WASHINGTON -- The midterm elections approach, and there is
excitement in Washington. Some of the learned psephologists predict
a close struggle for control, at least of the House of
Representatives. Others predict a "blow-out," with the Republicans
being blown out in the House and possibly edged out in the Senate.
Looking back on history we should have predicted setbacks for the
Republicans in this off-year election. President George W. Bush
broke with historic convention when he actually picked up seats in
2002, but now things are apparently back to normal. In normal times
the sitting president's party suffers losses on the Hill at
midterm.
Yet these are not normal times. What throughout the decades of
the Cold War was called the Liberal Establishment has been drained
of ideas and meaning. It is what historians call an Old Order, a
passing Old Order. Its political party, the Democratic Party, has
been moribund for years. The party has no policy coherence and no
principled leadership. Yesteryear's disciplined liberal Democrats
such as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey have been replaced by
blunderbusses such as Senator Harry Reid and Congresswoman Nancy
Pelosi, who seem to think that a liberal agenda is a temper tantrum
and a congressional investigation. That is what they promise if
they gain leadership of the Senate and the House, along with tax
increases.
The Democrats' last successful national leader was President
Bill Clinton, who governed as a centrist famous for saying that
"The era of big government is over." His boasts were a balanced
budget and economic growth. He was a reasonably good Republican
president except for the fact that he ran his campaigns with
foreign money and his office like a heterosexual Mark Foley. Foley
had salacious e-mails to a male intern. Clinton had salacious
telephone calls late into the night with a female intern.
Because the Democratic Party is in such intellectual and moral
decline, the Republicans should be eking out victory next week. The
economy could hardly be better, and the Democrats' alternative is a
combination of tax increases and a promise to investigate
corporations and financial services, a formula for recession. The
war against terror is being successfully executed, and the
Democrats' response is to hobble that execution through
proscriptive laws and more investigations. The war in Iraq is not
going well, but the Democrats' only policy is to withdraw our army
to, I believe Senator Reid suggests, Okinawa. Despite the
Democrats' feeble alternatives, the Republicans will probably lose
control of the House and possibly of the Senate. Yet that is not
the end of the drama. Many House races will be so close that they
will land in the courts.
Here is still more evidence that these are not normal times. It
may take weeks before we know who won control of the House and it
certainly will take weeks before we know who won every seat. John
Fund, one of our finest psephologists, explains in
OpinionJournal.com that the prevalence of absentee ballots makes
these results almost inevitable. Thus on November 15, when the
Republicans members of Congress are scheduled to elect their
leadership, some of those members voting will not even know if they
will be coming back to Congress. That makes no sense. Nor does it
make sense for the Republicans to elect their leadership without a
thorough reevaluation of how they lost touch with their base.
Conservative dissatisfaction with the House leadership is surely
the reason the Republicans find themselves in their present
fix.
The Republicans are going to have to reestablish their
connection with their base. They can hardly do this by rushing
ahead with leadership elections that might not even include members
of the incoming Republican delegation. The Republicans can hold
their leadership reelection any time before December 20. It is
important that they set a new date for their leadership election so
that only reelected members vote and the Republican base is assured
that a fast one is not being pulled on them in Washington. The
Democrats are an Old Order. It is time that the Republicans act
with the vigor and confidence of a New Order.
topics:
Harry Reid, Bill Clinton, Law, Iraq, NATO
