Here Lies The GOP

Weekly Standard: Rough Night For Republicans Was A Long Time Coming

(Weekly Standard)  This column was written by Fred Barnes.

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This one is pretty easy to explain. Republicans lost the House and probably the Senate because of Iraq, corruption, and a record of taking up big issues and then doing nothing on them. Of these, the war was by far the biggest factor. Unpopular wars trump good economies and everything else. President Truman learned this in 1952, as did President Johnson in 1968. Now, it was President Bush's turn — and since his name wasn't on the ballot, his party took the hit.

The defeat for Republicans was short of devastating — but only a little short. The House seats the party lost in New York and Connecticut and Pennsylvania will be hard to win back. Just as Republicans have locked in their gains in the South over the past two decades, Democrats should be able to solidify their hold on seats in the Northeast, as the nation continues to split sharply along North-South lines.

What should worry Republicans most, however, is erosion of its strength in the West and in two states in particular: Colorado and Arizona. Four years ago, Colorado was solidly Republican. Since then, Democrats have won a Senate seat, two House seats, the governorship, and both houses of the state legislature. At the state level, that's realignment.

In Arizona, Republicans dropped two House seats and Republican Sen. John Kyl got a mild scare. Kyl, by the way, may be the finest and most able senator in Washington. He's certainly in the top five. Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano cruised to victory.

The bottom line is this: Colorado and Arizona may not be there for Republicans in the 2008 presidential race. Of course, everything depends on the actual candidates, but these two states start out as presidential swing states. This is a new development.

Virginia is now worrisome for Republicans, even if Sen. George Allen wins re-election via recount. It has become more a Middle Atlantic than a Southern state, as University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato notes. (Sabato, by the way, picked the outcome in the House and Senate almost perfectly.) Republicans have lost the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia, which have grown into a third of the state's vote. And Representative Thelma Drake almost lost her House seat in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area, a Republican stronghold heavily populated with active duty and retired military.

Already the wails of the immigration restrictionists are rising, insisting Republicans lost because they weren't tough on keeping illegal border-crossers out. Not true. The test was in Arizona, where two of the noisiest border hawks, Representatives J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, lost House seats. Graf lost in a seat along the Mexican border, where illegal immigrants flock.

What Americans want is a full-blown solution to the immigration crisis. And that will come only when Republicans come together on a "comprehensive" measure that not only secures the border but also provides a way for illegals in the United States to work their way to citizenship and establishes a temporary worker program. If Republicans don't grab this issue, Democrats will.

Immigration was a big failure of Republicans over the past two years, but hardly the only one. Republicans cast themselves as the party of reform, but they didn't reform anything. And heaven knows, the public is eager for a lot to be reformed, starting with Congress itself and moving on to taxes and entitlements.

Congressional Republicans left President Bush hanging when he courageously proposed and campaigned for Social Security reform in 2005. They passed a last-minute, totally inadequate immigration bill (700 miles of fence) this fall. They toyed with doing something serious about earmarks (spending measures tossed into appropriation bills by individual members of Congress), then did too little.

With a serious record of reform to boast about, Republicans surely would have done better. They would have minimized the tendency of voters, in the sixth year of the Bush presidency, to shy away from any candidate with a "R" by his or her name. Sure, they'd have lost the House. But I suspect the margin would have been considerably smaller. Perhaps Nancy Pelosi would have a numerical majority but not a working, governing majority.

What happens in a bad Republican year is that good Republican candidates lose. There were many of them: House challengers David McSweeney in Illinois and Van Taylor in Texas, lieutenant governor candidate Luther Strange in Alabama and Tom McClintock in California, and House incumbents Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania, Jim Ryun of Kansas, and Clay Shaw of Florida.

But you have to give Rahm Emanuel, the House Democratic campaign chief, credit for recruiting an impressive group of candidates, including a few non-liberals like Brad Ellsworth in Indiana and Heath Shuler in North Carolina. The media, however, is exaggerating the number of these unconventional Democrats. They are a handful, and the pattern of moderate and conservative Democrats when they get to Washington is to pipe down. Or, as losing Republican Congressman Chris Chocola said of his victorious opponent Joe Donnelly, they become "Nancy Pelosi."

