Without DeLay
Do Republicans realize they could lose Congress? Plus steroids and baseball and more.

Monday, April 10, 2006 12:01 A.M. EDT

Paul Gigot: This week on "The Journal Editorial Report," the GOP agenda and the 2006 elections. With Tom DeLay out of the picture, can Republicans get their mojo back? Plus, baseball steroid scandal. The Major League opened 2006 under a cloud of controversy as a book detailing the alleged steroid use of San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds prompts a formal investigation. Can America's pastime recover? Those topics plus our weekly "Hits and Misses." But first the headlines.

Hewitt: Hi, Paul.

Gigot: You argue in your new book that the Republican prospects in 2006 could be as "disastrous," and I think that's your word, as they were for the Democrats in 1994. Why do you think Republicans are in such trouble?

Hewitt: Well, I think it's a combination, Paul, of indifference and dithering. Republicans now are taking a lot of comfort in what they consider to be a gerrymandered and defeat-proof map in the House and a 10-seat margin in the Senate. But it is pretty easy to see how you could lose at least four seats in the Senate: Lincoln Chafee, Conrad Burns, Santorum and DeWine. And maybe one more and we're back to 50-50. And in the House it's about wave politics.

I was doing a show much like this in 1994 on the night that the Democrats were surprised by a wave. Chris Cox, now the SEC chairman, came into the studio and told me, "Hugh, if anyone tells you they saw this coming they're lying." Well, right now, a lot of voices are joining mine. Whether it's Newt Gingrich, I talked to Tom DeLay this week after his announcement, and many of those voices who close to American politics at the base realize that, while the Democrats can't pretty much turn out anymore than they did in 2004, all those people are most likely going to vote but a lot of Republicans may in fact sit on their hands unless they see the sort of activity that they thought they would get from a majority.

Gigot: Well, you know, this Republican Congress, they have the White House and Capitol Hill. But it started with so much promise, yet very little has gotten done. What has gone wrong? Why haven't they been able to agree and get some legislation passed?

Hewitt: You know, even if they would stand and slug it out with the opposition, that would be preferable to the appearance of inaction. The House, for example, is on a track record to match the Congress of 1948 for the least days in session. The number of actual debates, sort of like the ones that marked the judicial knockdowns of 2003 and '04, are missing. Now, the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito are great things to have on the table to point to, because there might be yet another vacancy, and the Senate would lose ability to confirm a Bush nomination to a third seat on the court if they lose even two or three Senate seats.

But Majority Leader Frist and certainly the House leadership have not managed to set up the kind of confrontations that attract the attention of the American people and clearly delineate the parties. There is a big difference here, and yet I think Republicans have McClellan's disease. They don't much care for face-to-face confrontation, for the kind of political conversation and debate that inspires Americans to make choices rather than to stay home in November. Right now I think they're leaning towards staying home.

Gigot: A lot of Republicans say, look, with President Bush's approval rating at 35% to 40%, very low, they need to distance themselves from the president, and maybe even criticize them, to protect their own status within their own districts or states. Do you agree with that as a Republican strategy?

Hewitt: No, no. That is the worst possible move. And I do see that, though, you're right. It's accurate description of what's going on out there. Chapter 1 of "Painting the Map Red" is about the war and about the president's leadership in the war, and about the need for Republicans to define themselves as the party that is serious about the threat that we face, is serious about the supporting the president, is serious about winning in Iraq, victory in Afghanistan, deployment wherever terrorists might find refuge.

And those that are running away from the president are basically telegraphing that they're not serious about the war. It is the one issue about which there is complete clarity in this country. The Democratic Party, if they win the House or the Senate, they will lead to the withdrawal from Iraq. That means defeat in the war.

And so Republicans have to, despite the numbers, they have to rally to the president's side and to the cause of the war, and to the cause of security. In there lies with hope of victory in November, as it was in 2002 and 2004, Paul. I don't think there can be much distance from the president that doesn't lead to distance from a majority.

Gigot: But Hugh, we're now five years from 9/11, from Sept. 11. We haven't had a terrorist attack here in the United States again. And Iraq is a struggle; it's a very difficult fight. Isn't the landscape of the national-security debate different now than it has been, was 2002 and 2004, and could Republicans lose the national-security debate this year?

