From the WSJ (subscription only):
If Republicans lose control of Congress in November, they might want to look back at last Thursday as the day it was lost. That’s when the big spenders among House Republicans blew up a deal between the leadership and rank-in-file to impose some modest spending discipline.
Unlike the collapse of the immigration bill, this fiasco can’t be blamed on Senate Democrats. This one is all about Republicans and their refusal to give up their power to spend money at will and pass out “earmarks” like a bartender offering drinks on the house. The chief culprits are the House Appropriators, led by Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis of California and his 13 subcommittee chairmen known as “cardinals.” If Republicans lose the House—and they are well on their way—Mr. Lewis deserves the moniker of the minority maker.
For weeks, the Republican Study Committee, a group of fiscally conservative Members, had been negotiating a spending outline with the House leadership. But when they finally struck a deal last week, Mr. Lewis refused to go along and threatened to defeat the budget on the House floor if Speaker Denny Hastert brought it up. With Democrats opposing the budget as a matter of party unity, GOP leaders gave up and left town for Easter recess without a vote on their budget blueprint for 2007.
Political hardball isn’t new to Congress, but what’s especially notable here is the utter cluelessness by Mr. Lewis and his friends about how much trouble they’re in and how to get out of it. The rank-and-file Members who haven’t yet gone native in Washington realize that their biggest problem is the disappointment of Republican voters at Congress’s free-spending ways. If those voters stay home in November, Mr. Lewis will soon be known as Mr. Ranking Member.
Then again, he’s been there before and doesn’t seem to mind. Mr. Lewis, who is now in his 14th term, was one of those Republicans who was utterly comfortable in the minority before the Gingrich Revolution in 1994. As chairman of the GOP Conference, Mr. Lewis was the No. 4 Republican in the House before Dick Armey challenged him for the post in 1992 and won—in part because Mr. Lewis was a lot less than revolutionary.
Since that defeat, he’s hunkered down as one of the GOP’s spenders-in-chief, presiding over multiplying earmarks and chopping to bits the party’s reputation as fiscal conservatives. When President Bush recently asked Congress to pass a modified line-item veto, among the first to complain was Mr. Lewis. The spending baron told the Rules Committee last month that the line-item veto “could be a very serious error” that threatens the separation of powers. “We are the legislative branch of government.”
Translation: Mr. Lewis is opposed to any budget reform that would give the President more leverage to limit his ability to spend tax dollars like there’s no tomorrow. On the item veto, this puts him to the fiscal left of John Kerry, Al Gore, and, well, it’s hard to get any further left than that.
As Terry Hastings notes in an email:
If the government controls your discretionary income, they control you. Personal economic liberty is sacrificed to fund an exponentially growing nanny state. You would think the Republicans would make this an integral part of their platform. Whether the nanny state operates by tax and spend or borrow and spend is a distinction that will matter little when the bills come due.
Terry’s point is well taken: Bush’s sagging approval numbers are due in large part to increasing disapproval from Republicans and conservatives (including many libertarians), and reflect a disapproval with the Republican controlled Congress that is (sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly) transferred onto the President. With the exception of the time immediately after 911, social Democrats and left liberals have been, as is their wont, perpetually united in their disapproval of the President—something that was never likely to change, and which suggested that the highest approval rating the President could conceivably hope for would closely mirror, within a few percentage points either way, the 2004 election result percentages.
So when Bush’s approval numbers are in the thirties, this is a signal that Republicans and conservatives are increasingly disatisified with what “compassionate conservatism” has become—a spend-happy expansion of government entitlements and fiscal irresponsibility largely engaged in by the Republican controlled Congress. Which is to say, I think Bush’s approval ratings are affected in large part by disillusionment with a conservatism that is, fiscally-speaking, anything but.
There are, of course, other issues—the grandstanding by members of Congress over both the Dubai ports deal (grandstanding based on irresponsible reporting and an easy, non-forward looking outrage by people who should have known better); the NSA “domestic spying” scandal (also based on poor reporting, and kept alive by a Executive v. Legislative turf war); the immigration reform battle; social conservativism v. the libertarian portion of the Republican-voting coalition on such things as the Schiavo overreach, stem-cell research, ID; the Miers nomination, and on an on.
But as a loose alliance, Republican voters have had two major things in common: the desire for strong national defense, which includes a refusal to surrender sovereignty to the transnational progressivism pushed by many Democratics who fancy themselves continental elites; and the desire for a smaller government, one that is fiscally responsible and pushes back against the constant attempts by Democrats to expand the scope of the ever-growing nannystate.
