Life After Daschle
Will a 55-seat majority be enough to end Senate obstructionism?
BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Friday, November 5, 2004 12:01 a.m.
- Ms. Strassel is a senior editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal.
There's an old saying in the Senate that only two numbers matter: 50 and 60. The big question now is whether the GOP's new 55-seat majority is magic enough to make a difference.
President Bush has won a clear mandate for his big second-term agenda, including the giants of Social Security reform and tax overhaul. Yet his ability to do anything still rests with the Senate, or, as it became known under Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the dead zone. Mr. Daschle's motto was: If it has a pulse, filibuster it, and he buried everything from judicial nominees to an energy bill. Majority Leader Bill Frist was reduced in October to distributing a list of GOP feats that boasted the "Do Not Call" registry.
Prospects have now brightened. On Tuesday, Republicans pulled the electoral equivalent of Sherman's March through the South, picking up Democratic seats in both Carolinas and Georgia, as well as Louisiana and Florida. They weathered storms in Kentucky and Oklahoma, and even held Alaska. But the big daddy came with the overthrow of Mr. Daschle. That ouster, the first time in more than 50 years a Senate party leader was exiled, was as much a repudiation of obstructionism as it was Mr. Daschle's own record.
But is it enough to make the Senate function again? To answer that, consider not just the Republicans' numerical gains, but their ideological ones. With the exception of Georgia, where incoming Republican Johnny Isakson may well be less conservative than outgoing Democrat Zell Miller, most of the pickups will be moving the center of GOP gravity to the right. In South Carolina, free-trading Jim DeMint replaces protectionist Fritz Hollings. Rep. Richard Burr, who voted with the White House 90% of the time, takes over for North Carolina's trial-lawyer-senator, John Edwards. Florida's Mel Martinez ran as a cultural conservative, replacing the socially liberal Bob Graham. Similar swaps came with David Vitter's takeover for John Breaux and (obviously) John Thune's ouster of Mr. Daschle.
This ideological shift matters when it comes to the first of those Senate numbers: 50. The GOP's itsy-bitsy margin since 2002 left the party hostage to its own moderates. A Northeast Three--Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lincoln Chafee--joined by John McCain, knew their party couldn't pass even budget bills without their cooperation. They used that power to hamstring their leadership's priorities, from tax reform to liability change. But with 55 members--many more in line with the basic GOP agenda--Mr. Frist can lose the tantrum-throwers and still get 50 votes on judges and other key legislation.
The ideological shift has already come in handy in keeping certain troublemaking members in line. Ask Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania moderate known for giving his party migraines. Having won a tough re-election with fuel from the White House, Mr. Specter, who is due by seniority to take over the Judiciary Committee, chose to repay President Bush by warning him Wednesday not to send any controversial appointments.
By yesterday, Mr. Specter had done a 360 and released a contrite communiqué praising Mr. Bush's past nominees and promising any new ones a committee vote in 30 days. It seems his colleagues took him aside to remind him that not only does he need the party to vote him into that job, it can also throw him out. Mr. Specter may also be held in check, as will others, by the fact that 55 seats may give the GOP the right to a two-vote majority on certain committees, isolating party holdouts.
The harder question is whether the GOP has the goods to beat the 60-vote filibuster that was the Daschle trump card. Yet dig into the record and the stonewalling was never all that solid. The 51-strong GOP may not have been able to rustle up nine Democrats on any one issue, but they usually managed a handful. That's all they'd need now. The trick will be picking off the willing on an à la carte basis. Various tort reforms have had the support of Democrats like Dianne Feinstein, Tom Carper, Jeff Bingaman, and Blanche Lincoln. Drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge failed in a filibuster by only one vote, thanks to Democrats. Similar bipartisan support exists for bankruptcy reform, an energy bill and tax reform.
But what of the bigger ideological battles like judges that united Democrats last time around? No one should fool themselves into thinking that even after Tuesday's blow, Democrats are wise enough to renounce the liberal heavyweights who dominate the agenda, from Hillary Clinton to Ted Kennedy. That Nevada's Harry Reid, a loyal Daschlista, is likely to be elected new leader, suggests the leadership doesn't plan to play nice.
Yet neither should anyone underestimate the psychological power Mr. Daschle's defeat will wield over middle-America Democrats. South Dakota voted Bush by 22 percentage points this week, and Mr. Daschle's demise came precisely because his opponent effectively explained to voters that it was Mr. Daschle who stymied the same president's agenda. That's something to chew on if you are the state's junior senator, Tim Johnson, or Max Baucus of Montana (59% for Bush), or Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln (54%). One of the only Democratic pickups in the Senate this time came via Ken Salazar, who was smart enough to run as a social centrist in Bush-voting Colorado (against "Coors Lite").
The pressure builds on those red-state Senators up for election in 2006. Is New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman going to vote down a Miguel Estrada nomination, with a state home to the largest proportion of Hispanics in the country? Look too for Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Kent Conrad of North Dakota to be heeding the Ghost of Daschle's Past.
The GOP's best shot for leveraging this fear of home state voters is to let Democrats know they'll be ready with strong candidates who'll run campaigns that highlight any obstructionism, along with the voting record. Then 60 may not seem like such a big number after all.
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