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 .
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I understand that frustration, but the crucial word in your post is "relatively", and if the GOP did a better, dare I say a relatively good, job of adhering to and governing by conservative ideals, more people who presently consider themselves Libertarians would cross over and vote for Republicans; probably many wouldn't have even re-registered as Libertarians in the first place. If you look at where growth is coming from in the Libertarian party, what you see are a large number of disaffected former-Republicans. These people didn't turn away from conservative ideals, their former party, the GOP, did. So, rather than betray those principles, they did an honorable thing, and re-registered with a party that still upholds them. That albatross needs to be hung around the necks of RINO's -- McCain, Chaffey, DeWine, et al. -- and their apologists; people who think a successful GOP is a GOP that looks more like the Democrat Party. THOSE clowns are capital "I" IDIOTS, and they are to blame for all manner of disease within the GOP, one symptom of which is people re-registering as Libertarians.
Now, you may argue that it's more honorable to stick with the GOP and work to steer it back to those conservative principles, and I agree with that. But, in defense of re-registrant Libertarians, I must point out that the expectation is that the GOP will uphold conservative ideals as a vehicle to change government and the country; to turn them back to more Constitutional ideals. We already know that the country and government have problems that would not exist if conservative principles were being applied and adhered to, and it's a monstrous battle to make headway there. Well, when the GOP itself began to fail in terms of applying and adhering to conservative ideals, it forced the constituency into yet ANOTHER battle; a battle for their own political party. As if we weren't already tired, and irritated, and frustrated with the myriad ways in which government and the country, in general, have turned away from conservative values, now THIS TOO? Frankly I can't bash people who looked at that situation and just said, "T'ell with it!" and re-registered as Libertarians.
At the day's end, the GOP needs a long dark season of painful introspection during which it decides, once and for all, whether to be a conservative party, or an equivocating, squishy-middle party. Is the GOP going to make a decided turn back to the right, and re-establish itself as the champion of the conservative ideals upon which this Republis restsl; or is it going to take the view that those ideals are antiquated, and continue to slide leftward?
I'll stay and fight for the former. I repudiate and damn the latter.
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The big problem with sitting out or voting for 3rd parties is letting Pat Leahy control the Judiciary committee. We had a chance to put another conservative on SCOTUS, which now is probably gone, and this goes well, well beyond two years of possibly temporary period of "sending rascals a message".
There is a good story today in WSJ about 26000 votes in VA Senate race that could keep Senate barely in GOP hands.
Imagine 5 conservative Justices on SCOTUS and end to stupid decisions or guessing games. There was a rumor last week that Stevens can't possibly hold much longer... now, Bush and RNC didn't make a big fuss about that, possibly not wanting to "alert the media" and Dems, but true conservative voters are supposed to understand these things, and what's really at stake.
Are the actual numbers supporting that statement available yet?
I'd heard this from a talking head, but I can't confirm it.
Oh, I am in complete agreement with you about the "death toll", here; I'm painfully aware of the opportunities that have been squandered over the last six years, and now will be unreachable over the next two. But I'm not so blind as to lay blame on people who had no opportunity to do something different. As Hugh ponts out in his column, the fault for this loss may certainly be laid at the feet of bonheads like McCain and the six other Republicans he conned into being part of his now-infamous "Gang of 14". People -- I almost botched it and used the word "men" -- of such diminutive character; who cannot see beyond the horns at the end of their noses to uphold the core principles that undergird the GOP platform are anathema to the Constitution, and they need to be regarded as anathema to the GOP, too.
Until then, nothing will ever change; at least not for the better.
I am demanding that we now step up our 'investigations' that we so nicely postponed - like the Sandy Berger papers, etc.
And I assume that we will soon hear more about Harry Reid's land deals...there's more there than smoke.
Open Borders Hugh- just the man the GOP needs for advice.
How can we blame them? Koolaid is such a powerful drink.
You're closest to the mark.
Another winner in the contest to completely misread the problem.
Makes me sick...we let so many things slide and they are going to crawl up Bush and Cheney's rear with a microscope...
Lol. Good call. And that's not his only convenient 'omission'.
Thank you!
today's Zogby poll:
Do you agree or disagree that Congress should hold hearings to consider impeaching President Bush?
Agree
Disagree
Not sure
Which of the following is the most urgent moral problem in American culture?
Greed and materialism
Poverty and economic justice
Abortion
Same Sex Marriage
None/not sure
Other-Specify
I hadn't thought Frist was thinking about presidential ambitions for several months now; a lot of noise for a long time about it, and then quiet.
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