Hewitt: You know, I don't think they can but I think they could lose it by not having it. I was in a theater recently when the trailer for "United 93" played, and it was like a gut punch for most of the people watching it. Right below the surface--and we saw it in the ports controversy; we see in the rallying to the president over the NSA program to conduct warrantless surveillance on al Qaeda contacting Americans who may be in cooperation with them, we see it time and time again. Right below the surface, the American people remain convinced that the president's No. 1 job and the job of the Congress is the security of the United States.

The immigration debate, for example, which could have been solved with a generous program of normalization and regularization, provided it had been coupled with serious security measures on the border including a fence--that also showed security, security, security, the war, the war, the war.

And, Paul, all the polls in the world will not persuade me that the American people have forgotten this, or that at least a majority of them have not forgotten it. All you have to do is push a little bit hard on the issue, and the American people quickly go back to understand that 9/11, as horrific as it was, could have been much, much worse, and that there remain tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Islamists who would do worse if they could.

Gigot: All right. Hugh Hewitt, we'll see if they're listening to you. Thanks for coming. When we come back, "Speaker Nancy Pelosi." Are those three words enough to get Republicans voters to the polls this November, or does the GOP need a plan B? Plus, the Major Leagues mired in scandal. Can baseball move past the steroid era, our panel tackles those topics and our "Hits and Misses" of the week, when "The Journal Editorial Report" continues.

Gigot: Welcome back. That was Congressman Tom DeLay hoping his resignation this week will allow Republicans to focus on maintaining their majority this November. Joining me on the panel, Wall Street Journal columnist and deputy editor Dan Henninger, OpinionJournal.com columnist John Fund, and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Steve Moore.

John, you've been talking to some Republicans in Congress. Do they know how much trouble they're in?

Fund: No. But they may know in November. The problem with the budget that collapsed this week is not so much that there is not going to be a budget; Americans don't care about that. It's the reasons why the budget collapsed. Earmark reform--these are the pork-barrel projects that are slipped in, in the dead of night--this really hurt the Republicans earlier this year. Remember the "bridge to nowhere"?

The conservatives had forced budget reform, with earmarks, into the budget, but at the last minute, Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis said to all of his committee members, you want to stay on this committee, you want projects, you will vote against the budget resolution. This is more serious than you can imagine, because when the Republicans lose control of the House mechanism, it gives people reminders that the Democrats had the same control problems in 1994. They looked chaotic, they looked incompetent as well as unprincipled, and that's what led to a historic defeat.

Moore: The big problem here is that where Republicans are really losing support is among their very conservative base, the people who put them in office in the first place.

Gigot: And they're upset with spending and--

Moore: Spending is the first thing that comes up whenever I give talks to conservative audiences. They mention--what is the symbol of the Republican Party right now? The "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska.

Fund: Well, Steve, it's even worse. We're now going to have "bridge from nowhere." It's in Mississippi; it's the railroad track that CSX is getting $700 million in taxpayer money through Trent Lott, the senator from Mississippi's, intervention. This is $700 million of national subsidies for a project that shouldn't even be happening in the first place.

Gigot: Well, you know, Dan, what interests me here is, Republicans go back to their districts, they talk to their voters, they hear what Steve says, they are upset about spending. And yet there is this disconnect. They just don't seem to get it. Instead they're going off every which way in Congress, and they're not getting their act together. What's the problem?

Henninger: The problem is an absence of real leadership. I mean, what we're describing here is a state of anarchy on Capitol Hill. And you've got on the Senate side, you've got a Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, who is in fact thinking about running for the presidency and trying to run the Senate at the same time. On the House side, I think the DeLay episode has been extremely distracting to the leadership. It's like a big congressional investigation. They've got to spend they're time worrying about Tom DeLay, and they're unable to police people like Jerry Lewis, the appropriations chairman, who pulled this trick this week. And the presidency, the White House, is actually--their congressional relations liaison has been very weak through this presidency. Under those circumstances, all of the House chairmen, they do what they do. They go off and run their own programs.

Moore: If you look at the single domestic policy achievement of the Republicans, obviously was the big tax cut that passed in 2003.

Gigot: Right.

Moore: Well, just this week, before a two-week recess, you would think the Republicans would want to go back and say, we renewed this. You know, we're going to extend it, but it fell apart last night. It's just another example of how the Republicans can't get their act together and even celebrate their victories.

