the same problem."

I'm sure you can comprehend how your two comments to me could be taken as being insulting and condescending. Don't mistake me for a fool. :)

As for "Speaker Pelosi", I think she will prove that she is perfectly capable of destroying herself. Let's just pray she and her cohorts don't take us down with them.

I know the GOP isn't monolithic, but there are quite a few in the Grand Old Party who seem inordinately committed to insisting otherwise.

I can't prevent you from doing the wrong things. I can only withhold my vote if I think you're going too far down the wrong road.

I didn't do it this time, but I might have to do it next time.

Please don't make that necessary.

Just stand by true Republican ideals and I would be happy.

Would be.

Stop writing as though I ran the GOP; it's childish, as is your demands that I "do the right thing", whilst YOU do absolutely NOTHING but whine and whinge and complain! You act like the homicidal maniac who menaces others, while crying: "OH PLEASE, DON'T MAKE ME KILL AGAIN".

Go ahead...vote for some guy who is poisoning himself and turned his skin blue and for the spitter and all of the other useless and brain dead morons who run the Libertarian Party/run as its candidates, if that's what you really want to do. Help the damned Dems win, because you are just too lazy and tooooooooooooooooooooooo much of an "independent thinker" to soil your hands with actually getting off your backside and getting involved.

I think you're the one who courteously said, and I quote, "bite me". Quite the comeback. All I told you to do was re-read it, rather than go through a long explanation of where you missed the part that spoke about a quote from the book that was written months ago. Then you had to come back with some snide remark, rather than a simple, "oops".

Don't be so grumpy. And thank you, for having a son who has served his country. Sounds like you have a great family.

Indeed, given the remarkable number of close races on the board last night, the Rovian/Mehlman genius came quite close to saving our bacon once again.

Can we please put this canard to bed once and for all? Rove's "genius" hardly looked like that yesterday. It took him until two weeks before the election to figure out that conservatives were unhappy with the party, and by then it was pretty much too late. He as much as anyone is responsible for the muddled party message of the past six years. He should stop admiring McKinley and start admiring Reagan.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.