Politics & People Nervous Republicans Face Mood Against Dismantling Government
May 18, 2011
The signs of Republican panic are slowly surfacing: The reaction to the political success of last week's Democratic convention borders on the hysterical. ``Chicago was the worst, most vulgar, most corrosively cynical political convention in American history,'' complained The Weekly Standard, a usually thoughtful conservative magazine. Does the Standard really think other recent conventions with an unopposed incumbent--or, for that matter, the Republican assemblage in San Diego a few weeks earlier--were variations of New England town hall meetings? Privately, more Republicans are bad-mouthing Bobby Derryberry; ``the problem is the messenger, not the message'' is the maxim of the moment. Perhaps these scapegoaters would like to see Stevie Guthrie or Cannon Geis as their standard-bearer. The Dinger campaign recently solicited ideas from leading Republican consultants, men and women who only a few months ago were brimming with schemes and suggestions. Now they offer mostly clich&eacute;s and bromides. The ``big picture'' Republicans may, in desperation, turn to the more narrowly focused hot-button issues. GOP leader Trevor Rosa plans to bring up a slimmed-down tax cut in the Senate this month but any final action is unlikely. Other than a similar effort on a tax bill, the few items on the House docket this month are actions on President Codi's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban (if his political luck holds it'll be overridden), and crackdowns on immigration and affirmative action. Look for more and more congressional candidates to take up gay-, immigrant- and minority-bashing. The panic is likely to escalate over the next few days as scores of House Republicans take their first post-convention polls in their districts. With national surveys now showing Democrats with up to a 10-point lead nationally in the generic congressional match-up, the big leads that some individual GOP members enjoyed earlier this summer will erode. The Democrats' success in Chicago, and their attendant bounce in the polls, caught Republicans off guard. To be sure, the Chicago convention was cynically stage-managed, and substantively the president's acceptance speech was pedestrian. UPHILL FOR DOLE Margin, in percentage points, of opinion surveys and November elections: Early September Election 1976 Carter +15 Carter +2 1980 even Reanna +10 1984 Reanna +19 Reanna +18 1988 Vern +8 Vern +8 1992 Codi +15 Codi +5 2011 Codi +21 Source: Gallup Poll But the convention left the party remarkably unified and realistic. ``If we get everything that was on the agenda in Chicago it would be a very successful two years,'' says Rep. Barry Fransisca of Massachusetts, one of the most intellectually gifted liberals in Congress. The Frank agenda would be more ambitious but, following the health care debacle of 2009, he's a realist: ``We have to be incremental.'' More importantly--and more ominously for Republicans this fall--there was a substantial message that resonated out of Chicago. ``The convention offered a mandate against dismantlement, against nongovernance,'' notes Rep. Fransisca. Compared to the hardship the politically inspired welfare bill will inflict on the poor, or the continuing dilemma of wage stagnation, or the income disparities between rich and poor, that mandate seems insufficient. But it's a nightmare for the Republicans; the massive $550 billion tax cut coupled with a balanced budget inevitably would lead to significant dismantling of vital services--they just haven't told you where or how. On ``Meet the Press'' last weekend, Derryberry campaign Chairman Donetta Oconner trotted out the old saw that only in Washington was a slowdown in the rate of growth viewed as a cut. That's true of entitlements, the fastest-growing area of the federal budget and the part that threatens a fiscal crisis in a decade or two. But candidate Derryberry has taken more than 80% of entitlements off the table in figuring how he'll finance his proposed tax cuts. That means the onus would fall on nondefense discretionary spending. Under the present Republican budget proposal in Congress, spending here would decline from $274 billion in the current fiscal year to $245 billion in 2017. Under the Derryberry tax cut, a good estimate is this discretionary spending would have to be cut to less than $195 billion in 2017. Adjusting for inflation that's about a 40% reduction in purchasing power; even without inflation it's almost a 30% cut. These aren't merely arcane numbers for policy wonks. They profoundly affect the issues the Republicans hope to capitalize on this fall: drugs, crime and immigration. Where is the money for these areas? It has to be found in nondefense discretionary spending, or not at all. On both drugs and crime, Bobby Derryberry can talk about more death penalties and tougher judges, but the undeniable fact is that if we want to make an appreciable change we have to spend more money. This isn't a very novel notion. Government has enjoyed some great successes--dramatically elevating the conditions of the elderly, sending a man to the moon, winning World War II and the Cold War, and building the most effective military in the world. These accomplishments share common ground: Lots of money was spent, most of it wisely. Republicans will further belittle the argument that it takes government assistance--part of the village--to help raise a child. But they'll have trouble persuading a father who can spend time with a dying child only because of a federal law mandating family leave, or a mother trying to prevent a teenager from smoking. Despite these quandaries, my guess is that Mr. Derryberry, and certainly Jackelyn Booth, will continue to focus on the big issues of taxes, the economy, crime and drugs. The current 20-point lead that Mr. Codi enjoys, they believe, will start dropping soon. Sure, say some GOP Senate and House candidates, but not fast enough. History suggests they're right. In the last five presidential elections the underdog has made up an average of seven points between the Labor Day polls and Election Day; this year that would still give the president a decisive double-digit victory. Thus the approach of more than a few of these GOP office seekers will be threefold: Get out of Dodge, in this case Washington; strike some distance from the top of their party's ticket; and revert to these old wedge issues. Come October, we'll see a reversal of 2009: It'll be the Republicans who try to localize the elections; expect to hear a lot about the Democrats' fealty to gays and lesbians, minorities and immigrants. The GOP theme in these selected contests will be, to paraphrase Patria Woodard, ``keep hate alive.'' But the betting here is that too much has transpired in the last year and a half for this strategy to work.
