REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Incumbency Over Ideas
The House GOP's real problems.
Tom DeLay deserves credit for taking himself out of the House Majority Leader contest this weekend, even if he did wait until other Members began to force his hand. He has now given his GOP colleagues a chance to reinvigorate their leadership, assuming they're alert enough to realize the dangers facing their majority this November.
On first glance, we're not sure they are. Speaker Dennis Hastert's response this weekend was to issue a press release declaring his sudden passion for "lobbying reform." The Speaker says he wants these "important reforms ready as soon as possible," never mind that they are so important he'd never mentioned them before. The idea seems to be that a ban on lobbyist-paid golf junkets or limits on the House floor privileges of former Members of Congress will prevent the next Jack Abramoff.
This is a junior-achievement version of what Democrats did in responding to the Clinton fund-raising scandals by adopting the cause of "campaign-finance reform." Why is it that whenever Congress gets into an ethics scrape, its first reaction is to further restrict the Constitutional rights of other Americans to influence Members of Congress? We can only hope these "reforms" will be as trivial as they sound.
The real House GOP problem isn't about lobbyists so much as it is the atrophying of its principles. As their years in power have stretched on, House Republicans have become more passionate about retaining power than in using that power to change or limit the federal government. Gathering votes for serious policy is difficult and tends to divide a majority. Re-election unites them, however, so the leadership has gradually settled for raising money on K Street and satisfying Beltway interest groups to sustain their incumbency.
This strategy has maintained a narrow majority, but at the cost of doing anything substantial. The last year in particular was an historic lost opportunity. House Republicans were also the main culprit in watering down Medicare reform, while Ohio's Mike Oxley has run the Financial Services Committee more or less as liberal Barney Frank would. Beyond welfare reform and tax cuts (and perhaps health-savings accounts), the GOP has achieved little in the last decade that will outlast the next Democratic majority.
Meanwhile, the most talented and policy-driven Members have continued to leave Congress for other opportunities. Chris Cox now runs the SEC, Rob Portman is the U.S. trade rep, J.C. Watts is in the private sector, and others are running for Governor or the Senate. The leaders who remain have become ever more preoccupied with process, money and incumbency. Ideas are an afterthought, when they aren't an inconvenience.
As House Republicans consider replacing Mr. DeLay, they need to choose someone who will reinvigorate their commitment to reforming Washington. And this may mean more change than they'd otherwise prefer entering an election year.
Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt is signaling a run, despite his performance last year. Northeast Members forced him to pay three or four times for their votes to pass the 2006 budget, which is not a good sign for a man who rose in the ranks as a vote counter in the whip operation. Mr. Blunt has never been an ideas or policy man, and we'd like to know how he'd lead differently than he has.
Ohio Congressman John Boehner jumped into the race yesterday, and at least his letter to his colleagues acknowledged GOP troubles by proposing "a conversation about renewal." He mentioned "the vision that brought us to majority control" in the House: "a vision of smaller, more accountable government and of a society deeply rooted in principles of personal responsibility." To his credit, he's also never voted for a highway bill. On the other hand, Mr. Boehner flopped in an earlier stint in the leadership before a more successful effort as chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee.
One puzzle is that so far no one in the younger generation has stepped forward to seek the job. We've heard plenty of justifiable grumbling over the past year from the likes of the conservative Republican Study Committee. But the fact that no one from its ranks seems ready to battle for leadership suggests an excess either of deference or complacency. When Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey were bidding to run the House GOP back in the late 1980s, they didn't wait for Bob Michel's permission. They were rounding up votes for months and struck when the main chance arrived.
Our sense is that Republicans don't yet appreciate the trouble they're in. Confident of K Street money and gerrymandered districts, they think the voters will never turn Congress over to a party run by Nancy Pelosi. But that's also what Democrats and the media thought about Republicans led by Newt Gingrich in 1994. Eventually, voters may grow more disgusted with Republicans who care only about re-election than they are afraid of Ms. Pelosi's San Francisco liberalism.
