Today's Article
Could an election
loss be the thing
which saves the
Republican Party?
The American Spark
Could Loss of Congress Be Best Thing for G.O.P.?
By Cliff Montgomery
According to the Associated Press (AP), "the White House is bracing for guerrilla warfare on the homefront politically if
Republicans lose control of the House, the Senate or both--and with it, the president's ability to shape and dominate
the national agenda."
Regardless of the macho talk, Republicans are running scared. Polls and analysts in both parties increasingly suggest
Democrats will capture the House, and possibly the Senate, on Election Day Nov. 7th.
Democrats need a 15-seat pickup to regain the House and a gain of six seats to claim the Senate.
Everything could change overnight for Bush, who has governed for most of the past six years with a Republican Congress
and with little support from Democrats.
"Every session you change the way you do business with the Congress. And you test the mood of the Congress, find out
what their appetite will be. But it doesn't change your priorities," the president told ABC News.
In a phrase, that's Bush whistling past the graveyard. It takes the president and the Congress to shape an agenda; and as
the legislative branch, Congress is firmly in the driver's seat.
"If he loses one house here, President Bush will enter the last two years very wounded," agrees David Gergen, a former
White House adviser who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.
"He will have the capacity to say no to Democratic legislation, but he won't have the capacity to say yes to his own
legislation," Gergen, who teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, told AP.
Of course, if Dems pick up both houses of Congress they may override Bush vetoes, at least on more moderate aspects of
their agenda.
"All of our numbers look pretty bad and there's no question that there's a jet stream in our face," said House Majority
Leader John Boehner, (R-OH).
Furthermore, some of Bush's fiercest fighting will almost certainly be with fellow Republicans as they seek to find a new
standard bearer for 2008--and try to distance themselves from an unpopular war, the unpopular, far-right president who
waged it, and congressional scandals that include inappropriate e-mails to House pages from ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL).
"There's no question that the Republican coalition is stressed over the way Washington [i.e., Bush] has been handling
fiscal matters, the Foley affair, the Iraq war," said GOP consultant Scott Reed. "All of these are coming together at the
same time."
If Republicans lose their majorities, it will be that much harder for Bush to hold together his already splintering GOP
cohesion on Iraq.
But in a strange way, a loss here could be the best thing to happen to the Republican Party. It would almost certainly create
a need for remaining G.O.P. Congresspeople to separate themselves from what has in recent years been a slide to the
far right.
If they prepare themselves correctly, they could emerge in 2008 as a far more moderate party, one more dedicated to the
true conservative--i.e., "classic" or "classical liberal"--concepts of liberty put forward by such people as Thomas
Jefferson and John Stuart Mill.
In recent years the Democrats have successfully been re-inventing themselves, going from little more than "Republicans in
cheaper suits" to embracing their core liberal values, such as those put forth by Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
In fact many Democrats see the upcoming elections as a mirror image of 1994, with the parties reversed.
Doug Schoen, a Clinton pollster in 1994, said those times were bleak; but added that Clinton soon figured out how to
enhance his relevance and influence, reaching out to Republicans on some of their own issues, such as welfare law
overhaul and "talking about the common good," said Schoen.
Besides, President Clinton was already a well-known moderate on key issues, and was in fact able to cast himself as a last
bastion of moderation, the last thing keeping the less popular far right from obtaining much of its extremist agenda.
Such factors helped him easily win re-election in 1996.
But Schoen said he doubts Bush can do the same: "After 9-11, except for a brief period, he's governed from the [extreme]
right. There's so much bitterness and division, it's going to be tougher for him to do it than...it was for Clinton."
Some of Bush's sharpest critics would rise to top positions with a Democratic takeover.
Firebrand Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has sponsored legislation calling for steps that could open the way to Bush's
impeachment. If Dems win the House, he would lead the Judiciary Committee.
If Democrats do win Nov. 7th, the last two years of the Bush Administration may be very interesting indeed.