Years ago there appeared in the “Humor in Uniform” regular
section of Reader’s Digest the story of a young soldier at
Tank School who had three classes. The first, run by the
communications office, stressed that a tank without radio contact
with its officers would be incapable of finding and engaging the
enemy. Second, the driving class highlighted that a tank without
mobility was a stationary artillery piece good only for fixed point
defense. And third, the ordnance class told the soldiers that a
tank without a gun was a rather large, expensive, portable
radio.
There are three necessary components of power in Washington,
D.C. The majority of the House of Representatives. The presidency
with its pen for signing or vetoing legislation. And third, a
60-vote majority in the upper chamber to overcome a filibuster and
pass legislation through the Senate. One or two of those allow you
to play defense. You need all three to go on meaningful
offense.
This was most painfully driven home by the collapse of the Bush
presidency after the initially invigorating 2004 election, which
gave Republicans a narrow but functioning majority of the House,
another four years in control of the White House, and a shiny new
55-vote majority in the Senate. Republicans had not had that much
control of Washington since 1929, when they had 56 senators and 270
House members alongside Herbert Hoover.
President Bush announced that he would use his “political
capital” to enact Social Security reform that would give all
younger Americans the option of having their Social Security (FICA)
taxes go into a 401(k) that they controlled rather than into the
pay-as-you-go defined benefit — read: Ponzi scheme — that, left
unchanged, was destined by demographics to collapse sooner rather
than later. This proposal had popular support and Bush had
campaigned on it in 2000 and 2004. In the past Democrats had
trashed Republicans, claiming the GOP planned to cut Social
Security. Here Bush and the Republicans turned the tables on the
Democrats, effectively saying, “No, we will reform Social Security
to make it individually controlled and fully funded, and benefits
will be greater for those saving for the future than are promised
(but would never be delivered) by the pay-as-you-go system.”
There was one problem: the Democrats had 45 senators, and
Nevada’s senator Harry Reid organized a bloc committed to opposing
Social Security reform. The modern Democratic Party is paid for by
trial lawyers, labor unions, and big city political machines. They
know that if Social Security were reformed and every young American
were allowed to save his or her FICA taxes in a personal savings
account and to look forward to retiring with significant savings,
the party of trial lawyers, labor unions, and Chicago would be a
dead man walking. The Democrats have no policies that increase the
value of personal savings accounts. All their tax, regulatory, and
trade policies would shrink retirement savings.
In Silence of the Lambs there was an instructive scene
in which Hannibal Lecter talked the guy in the next jail cell into
swallowing his own tongue and killing himself. Republicans weren’t
that good. They could not get 60 votes for a policy that would
greatly benefit America at the expense of the building blocks of
the Democratic Party.
To make real, permanent, positive changes in the American
government requires a Republican House majority, a Republican
president, and 60 solid Republican votes in the Senate.
On November 2, 2010, Republicans won the first of these three.
They cannot capture the White House until the 2012 presidential
election. And it will take at least two more election cycles in
2012 and 2014 to win 60 votes in the Senate.
The good news is that it is entirely possible — indeed likely
— that Republicans can win 13 more Senate seats in the 2012 and
2014 elections.
ON NOVEMBER 6, 2012, there will be 33 Senate seats up for
election. Twenty-three are held by Democrats (counting Joe
Lieberman and Bernie Sanders, who caucus with the Democratic
Party), and 10 are now held by Republicans. The larger number of
Democratic seats in play is a repercussion of George W. Bush’s
decision to follow his popular decisions to overthrow the Iraq and
Afghanistan dictatorships with seemingly unending occupations of
same. This decision drove away independent voters to the point in
2006 when Republicans lost six of their 55-seat majority in the
Senate and fell to a minority of 49 senators. The loss of the
Senate has proved somewhat expensive for the American people, but
it now provides a target-rich environment in 2012, because many of
the senators up for reelection are running in states that (absent
Bush) trend Republican.