I think Bush has done well keeping supporters for the former around (even those who, like many foreign policy realists, are dubious about the strategy for spreading democracy to the middle east, and taking with a grain of salt the complaints of those who have a vested interested in resisting changes to the military structure Rumsfeld has been trying to institute); but his failure to use his veto to control spending has alienated those whose primary interest is the constraint of government and spending.
Compassionate conservatism is nothing but free-spending centrism, and it hasn’t gone over well, as a whole, with conservative voters (though I think many of the programs Bush attempted to introduce were forward thinking, among them, social security reform, private health savings accounts, and substantial tax cutting). Nor has it gone over well with the libertarians who joined the Bush coalition.
None of which is to say that when it comes time to vote, Republicans will suddenly vote Democrat. Instead, the worry is that they may just stay home and disengage, which could, potentially, leave us with Democrat-controlled House that spends the next 3 years trying to roll back tax cuts and impeach the President.
Fortunately for Republicans, the national Democrats have shown themselves to be so shrill and unserious that even some in their own ranks are likely to stay home, which could offset conservative disillusionment. And as Jay Cost and AJ Strata note, taking their cue from the Democrats’ inability to win the seat of disgraced Republican Randy Cunningham, taking back the House may not be as easy as it should be for Democrats—whose “contra Bush” platform doesn’t seem to be enough to inspire the confidence of the electorate.
Still, for the Republican-voting alliance to hold, many recent Republican voters—who are willing to compromise on a number of issues in deference to the two important issues of national defense and smaller government—need to be convinced that those they elect will act fiscally responsible and commit themselves to cutting waste, which means spending control (along with the forwarding of legal conservatives for the federal bench).
And actions like those by California’s Lewis simply don’t inspire confidence that today’s Republicans are any more than free-spending centrists who just happen to distrust stem-cell research and wish Hollywood would make more “family” pictures.
That’s it, Jeff, you’re out of the Kult.
Turn in your secret decoder ring and your autographed picture of Karl Rove this instant, young man!
Turn in your conservative bona-fides, or I’m telling Hannity.
I find myself unhappily agreeing with you (not unhappy with you, just the situation)… One party grudgingly gets my vote while it seems like it tries to piss me off. The other party, not being serious about anything, cannot do the two things an opposition should; be a viable alternative, or at least keep the majority “honest” to their principles.
Bah.
You fail to note that a large part of the ‘voting’ base for the republicans are really democrats that are fed up with anti-american, we’re better than you idiots like Carter, Clinton(s), Algore, Kennedy(s), Reid, Peloshi, Boxer and Hanoi John. Most can and will switch their vote rather than stay home. Believe it, I’m one that crazy Carter first ran out of the party.
Reason #4 why we need a Democratic Party:
To prevent Republicans from becoming Democrats.
Seems like the move toward insanity made by the Democrats has left a philosophical void in Washington, and the part of the big-spending party is now being played by Republicans.
It is kind of pathetic, but until either the Democrats come to their senses or someone new shows up on the scene (or someone like the Libertarians is ready to be taken seriously), we’re kind of stuck with it.
The Republicans still have a ways to go before I think they’ll be worse than Democrats.
Yeah, I hear you.
I’m not a Republican. I’m not even a Conservative as such.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t vote for Republicans this year and in 08, simply because the alternative is Democrats, and they’re worse in every respect.
I don’t like a big state, lots of spending, a weak military, ineffectual foreign policy, or socialist tendencies.
Not voting (or voting Democrat) increases the probability of getting all those things (and if they win, a near certainty).
The only way the Republicans aren’t getting my vote is if they somehow become worse than the Democrats. And the odds of that are very, very, very small indeed. (Imagine an alternate reality where Lieberman won the 04 Democrat nomination, though…)
(And voting LP isn’t an option, since the LP is currently Stark Raving Insane… and in a way I don’t like.)
I thought the pro-life strategy was the winning strategy for the GOP. Wasn’t there a memo during the Shiavo mess that said it was important to capitalize on the pro-life side. Come on, pro-life gives the GOP all the cover it needs to spend like there’s no tomorrow. Reagan was pro-life, he spent a lot and won landslide victories. This is what Rush has been saying for the last 17 years…pro-life baby.
Since the reagan revolution, republican popularity has been bought with deficit financing, paid for by future generations. Whats amazing is how its NOT working for dubya. Do people really think his popularity would increase if radical spending cuts were brought in? Would he be more or less popular if cuts in Social security were made and attributed to him?
