A lot of Republicans won on Tuesday. They won local and statewide races all over the country. Republicans were elected to state legislatures, governorships, and other statewide offices in large numbers. And the Republicans gained more than 60 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with six in the Senate.
The gain in the House is astounding. It was just four years ago that the GOP was kicked out of the House after twelve years in control. The Republicans lost even more seats in 2008. Republicans didn’t lose those seats just because people didn’t like the job President Bush was doing. They also lost seats because people didn’t like the job Republicans in Congress were doing. They went in as conservatives and came out as big-spending, big-government, Washington politicians. Maybe they wanted the federal government to do different things than the Democrats wanted, but they still wanted Washington to do them, and they spent a lot of money in the process.
John Boehner, Republican minority leader in the current House and presumptive Speaker in the next House was right when he said, on election night, “this is not a time for celebration”, but he missed the point, to some extent, when he continued: “[N]ot when one in 10 of our fellow citizens are out of work; not when we have buried our children under a mountain of debt … not when our Congress is held in such low esteem.”
Marco Rubio, Senator-elect from Florida, got it right:
“We make a great mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party. What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago.”
This fits with what I said back in May (not that it was all that hard to figure out):
“People are not switching to the Republicans because of what we have done – or even what we have proposed. They are turning against the Democrats because of what they have done – and the Republicans are the best way to vote against the Democrats.
In other words, Republicans, especially the Republicans in Congress, need to understand that if the Republicans do well in November, the victories are not a mandate. They are a chance. We are getting another chance, and we need to not blow it.”
So what do Republicans do now? First, avoid triumphalism. I think that most of them are doing this. (Here.)
Second, realize that Republicans are getting this second chance for two reasons. One: President Obama’s and the Democrats’ deficits and their expansion of the federal government. It could be that some (much?) of what President Obama and the Democrats have done was a logical extension of what President Bush was doing, but they went further, and they went, especially on the spending, enthusiastically. At the end of President Bush’s second term there were big deficits because of the economy, but President Obama’s plans would continue the deficits even after the economy recovered because he wanted to spend more money for new things and new programs.
Two: These deficits and this expansion of government resulted in the other thing that helped elect so many new Republicans to Congress: The Tea Party. Tea Party supporters were reacting to some of what President Bush started, in terms of the economy and financial system, but they were also reacting to things like President Obama’s health care plan and cap-and-trade, things that had nothing to do with President Bush.
So what should Republicans do now? Some people want them to just oppose, while others want things done. It is going to be tough to satisfy both the more enthusiastic Tea Partiers, who want government stopped and cut back, and independents, who want something done, especially with respect to getting the economy going again.*
Also, Republicans only control the House. Ultimately, what the Republicans can accomplish will depend on how President Obama reacts to all of this (see below) and on the Senate, neither of which they control.
It seems to me the Republicans need a two-part approach. While they need to be ready to work with President Obama and Congressional Democrats to get the economy moving, they also need to remain true to the principles of those who elected them. They can compromise on details as long as the general direction is right. They can go back one step as long as it is clear they are moving forward two steps.
But if President Obama’s idea of compromise is to do what he wants, but just a little slower, or to go in his direction but not quite as far, then Republicans need to say no. They need to say it carefully and thoughtfully, but they need to say it and they need to explain why.
Which brings us to the big question: What is President Obama going to do? How is he going to react? Will he pull a “Bill Clinton” and flummox the Republicans so badly that he is able to cruise to re-election in 2012 or will the next two years be as bad politically for him as the past two years, without the satisfaction of seeing big new programs passed?
I don’t know. I doubt that anybody knows for sure. One thing I will say, though. Assuming the Republicans do not mess it up (a possibility which should not be discounted), it will be harder for the President if he continues in his role as sociologist-in-chief, telling us how and why many of us aren’t smart enough to agree with him.
Everybody remembers back in 2008, when then-Senator Obama said this to a group of campaign contributors in San Francisco:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Just a few weeks ago, President Obama explained some of the opposition to his programs as follows (in another fundraiser, this one in Massachusetts):
"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country's scared.”**
If this is what President Obama thinks of the people who oppose his programs, if this is how the President views those who disagree with him, then the next two years are going to be a long hard slog.
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* I do understand that Tea Partiers and independents overlap. I use this distinction to more easily identify two imperatives that are facing the House Republicans.
** The connection between these comments and what some people perceive as a certain elitism in President Obama is probably worthy of a post or two. Maybe someday.
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