Among the Democrats whose seats will be in play in 2012 are Kent
Conrad of North Dakota, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jim Webb of
Virginia, and Jon Tester of Montana — all representing states that
tend to be red. Ben Nelson painted a particularly inviting target
on his back with the “Cornhusker Kickback” and his resulting key
vote for ObamaCare.
Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is 70 and may well be primaried by
the MoveOn forces that defeated him in the Democratic primary in
2006 and forced him to run as an independent because of his support
for Bush’s policies in Iraq. Lieberman paid them back by denying
them the public option in ObamaCare, and this act of revenge might
attract another challenge from the left. Sherrod Brown in Ohio will
run in a state in which Republicans won the other Senate seat, the
governorship, and both houses of the legislature — as well as five
lower house seats in 2010. Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey Jr. must run
facing an electorate that largely elected him on the false promise
that he would represent his father’s moderation and pro-life views.
Casey was the key vote allowing federal funding for abortion on
demand in ObamaCare.
One factor that has allowed a state like North Dakota, which
voted 63 percent for Bush in 2004, to repeatedly elect two
hard-left senators in Conrad and Byron Dorgan is that they voted
together and together explained their votes to a non-challenging
North Dakota press. For the next two years, however, with the 2010
election of Republican governor John Hoeven to the Senate, every
single significant vote will pit the liberal Conrad voting yea and
the conservative Hoeven voting nay. Every newspaper article will be
forced to explain that there is a left and a right position on a
given issue and their senators are on different sides of that
divide. Between now and the 2012 election there will be dozens of
tutorials on how left-wing Kent Conrad is. When Conrad and Dorgan
were voting together there was never a North Dakota standard
against which to understand how far left their votes were.
This new contrast will also hold for Sherrod Brown of Ohio,
whose votes will be compared to those of Rob Portman; Bob Casey of
Pennsylvania, who must answer to Pat Toomey; and Nebraska’s Ben
Nelson with Mike Johanns. Missouri’s Claire McCaskill’s liberalism
will stand in stark contrast to Roy Blunt’s votes. And Bill
Nelson’s once obscure voting record will stand exposed in the
bright light of Marco Rubio, whose votes will come with a Reaganite
soundtrack.
One might add that Hawaii’s Daniel Akaka is now 86 years old,
and that state’s very popular governor Linda Lingle might well
enter the fray. Wisconsin’s Herb Kohl will be 77 and California’s
Dianne Feinstein will be 79.
On the GOP side there are only 10 seats at risk and only Scott
Brown of Massachusetts (who has a campaign war chest of more than
$6 million to go with a high popularity rating) and Olympia Snowe
of Maine are running in blue states. Republicans in Maine point out
that this year Olympia Snowe campaigned hard — and sounded like a
Tea Partier — for conservative Republican candidates in Maine,
where the GOP captured the state house, state senate, and
governorship. Mike Castle may have learned nothing from 2010, but
other Republicans were watching.
IN 2014, 20 Democratic and 13 Republican seats will be in play.
The Democrats include Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska,
Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Mary
Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Jeanne Shaheen of
New Hampshire, and Mark Warner of Virginia — all eight in trending
red states.
On the Republican side, the only Republican running in a state
that did not vote for Bush, Bush, and McCain is thrice-elected
Susan Collins of Maine.
In 2012, Republicans will most likely capture at least the four
seats they need to win a 51-vote majority in the Senate. But the
meaningful number for control is 60.
In the 2012 and 2014 elections Republicans must win a net gain
of 13 seats of the 43 Democratic and 23 Republican seats in play.
Today one sees at least 20 vulnerable Democratic seats and at most
three vulnerable Republican seats inside those numbers.
If Republicans find a presidential candidate capable of
defeating Obama, they then only have to have two moderately good
years in Senate races — competing on friendly territory and
defending few if any of their own seats — to ensure the 60 votes
needed to overcome a filibuster and begin to repair the damage of
the past few decades of overspending, over-regulating, and
overreaching.
