The votes — and possible recounts — aren’t totally in yet from the landmark 2006 mid-term elections but this much is clear:
The Democrats will take control of the House. At the very least, the Democrats will come close to having taken control of the Senate. And the Democrats had a good day in their campaigns for governorships.
Exit polls and analysts noted that corruption, the war in Iraq, corruption scandals, and dissatisfaction with President George Bush combined to — for now at least — unravel the coalition that made possible the Reagan Revolution. More likely than not, the vote will be seen as protest vote — a vote in which many voters (including some Republicans) sent a message to the GOP and to President George Bush.
But there’s another factor that analysts will likely analyze:
George Bush and the GOP lost part of the edge that helped them win in 2000, 2002 and 2004: many polls cited by analysts showed that the Republicans lost independent and moderate voters in droves.
So welcome to the new political era: an era in which for the first time a woman will become speaker of the House, many Democrats who were elected are somewhat more more centrist (to garner votes in districts that would not normally elect a progressive Democrat), and where the concept of divided government — with at least one part of a branch is controlled by the opposing party providing vigorous oversight — will be the norm.
It’s an era where the Republican party — which pursued a “southern strategy” starting with Richard Nixon — has actually become more of a genuinely southern-based based party — just as the Democratic party emerged from this election as more of a northeastern based party. [UPDATE: A reader in comments below points out that the Democrats also did well elsewhere..]
How will George Bush respond? Will he throw down the gauntlet and echo the words of Vice President Dick Cheney that the administration isn’t running for re-election and it’ll be full speed ahead on a course it sets? Will GWB in his slated press conference today hold out an olive branch to those who seek a different approach to the Iraq war? Or dig in his heels?
Will Bush return to the model of governing for which he was famous in Texas as Governor by reaching out to the opposition party and trying to work in bipartisan mode? Granted, harsh words were exchanged during the campaign. But stranger things (such as Lyndon Johnson running as Vice President with rival John F Kennedy) have happened in American politics.
When the detailed analyses are made, and the lawyers have finished their scrutiny of the votes and any recounts are concluded, the key fact will remain: parts of the Reagan coalition came apart on election day 2006 — and independent and moderate voters overwhelmingly deserted the GOP.
Here are some possible factors why:
THE WAR IN IRAQ: This issue had shifted to being “for the war” or “against the war” or “stay the course” or “cut and run.” It also involved a growing conclusion on the part of many that effective policy formulation, war management and contingency planning were lacking. The daily drumbeat of bad news out of Iraq was coupled by a growing consensus in on many ends of the political spectrum that the war has been mismanaged. In this context, Cheney’s comments over the weekend probably did not help Republican prospects since he seemed to suggest the administration’s course was fixed no matter what.
CONGRESSIONAL CORRUPTION: The financial and sexual scandals coming out of this Congress negated lingering images of it as a Congress of reformers who came into power under Newt Gingrich. Most scandals involved Republicans.
THE BOB WOODWARD BOOK: This book was an eye-opener to many. It painted a portrait of a curiously closed-minded administration where the kind of policy formulation process students study in colleges and grad schools was missing. Rather than policy carved out from exploring, studying and analyzing many options, Woodward — who wrote two earlier books favorable to Bush, so he had extra credibility — essentially painted a portrait of an administration that formulated policy by positive affirmation.
THE RUMSFELD FACTOR: There were calls from some Republicans, as well as some Gannett-owned newspapers serving military areas but Bush’s public statements suggested he thought Rumsfeld was doing just fine. This meant those who sought a change could not achieve it by requesting it from the White House; they had to find a countervailing force…which emerged as the rebirth of divided government.
THE YECHH FACTOR: Some negative ads run by the GOP worked (negative ads DO work) but this time ads run in one state gained extra viewership by becoming the focus of news stories…and also via the You Tube Revolution, exposing the ads to countless other viewers. And some You Tube viewers would then embed these ads on their weblogs. What may have played well in one locale was seen in other locales and was likely to have hurt votes elsewhere. These ads most assuredly did not play well with independent voters. (And Rush Limbaugh suggesting Michael J. Fox was faking his illness’ symptoms probably didn’t help.)