Norquist knows this. He knows you can’t cut budgets, but you can cause fiscal crisis. So that’s the small-government plan: turn us into argentina. Bush is setting us up on that path.
But i’m with jeff. I think the GOP should stop sending earnmarks to their districts. Let the democrats be the party that delivers government services. That thinks there ought to be social, secure retirements for the aged and infirm. That think we ought to have public education and prescription drug plans for seniors, not PhARMA. And let the people decide what they want.
<blockquote>Let the democrats be the party that delivers government services. That thinks there ought to be social, secure retirements for the aged and infirm. That think we ought to have public education and prescription drug plans for seniors, not PhARMA. And let the people decide what they want.</blockquote>
Did I miss the anarchy plank in the Republican platform?
No, you just missed the smug plank that has existed in Democrats since I can remember. They love the smell of their own farts, to steal a bit.
Cradle to Grave, baby. Cradle to Grave. Just vote your betters in, we’ll do the rest. And stop asking questions…
Are you even aware of the absurdity of that sentence as your conclusion? This is the party that asks:
“Why educate yourself, when WE can educate you?
Why save for retirement, when WE can take away your savings and give you a ‘generous’ allowance instead?
Why choose the doctor you like, when WE can choose a doctor for you?
Why drive where you want to, when WE can put you on a train to where you’re supposed to go?”
Let the people decide what they want. Ha!
I can’t tell you all how much I look forward to the day that my life is 100% planned and controlled by actus and his comrades.
TW: It was tried before, and we all remember how well it worked out.
This one post mirrors American politics.
1) Jeff bemoans the state of the Republican party that has sacrificed so many of its principles.
2) Others agree, wishing for a better alternative (and snark at Jeff)
3) A lefty troll (bsigniter) drives by, flinging feces at the discussion
4) Another lefty pops up and drives the discontented back to the Republican party.
5) The cycle begins again.
Well said, Jay, well said.
Keep voting for us!
Jay sums up nicely. The most eloquent spokes-people the Republicans have are Democrats, which is why the Repubs are liable to pick up a seat or so in both houses in November, even though they surely deserve to lose them both. Of course that calculus changes if the Democrats can, for once, show the party discipline to shut up. Time will tell.
“Keep?”
That’s a very interesting, non-mainstream prediction. I’d like to hear more.
Jay wins!
___
For what it’s worth, Jerry Lewis is my Congressman and there is no viable candidate running against him. In fact, there are no “tossups” anywhere in this state, as far as I know, thanks to ludicrous gerrymandering by a Democrat-dominated legislature and a sniveling, compliant GOP delegation.
Left-of-center pundits may howl about the GOP redistricting plan in Texas, but they should take a look at California first.
We already have that – now working on the concept of “Womb to Tomb”.
I’ll have you know, Jay, I’m a registered Republican and have been all my life. It’s the party that’s changed, not me. Like Reagan said of the Democratic Party, it wasn’t he that changed but the party. I’m a Barry Goldwater Conservative and find it very hard to find one of those in the current GOP.
I think I’ll sit out this election. My stomach is not strong enough to vote for a democrat, and it is now so clear that George Wallace almost had it right years ago when he said “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.†There is a difference, it is that we get screwed just a little bit slower by the republicans than we would by democrats. There are essentially no people of character in American politics any more (and maybe there never were).
OT, but I’ve never really understood the concept of an individual declaring themselves as a member of a political party. Politicians more or less have to, but what is the benefit to an individual?
Especially if you don’t agree with a party’s political ideologies. Isn’t that what a party is? A group of people with similar political ideologies?
So you don’t agree anymore, uncheck the box on your registration. Big whoop. Vote however you want, for the choice that’s in front of you on the ballot. There’s no chad to punch for the old Barry Goldwater Republicans.
MayBee
I am lucky in a way. I live in CT., and can vote for Joe L., who is more “Republican” than any GOPer in the state. How cool to be able to cast a vote that will actually upset my “liberal” friends. (Voting Republican is a wasted efort in New England.)
Squid hit the I was going to make. I certainly don’t have a problem with letting people decide what they want. When I get pissed off is when they decide what I want.
Lost Dog- it would indeed feel great to vote for Lieberman. I long to feel that again.
Well, that sounded stupid.
I mean that I long to feel great about the person I am voting for again. I was lucky, because my first vote was for Reagan. And truth be told, I felt choosing between Clinton and Dole I couldn’t go too wrong. But since then? meh.
I just received my absentee ballot for Jean Schmidt vs. whoever. Yeah, right. I’m not wasting the postage.