Without DeLay
Do Republicans realize they could lose Congress? Plus steroids and baseball and more.
Monday, April 10, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
Paul Gigot: This week on "The Journal Editorial Report," the GOP agenda and the 2006 elections. With Tom DeLay out of the picture, can Republicans get their mojo back? Plus, baseball steroid scandal. The Major League opened 2006 under a cloud of controversy as a book detailing the alleged steroid use of San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds prompts a formal investigation. Can America's pastime recover? Those topics plus our weekly "Hits and Misses." But first the headlines.
Gigot: Welcome to "The Journal Editorial Report." I'm Paul Gigot. Tom DeLay's decision this week to resign from Congress removes one large Republican liability this election year. But it hardly ends the party's political problems. With the midterm elections fast approaching, can the GOP get its mojo back? Political strategist and nationally syndicated radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt is the author of a new book "Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority." He joins me now from Irvine, Calif. Hugh, welcome.
Hewitt: Hi, Paul.
Gigot: You argue in your new book that the Republican prospects in 2006 could be as "disastrous," and I think that's your word, as they were for the Democrats in 1994. Why do you think Republicans are in such trouble?
Hewitt: Well, I think it's a combination, Paul, of indifference and dithering. Republicans now are taking a lot of comfort in what they consider to be a gerrymandered and defeat-proof map in the House and a 10-seat margin in the Senate. But it is pretty easy to see how you could lose at least four seats in the Senate: Lincoln Chafee, Conrad Burns, Santorum and DeWine. And maybe one more and we're back to 50-50. And in the House it's about wave politics.
I was doing a show much like this in 1994 on the night that the Democrats were surprised by a wave. Chris Cox, now the SEC chairman, came into the studio and told me, "Hugh, if anyone tells you they saw this coming they're lying." Well, right now, a lot of voices are joining mine. Whether it's Newt Gingrich, I talked to Tom DeLay this week after his announcement, and many of those voices who close to American politics at the base realize that, while the Democrats can't pretty much turn out anymore than they did in 2004, all those people are most likely going to vote but a lot of Republicans may in fact sit on their hands unless they see the sort of activity that they thought they would get from a majority.
Gigot: Well, you know, this Republican Congress, they have the White House and Capitol Hill. But it started with so much promise, yet very little has gotten done. What has gone wrong? Why haven't they been able to agree and get some legislation passed?
Hewitt: You know, even if they would stand and slug it out with the opposition, that would be preferable to the appearance of inaction. The House, for example, is on a track record to match the Congress of 1948 for the least days in session. The number of actual debates, sort of like the ones that marked the judicial knockdowns of 2003 and '04, are missing. Now, the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito are great things to have on the table to point to, because there might be yet another vacancy, and the Senate would lose ability to confirm a Bush nomination to a third seat on the court if they lose even two or three Senate seats.
But Majority Leader Frist and certainly the House leadership have not managed to set up the kind of confrontations that attract the attention of the American people and clearly delineate the parties. There is a big difference here, and yet I think Republicans have McClellan's disease. They don't much care for face-to-face confrontation, for the kind of political conversation and debate that inspires Americans to make choices rather than to stay home in November. Right now I think they're leaning towards staying home.
Gigot: A lot of Republicans say, look, with President Bush's approval rating at 35% to 40%, very low, they need to distance themselves from the president, and maybe even criticize them, to protect their own status within their own districts or states. Do you agree with that as a Republican strategy?
Hewitt: No, no. That is the worst possible move. And I do see that, though, you're right. It's accurate description of what's going on out there. Chapter 1 of "Painting the Map Red" is about the war and about the president's leadership in the war, and about the need for Republicans to define themselves as the party that is serious about the threat that we face, is serious about the supporting the president, is serious about winning in Iraq, victory in Afghanistan, deployment wherever terrorists might find refuge.
And those that are running away from the president are basically telegraphing that they're not serious about the war. It is the one issue about which there is complete clarity in this country. The Democratic Party, if they win the House or the Senate, they will lead to the withdrawal from Iraq. That means defeat in the war.
And so Republicans have to, despite the numbers, they have to rally to the president's side and to the cause of the war, and to the cause of security. In there lies with hope of victory in November, as it was in 2002 and 2004, Paul. I don't think there can be much distance from the president that doesn't lead to distance from a majority.
Gigot: But Hugh, we're now five years from 9/11, from Sept. 11. We haven't had a terrorist attack here in the United States again. And Iraq is a struggle; it's a very difficult fight. Isn't the landscape of the national-security debate different now than it has been, was 2002 and 2004, and could Republicans lose the national-security debate this year?
Hewitt: You know, I don't think they can but I think they could lose it by not having it. I was in a theater recently when the trailer for "United 93" played, and it was like a gut punch for most of the people watching it. Right below the surface--and we saw it in the ports controversy; we see in the rallying to the president over the NSA program to conduct warrantless surveillance on al Qaeda contacting Americans who may be in cooperation with them, we see it time and time again. Right below the surface, the American people remain convinced that the president's No. 1 job and the job of the Congress is the security of the United States.
The immigration debate, for example, which could have been solved with a generous program of normalization and regularization, provided it had been coupled with serious security measures on the border including a fence--that also showed security, security, security, the war, the war, the war.
And, Paul, all the polls in the world will not persuade me that the American people have forgotten this, or that at least a majority of them have not forgotten it. All you have to do is push a little bit hard on the issue, and the American people quickly go back to understand that 9/11, as horrific as it was, could have been much, much worse, and that there remain tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Islamists who would do worse if they could.
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