Conservatives won't want to hear this, but the Republican who maneuvered his way into the most impressive victory of the election was California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Okay, he's sui generic. But he won a landslide victory after moving to the center, while holding onto conservatives by not hiking taxes. Just think if he were eligible for the White House in 2008. Even (some) conservatives would be clamoring for him to run.


Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

[diamtool]

Tread carefully Democrats! Do not accept the smiling faces and outstretched hands of these corrupt scoundrels you have DEFEATED. They told your fellow countrymen that you were nothing but traitors and cowards, and they meant it.
They have looted your treasury and sent your brave young men to die needlessly, while denying your patriotism because you questioned their
radical ideas. Their ideas have been failures. They will never admit it.
Rule with strength and demand accountability for these failures.
NEVER FORGET how resolute, defiant, stubborn and ruthless the right wing has been in advancing the agendas of corporations, special interests, and big government's raw power along with their own perpetuity and greed.
This is how resolute and ruthless you must now be in defending the Americans who have made you their best hope.
Impeach Cheney First.

[wny14127]

The Democrats need to remember that they were voted in because the voters chose the lesser of two evils in the voting booth. We were not thrilled by the Republicans and not overjoyed by the Democratic options offered. We are tired of the Republican ***, but will not hesitate to vote the Dems out if they screw up the chances they are given to fix this mess.

[jpesot]

HA. Fred Barnes helped dig this hole, and now he thinks his fingers are clean and he can point fingers. I bet we'll see a lot of this behavior on Fox News!

The fact is, that this administration and the GOP told half of the country to sit down and shut up for almost 6 years. They ignored us. They didn't look for common ground. They tried to win at the buzzer or in OT. And they did this over and over.

Now they'll want to play nice.

It's kind of a shame, but I suspect that the Dems will play nice because they are trying to move the country forward.

But we better be smart .. because the right will stab us in the back at the first chance.

Trust but verify.

[tejasdemo]

I agree completely. Republicans are crooks and liars and playing nice with them is the last thing we should do.

Dont give in one inch. Raise the min wage immediately. Make Bush veto it.

Push for withdrawing troops.

Investigate the corruption asap and push hard. Very hard.

Make them pay.

Play nice ? No way. They are crooks. When Bush extends the olive branch, grab it out of his hands, wack him on the head with it and push him outta the way.

[mjv2944]

I hope the American people keep the current attitude. If the dems don't address the issues of immigration, job loss, Iraq, corruption, then we vote them out in two years. If we keep it up we may get America back on track. Congratulations America!!!!!

[gunnerv1]

That's OK, We'll be back in two years, because that's about how long it'll take to P*** Off the voters again. (And don't say "I didn't tell you so")If you can do better, then "Step up to the plate". In the mean time, I think I'll go and bury my guns in the garden.

[bcadrew]

The dems can govern and Pelosi is a new entity. She is a very inteligent lady and her outline of the first 100 days is music to middle America. The right tried to vilify her, but she was ready with a populist agenda. Now all she has to do is follow through. If she does, we have seen the last of the neo-cons for a while.

[heartlight3]

I don't have a problem with Republicans, but this current Republican party has lost their focus and direction. They have been focusing on what would benefit them and their friends rather than what was best for the country. It is all about money and power. Who can raise the most money and doing whatever it takes, ethical or not, stay in power. They have not had the vision and foresight to understand the bigger picture and see that it is good for the country to have multiple points of view and a diversity of opinion. This assures that balance is maintained and that all are represented. Democracy is unsustainable without balance. The American people understand that even if their politicians don't.

[Syndicate]

For those of you who do not want to work with the Republicans to bad, you have to. You see all those Democrats voted in over Republicans are very moderate some are even conservative Democrats. Your margin of victory was not very high in some cases a few tenths of a percent. which means if don't at least look like your trying to work with the Republicans you will be booted in two years. Since you have control you get all the blame.