GOP
Left Holds Right Hostage
Posted Sept.
16, 2002
By Rod D. Martin
It turns out that,
thanks to an obscure Missouri law, the GOP may
regain the Senate as early as November, at least
for the rest of the year. And they may lose it
again almost immediately, courtesy of the Big
Tent.
First the good news. Capitol Hill is abuzz with
talk that a win by Republican Jim Talent in
Missouri's U.S. Senate race could shift control of
the chamber, at least for the remainder of the
year. Talent is running against Democratic Sen.
Jean Carnahan, widow of Mel Carnahan, the corpse
whom Missouri voters elected over then-senator
John Ashcroft two years ago. Jean Carnahan was
appointed to fill the vacancy. By Missouri law,
she must win the seat in her own right this fall.
But it now appears that, if she loses, Missouri
law forces her out of the seat immediately. Talent
would become Missouri's junior senator this
November, not in January. That would shift the
Senate back to Republican control, at least for
two months: 50 Republicans (plus Vice President
Dick Cheney to break ties), 49 Democrats and one
"independent," Vermont's Jim Jeffords,
the senator whose one-man coup in 2001 handed the
chamber to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.)
and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) in the first place.
The shift could prove earth-shattering. From
President George W. Bush's scores of bottled-up,
pro-life judicial nominees to his tax cuts to
Iraq, a flood of initiatives would burst through
the Democrat dam.
They would, that is, if they could. That they may
not is a testament to the disloyalty of the
Republican left and the suicidal shortsightedness
of the national party leaders who support and even
promote them.
The time bomb in this case is an extortionist
named Lincoln Chafee. Termed by the media a
"centrist" due to his voting record
almost identical to that of another famous
centrist, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) the
Rhode Island Republican senator is a leftist of
the sort only New England can produce. Just days
after Jeffords' defection, Chafee told Fox News
and CNN that he would continue to work to move the
GOP to the left. And assuming he didn't get his
way, if the GOP ever did get back its one-seat
majority, he'd switch parties to give control
right back to the Democrats.
Would Chafee follow through? Probably, if the
Democrats win enough races in November to keep
control in January. In that scenario, a Chafee
defection would thwart Republicans' "one big
chance," and probably would reward the
turncoat richly as well.
The irony, of course, is that the Republican
leadership gave Jeffords and Chafee this power.
How did they do it? By their insistence on
"running to the middle" as a general
election strategy. In 2000 alone, Republicans lost
two key Senate races in Washington state and
Nevada by just a few hundred conservative
votes cast for third parties. Had the party won
that handful of votes, or those of the countless
others who just stayed home, a 52-48 Senate would
have been impervious to Jeffords' and Chafee's
treachery.
Bush lost New Mexico and nearly lost both
Florida and the presidency for the same reason.
Indeed recent history is littered with such, from
the loss of the Colorado state Senate to George
H.W. Bush's and Bob Dole's disastrous runs against
Bill Clinton, each of which originally was thought
a cakewalk.
Running to the middle whether by actually
moving left or by sticking to mushy, vague
platitudes fails because it ignores simple
math. In elections where less than one-half (and
often less than one-third) of the people vote,
simply turning out all your own people will win
time and again. What's more, the
"middle" largely is irrelevant. Most
people who vote are, by definition, interested,
and therefore have an opinion; thus, running to
the undecided middle means trying to convince
people who probably won't vote, while turning off
the people who would elect you, if you gave them a
reason to do so.
Who are the Republicans' people? Certainly not the
loony leftists who populate Chafee's Providence.
They are the social and economic conservatives who
happen to make up most of America. They long for a
Ronald Reagan yea a whole party of Reagans,
leaders who will lead, not just mark time. And
though their fates may be wedded to the Republican
Party, their hearts and votes are not.
Reagan offered a compelling, winning vision of a
different, better America. For too many Republican
"leaders," this is almost inconceivable.
Until that changes, people such as Chafee will
continue to hold Republicans hostage. And the
left, whether in or out of power, will continue to
dominate America.
Rod D. Martin, founder and chairman of Vanguard
PAC, is an attorney and writer from Little Rock,
Ark. A former policy director to Republican
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, he is the senior
fellow in public policy and political affairs at
the Center for Cultural Leadership. |
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