Monday, May 12, 2008
Democrats are finally rejecting craven compromises and redefining the party in opposition to right-wing Republicans.
Jun 17, 2005 | Half a century ago, Republican Sen. Robert Taft said the duty of the opposition was to oppose. Republicans were arguing the same line in 1994. Two months before the midterm elections that year, a bitter game of legislative chicken had ensued. The Republicans were filibustering a campaign-finance bill, one of the few items standing on President Clinton's legislative agenda. Amid an all-night session, as cots were set up and the theatrics began, Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell was frustrated. His party controlled Washington but couldn't pass meager campaign-finance reform. The Republican minority, Mitchell lamented, was "unprecedentedly obstructionist."
Come Election Day 1994, the obstructionists prevailed. Republicans took control of the House for the first time in four decades, and the Senate for the first time in eight years. More than a decade later, Democrats are borrowing from the Republican playbook.
As Democrats regroup from the electoral drubbing of 2004, they intend to portray Republicans as they themselves were cast a decade ago: a majority corrupted by political hubris gone awry. If a unifying strategic theme can be found among Democrats as they prepare for midterm elections, it is their intention to run as the alternative to what they claim is Republican legislative overreach and abuse. They'll "absolutely" run on their refusal to capitulate to Republican policies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declared in an interview. But compared with the Republicans of 1994, she said, "We have a stronger case."
Democrats are relying on the congressional equivalent of turnabout being fair play. And President Bush has taken notice: "On issue after issue, they stand for nothing except obstruction," he said of the Democrats at a GOP fundraiser this week. What a difference a term makes. The Democratic willingness to compromise that marked Bush's first term is no more. Most clearly, on the president's signature second-term issue, the partial privatization of Social Security, Democrats are almost bellicose in their opposition. "It's not dead yet," Pelosi said. "We have to stay focused on taking that down."
Democrats are also hoping to take down the nomination of conservative John Bolton to become the U.S. ambassador at the United Nations; they've waged a fight against legislation to make Bush's tax cuts permanent. And as the fight over judicial nominations gets hotter, Democrats gathered what political capital they could to retain their right to filibuster. "Right now," Pelosi said, "the issues climate and the ethics climate are very conducive to success for the Democrats."
"Conducive to success" is about as bold as Pelosi will get. But beneath the guarded language, Democrats are almost giddy. Whereas presidential elections place emphasis on the candidates, midterm elections are believed to be a referendum on the status quo.
Veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, in what amounted to his first extended interview since the 2004 presidential election, said the Republicans are exactly where Democrats want them. "I think the contours of the landscape are such that you have a president whose major domestic initiative, Social Security, is in terrible if not terminal trouble," he said. "You have the cessation of judicial wars and satisfying the right wing. And I think the country is saying, why aren't they doing something about education, healthcare, the economy, and Iraq, the things that really matter in our lives?"
The midterm elections may be more than a year away, but Shrum insists, "We are gaining long-term traction." To be sure, recent developments have given Democrats leverage in their role as the opposition. Polls show that about six in 10 Americans now disapprove of the way Bush is handling the U.S. economy and the war in Iraq. Multiple polls, from Pew to CBS News, show the president's approval rating at record lows for his administration, bobbing just above 40 percent. Ethical questions surrounding Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, have offered Democrats reams of material in making the case for Republican abuse of power. Democratic advertising already emphasizes the ethical imbroglios surrounding DeLay.
In Bush's push for the partial privatization of Social Security, Democrats echo the Republican opposition to Clinton's first-term healthcare plan, arguing that unified opposition to the majority's alleged abuse is a viable stand in its own right. "Social Security really has become a gift that President Bush has given us. He went to a place he wasn't prepared to go," Pelosi said.
Democrats intend to put this "gift" and others to good use in 2006. They will cite the GOP's efforts to undermine the judicial branch in the Terri Schiavo case as emblematic of Republican legislative overreach. They will cite General Motors' recent announcement that it intends to lay off 25,000 American workers, amid an ever-widening chasm between the richest and poorest Americans, while gas prices remain at record levels, as examples of an out-of-touch Republican Party.
And with more than 40 million Americans without health insurance, the minority party remains optimistic that healthcare is the "kind of issue that Democrats can rally on," former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois said in an interview.
Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., has reportedly joined calls for the United States to consider closing the controversial prison at Guantánamo Bay, describing it as an "icon for bad stories" and declaring that "it's not very American, by the way, to be holding people indefinitely." The Downing Street memo adds mortar to the case that the Bush administration was determined to go to war despite misgivings over intelligence.
Such revelations have led the House member who renamed French fries "freedom fries" -- because of France's opposition to the Iraq war -- to reconsider his support for the invasion. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., recently told ABC News that the facts compel him to conclude that the war in Iraq was waged under false pretenses.
Democrats are wagering that while the public's misgivings over the Iraq war didn't defeat Bush in 2004, eroding support for Bush's Iraq policy may help the minority party in 2006. Fewer Americans, 42 percent, support the war today than ever before, according to the Gallup Organization. "The election is over and [Americans] are seeing some of these things with the air clear. They see that troops are dying, that the violence continues, and that we are not safer as a country," Pelosi said.
But will all of this add up to Democratic victories next year?
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