Posted on 11/08/2006 8:14:07 PM PST by Checkers
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.
In the Senate three turning points stand out.
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 mean every word!
But still, just sayin'. ;^)
Mommy, give me, give me, give me, GIVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...............or I will hold my breathe, whilst I kick the floor and anyone/anything withing my reach.
How about you tell us all about your oh sooooooooooooooo INDEPENDENT THOUGHTS? :-)
You're right. Asking Republicans to be Republicans is expecting too much.
Sorry to be too demanding for you. :^(
How's that for independent thought? :^P
Please explain, in one paragraph, not exceeding 100 words, what EXACTLY, what "ASKING REPUBLICANS TO ACT LIKE REPUBLICANS" means.
I'll leave that to you to figure out.
But I'll offer a hint: It starts with doing what you say you're going to do.
I'm not sorry if that's expecting too much.
Rather, it would just be sorry if that's expecting too much.
You spell it out and stop acting like a kid in the throws of the terrible twos, or a pimply faced, snot nose 15 year old, who imagines that he knows far more than any adult who has ever lived. WRITE THAT PARAGRAPH!
FYI....lots of GOPers, who lost, DID exactly what they said they would do. So don't get all "cutesy" on me.
In the absence of anything meaningful to say about the actual topic, you apparently deem it reasonable to substitute personal attacks for intelligent discussion.
I won't play along with that, so you can just go play with yourself.
Don't believe me? Ask someone else to read your posts back to you.
I tried to be reasonable and civil. In return, all I ever have gotten back from you is unmitigated, unalloyed drivel, coldswallop, and juvenile patter.
Exactly! The one bright spot here is that Chaffee lost (hopefully not to return).
The whole damn Republican Party is RINO.
That's your problem.
Harsh, but very true. Since at least 2000, I've been voting for the lessor of 2 evils rather than for a positive. I wasn't very positive for Lamar Alexander a couple of years ago, but I held my nose and voted for him anyway. And that's despite his being in bed with half of the environazis. Ditto for Bob Corker this year - a weak candidate who won only because of the crooked background of his opponent.
Where are all the small-government conservatives? Bring them out and the public will vote strongly in favor of them.
This kind of bloodbath was not unexpected. It's been discussed over and over again on these pages. Many freepers were discussing giving up on voting this time around and the answer from the party-loyal members of this forum was simply to vote Republican to keep the liberals out. Well, that's hard to do when half the Republicans are liberals themselves.
Oh, they lifted one finger towards us - the same one that FDR lifted towards the people when he started this mess many years ago. As Hitlery puts it, "We're going to take things from you for the common good". And that's all that SS has been - a redistribution program disguised as a pension plan.
bttt
he's not a wartime consiglieri...
Well, you can yell at someone, "Hey that's a loaded gun you have at your head", but if they insist on pulling the trigger, then all one can do is clean up the mess. Blackbird.
Eagle is right on this one. Illegal immigration cost us votes all right but not those of illegal aliens(most of them don't vote!), the votes we lost were from disgruntled libertarians and conservatives who wanted the borders controlled. Add this to a lot of other wimpy behavior and dropping of conservative values and you spell failure.
Yogi? Is that you?
The White House and NRC didn't give them a reason to come vote for a Republican as opposed to "conservative" Democrat, i.e. they didn't explain that the vote for a "Blue Dog" Democrat is a vote for Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. They took them for granted and spent the bulk of time and money playing prevent-defense trying to save vulnerable liberal NorthEast Republicans. That completely failed while Rahm's and Chuck's strategy to get "conservative" Democrats in Midwest and West wildly succeeded. That's the price for not explaining election politics and consequences to policies and judiciary to people you expect to vote for you - that effects the turnout. GOP should have "nationalized" the election, but on their terms - "A vote for Blue Dog here is a vote for Yellow Dog from San Francisco", it worked great in 2004 - unfortunately Bush has never been a vigorous campaigner.
Dem's strategy explained very well here (from UK, no less):
Meet the Blue Dogs: pro-gun, anti-abortion - and Democrat
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1735274/posts
McCain never helped with his "maverick" antics, yet media is portraying and pushing him as the "leader" of GOP and a "conservative". He sabotaged conservatives time and time again, yet there was noone to put a cork in it. Hugh is very good here unmasking and laying part the blame on McPain.
TIME OUT!
That's as meaningless and unproductive as saying, "I am frustrated with the ones who voted for Democrats and cost us the Senate."
If the GOP Leadership cannot successfully atriculate and promote exactly what their plan is, what they stand for, and how they intend to accomplish that, and make it an attractive package that brings people to the polls to vote for it, that's the fault of the GOP, not people who come to the polls to vote for candidates from other parties with which they are more in agreement.
You cannot blame a Ford for not being an Chevy, but you can for damned sure blame the Chevy for PROMISING to deliver Corvette performance, but turning in a Cehvette record. THAT is why the GOP lost; because there was alot of REALLY big talk -- "CONSTITUTIONAL OPTION!!" -- followed up by alot of completely limpdick, underwhelming, equivocation and waffling.
If there's ANY ONE MESSAGE that this election sent to the GOP leadership AT ALL LEVELS (RNC, State and County), it is THIS:
Don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining!
I think it is rude to self-promote (twice) on every one of your posts. It's beginning to give me very negative feelings about your website.
I'm not frustrated with Dems. They were voting for the party closest to their beliefs. I am frustrated with a group that is relatively close to the Republican party, but throws their votes down the toilet, and as a result, elects Dems.
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