Fund: And the markets will respond if the Republicans decline to extend the tax cuts, because that fueled economic growth. If the markets start to weaken in October and November, that will have political repercussions because you can imagine the Democrats will talk about that.

Gigot: John, we had a Republican strategist in recently who said that we had the three M's going for us: members, meaning incumbents, money and message. But when you get below the question--ask the question, what is the message? He said "Speaker Nancy Pelosi." So they're going to don their Nancy Pelosi fright mask, try to scare the voters with a negative campaign. Is that going to be enough to get their voters out with any enthusiasm?

Fund: In some districts, yes. But a lot people want to know, where's the beef? And voters aren't stupid. If you just have a purely negative campaign, that may convince them the Democrats are bad. Will it convince them to come out and vote for you?

Moore: Especially when they have, you know, they have a huge majority, the Republicans can't blame the problems on Nancy Pelosi. They used to be able to do that when the Democrats controlled Congress.

Henninger: Let's not forget the 800-pound gorilla in the room. We've got a war going in Iraq. This has been a war presidency. And I don't know whether Vince Lombardi actually ever said this, but in war isn't the only thing--everything. It the only thing. And we're not winning the war right now. It has just sucked all of the energy out of this presidency because, it has all been directed towards Iraq, and it's left a huge vacuum on Capitol Hill where there is very little to show.

Gigot: Just a short time left, John. Democrats say they want to nationalize the election like Republicans did in 1994. Republicans say they want to localize it. Suddenly they are big fans of Tip O'Neill--all politics is local. Is that a smart strategy?

Fund: We're going to find out next Tuesday. There is a special election in San Diego for Duke Cunningham, the congressman who took the bribes. Democrats are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars in to win that seat. If they win it in a surprise, you will see a nationalized election.

Gigot: All right. John, last word. When we come back, Barry Bonds nears the home-run record set by baseball greats Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth, as new allegations emerge about his steroid use. With a formal investigation under way, can Major League Baseball move past this current crisis? That and our "Hits and Misses" of the week.

Henninger: I think it's a step in the right direction. I think it actually is of a piece of what we were just talking about, the lack of leadership in Congress and Washington right now. Institutional leadership really matters. And what the institution of baseball is finally beginning to show is that it is trying to protect the integrity of the sport. Prior to that, when all of this junk was going on, they really weren't. The athletes could see that the leadership was basically complicit in what they were doing. And until the people running an institution like baseball show that they're against that sort of thing, the athletes see no reason to change.

Gigot: I can't believe I'm saying this, but I want to give some credit to Congress, because I think those hearings a while back on steroids just embarrassed Major League Baseball and the players in such a way that they feel compelled that they have to respond.

Moore: Major League Baseball has been quite hypocritical here, in my opinion. I mean, you look at what happened when Mark McGwire hit 70 homeruns, and that year that Sammy Sosa was in the--that was the best year for baseball. I mean, people were watching that. And Major League Baseball turned a total blind eye to the steroid use. Everyone knew that Mark McGwire was using steroids.

Henninger: He looked like it.

Gigot: Now, wait a minute, McGwire was, in his later years, at least quite similar to what he was as a younger man. He was always a slugger; he hit 50 homeruns as a younger baseball player. I don't think everyone knew at that time, until some of this investigation came out, at that time that it was really going so bad.

Fund: Well, institutional leadership is important, but let's talk about the fans. They fanatical fans are going to give Barry Bonds standing ovations, but there are a lot of part-time fans that, frankly, have missed the fact that baseball hasn't had a lot of heroes lately. Cal Ripken was perhaps the last great example. And a lot of part-time fans are turned off from the sport, and other sport, too, because frankly a lot of the stars like Barry Bonds are jerks. But you know what, that doesn't sell tickets and it doesn't really inspire confidence in the game.

Moore: The real tragedy of the Barry Bonds steroid use is, this guy was one of the great baseball players even without using steroids. And would be a Hall of Famer and he has tainted his career. My feeling is, they should have a zero-tolerance policy going forward. I don't see that you can really correct the mistakes of the past. I think was a mistake to put an asterisk by the homeruns of McGwire or Barry Bonds.

Henninger: And the question of tolerance--that implies that you're going to be able to catch them. In the future we're going to have things like genes that can be implanted, this is part of medicine, not sports. Genes that can be implanted to automatically turn on or turn off growth factors without injections. You will not be able to catch these people. They're going to have to, at some point, rely on the basic integrity of the people involved in the game.

