When we lament about the ‘Blue Wave’ that swept Republicans out of control of Congress, and arguably washed out the close elections of Tom McClintock, Tony Strickland, and Bruce McPherson, it is frustrating to feel like the GOPers in Congress truly don’t understand that a big piece of the blame goes to the Republican embrace of federal spending (up 44% since 2001!).
Check this out from FR friend Stephen Moore in today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary:
Wake-Up Call…or Snooze Button?
The political finger-pointing and recriminations are beginning in earnest among Capitol Hill Republicans, and it’s not a pretty picture. In the few days since the House GOP leadership elections, word is trickling out about why the caucus voted to re-elect its entire status quo slate of leaders. "The attitude of the members was simply this," says one of the 28 who voted for Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana for leadership. "Why change?"
A common attitude of other Republicans was it wouldn’t be "fair" to dump Rep. John Boehner after a mere eight months in the job as House GOP leader. Mr. Boehner is said to have given one of the best speeches of his political life before the vote, and he played the "fairness card" to the hilt. And once Mr. Boehner was in place as minority leader, the general feeling of members reportedly was let’s stick with the whole team and re-elect Roy Blunt as whip, over challenger John Shadegg of Indiana.
One reason is that House Republicans generally attribute their election defeat not to their own behavior, but rather to President Bush and the War in Iraq. This also was a convenient excuse for sticking with the status quo power structure. Ironically, Bush administration sources are blaming the election debacle on the House Republicans for spending too much money and for allowing scandals, like the Mark Foley page incident and the Tom DeLay indictments, to poison the waters.
"Pence and Shadegg were running as ‘change agents,’" says one distressed conservative member. "But in the end, our members had no appetite for change." Even worse, this House source notes, many House members bought the appropriators accusation that if it hadn’t been for fiscal whistle blowers "like Pence, Shadegg, and [Jeff] Flake, we might not have lost the elections in the first place."
Members of the Pence whip team tell me that many GOPers had already committed to John Boehner a week or so prior to the elections — before they knew how bad a beating they would take from voters. A lot of members reportedly wanted to make sure they could still get favors from Mr. Boehner, and didn’t understand that the minority leader doesn’t have a lot of favors to hand out. The fact that challengers Pence and Shadegg had rounded up almost the entire conservative movement support behind them didn’t hold an ounce of weight in this election. In fact, it may have been a negative because several members of the caucus say they were turned off by the way Reps. Pence and Shadegg had become "media hogs."
Perhaps the best summation of the leadership election races was offered by Mr. Flake, who reportedly told some of his conservative colleagues: "This caucus would have re-elected Mark Foley to the Child Welfare Committee if he were still around."