Gigot: Well, what's baseball selling? It's selling fair competition, really. And If you go to the game and you think it's rigged--

Moore: People like to see the home runs.

Henninger: Then it becomes wrestling.

Gigot: Steve, Steve--exactly, it becomes professional wrestling. It becomes a circus, Barnum & Bailey, the guy with three heads. Baseball--attendance at baseball games is going to be a record this year; it was a record last year. And that is in the poststeroid era, Steve. So, I mean, why can't you have--

Moore: I don't know. I mean, the best year they ever had was when McGwire and Sosa hit all those home runs.

Fund: Look, they can keep their audiences. Wrestling keeps its audience, too. But it's a different game, and frankly, we will lose something if it goes in that direction.

Gigot: I want to read a quote from Tom Verducci, the very good sportswriter--baseball writer for Sports Illustrated, who said, "Whether Barry Bonds ever hits another homerun he can never be regarded with honor and full legitimacy," end quote, meaning in the Hall of Fame. Do you agree with that?

Moore: It's a tragedy because as I said, he is one of the great players of all time, but he has tainted his career.

Henninger: Let's put it this way: We know how to create better athletes, now we've got to figure out how to create better people.

Gigot: I think this is like the Pete Rose situation. He lied about betting on baseball; he's not going to be in the Hall of Fame. And Barry Bonds lied about steroid use, it sure looks like that. And he shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame.

Moore: But I'll bet people watch Barry Bonds when he breaks the homerun record.

Gigot: All right, Steve. You get the last word. We have to take one more break. When we come back, our "Hits and Misses" of the week.

Henninger: Well, yeah, we can all recall how, watching tennis matches, we've seen the Jimmy Connors and John McEnroes of the world going just totally ballistic over line calls. At the big Masters tournament in Key Biscayne, this past weekend in Florida, they decided to use computers to do instant replay of line calls and let the players challenge two of them per set. And then the computer would say whether it was in or out. Well, guess what? It turns out that the linespeople are almost always right, and these high-powered tennis players are almost always wrong. Maria Sharapova, the No. 1 woman's player in the world, challenged the lines people 11 times. She was never right. Tim Henman went 0 for 6. Now all I can say from--the lesson is, on behalf of chair umpires, linespeople, home plate umpires, basketball referees everywhere this the message" Stop whining and get back out there and play ball.

Gigot: To quote John McEnroe, Dan, "You can't be serious!"

Henninger: Yeah. [Laughter.]

Gigot: All right. Thanks. Next, 18 Republicans do the right thing as the House imposes new limits on free speech. John?

Fund: Paul the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law regarding freedom of speech. Well, a few years ago they started to do that with political speech--McCain-Feingold. That had the unintended consequence of creating 527, independent organizations, like George Soros'a or Swift Boat Veterans. And they are attacking Republican congressmen with admittedly misleading ads saying they are taking a six-week vacation, when actually it's a congressional work period back home. But the Republicans are so spooked by this, they have passed additional restrictions this week in the House on these groups restricting free speech. Eighteen members, 18 Republicans, voted against it. Fourteen of them also voted against prescription drug benefits a few years ago. Those 14 deserve to go into the principled hall of fame.

Gigot: Yeah, both parties are disgraceful on this. They've reversed themselves for exact opposite positions they took two, three years ago.

Fund: Paul, there may be a word in the dictionary beyond hypocrisy, it should describe this.

Gigot: All right. Thanks. Finally, a woman's group slams Exxon for sponsoring this week's Masters Golf Tournament--Steve?

Moore: Paul, Martha Burk and the feminists are at it again. They're trying to ruin this wonderful golf tournament. You recall a few years ago, they tried to have Augusta opened up to women, because it's a men's club. Now this week, after they failed two years ago, they are back. They went to an ExxonMobil shareholders meeting and insisted that Exxon withdraw from its corporate sponsorship of the Masters. To its credit, Exxon did not cave in to the feminists. And their point is something that I think the feminists should understand: that both Exxon and the Augusta National should have the freedom to choose.

Gigot: All right, Steve, tanks. That is it for this week's edition of "The Journal Editorial Report." Thanks to Dan Henninger, John Fund and Steve Moore. I'm Paul Gigot. Thank you for watching. We hope to see you all next week.