THE NEED FOR CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT: Even Goldwater-descended conservatives were upset by a characteristic of the now-somewhat-displaced Congress that has not been seen often in American history: members of Congress surrendering their Congressional powers of advise and consent and oversight to “go along to get along” with the White House. Congress usually ferociously protects its right to have significant input in shaping and approving policy; this Congress yielded it.
A key issue is whether this election signals an end to the idea of “mobilization elections” where a political party pursued a strategy used by White House political maven Karl Rove. He went on the assumption that independents really didn’t exist so his goal was to mobilize the party’s base and its coalition and not attempt to govern through the center.
The election results could lead to several possibilities:
(1) There will be a greater effort to appeal more to centrists both in terms of votes and in terms of policy-making in Congress, and in greater cooperation between the executive and legislative branches.
(2) It will mean little since those who advocate mobilizations will (rightly) point out that towards the end of the campaign the GOP did in fact rally its base and get it out to stave off what could have been a bigger loss.
(3) Some will argue Bush needs to be more conservative and even firmer on Iraq and other policies go get the base re-fired up and regroup for 2008.
But there is one certainty: if the GOP had gotten the same number of centrist and independent voters it had in past elections, come January there wouldn’t be some major offices changing owners in the House and some lawyers tonight might not be preparing for contentious recounts.
SOME KEY MEDIA EXCERPTS:
Americans finally got to vote on the war. They want change.
They got to vote on one-party rule. They rejected it.
They got a chance to vote local. They voted national.
No matter what name was on the ballot, to many voters it read “George W. Bush.”
And for Republicans, for the first time in six years, that was very bad news.
A toxic stew of a war gone bad, politicians gone corrupt and issues not addressed left voters in a vengeful mood, clearly voting more against Republicans than for Democrats.
Indeed, the Democrats essentially beat something with nothing. They offered no clear agenda, no Contract with America, not even a memorable bumper sticker. This was an election driven by feelings of rejection far more than embrace.
But they did offer a vessel for change, and voters sent a loud message that the status quo of one-party, highly-partisan rule would no longer do. Theirs was a triumph of tactics more than it was a victory of vision. They selected candidates — vets, cops and jocks — who appealed not to the right or the left, but the often-neglected middle. It was about winning, not ideology.
The political world that George W. Bush inhabited for the last six years — the one he ruled — ended yesterday.
The new world, in which Democrats have picked up more than the 15 seats needed to control the House while bolstering their ranks in the Senate, will require painful adjustments in the president’s governing style, compelling him to choose between the role of a partisan warrior or a more conciliatory leader who seeks bipartisan accords to get things done.
Bush’s agenda will change, too. He’ll be under intense pressure to pull troops from Iraq; defense of his tax cuts will become more difficult; and plans to revamp New Deal-era social programs will be downsized, or ditched. Immigration overhaul, an energy independence plan, and the pursuit of free-trade pacts may be doable goals — if Bush can cut deals with foes he once steamrolled.
“It’s a new day,” said former Louisiana Democratic Senator John Breaux. “If the president wants to get some things accomplished, he’s going to have to involve the Democrats.”
As Texas governor, Bush worked with a Democratic legislature to improve schools and simplify taxes. As president, he found it far easier to use loyal Republican majorities in the House and Senate to crush Democrats, earning an enmity that may come back to haunt him.
—Washington Post editorial:
SIX YEARS OF nearly unbroken one-party rule have not been healthy for the country. The apparent Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives yesterday is a good thing. Republicans won control of the House in 1994 promising a change from Washington business as usual. Instead, entrenched by gerrymandered redistricting into what they envisioned would be a permanent majority, Republicans slid toward lax oversight, unbridled partisanship and rampant sleaziness, if not outright corruption. Voters yesterday expressed their anger at President Bush and their frustration with the war in Iraq, as well as their disgust with the arrogant misbehavior of House Republicans. Though we regret the loss of some of the most talented Republican moderates, the GOP deserved to lose its majority.
Less clear is that Democrats deserved to win — or that they would have done so absent Republican missteps. The Democrats won the House, and, as of this writing, at least narrowed the GOP majority in the Senate, but not because voters necessarily agreed with their program. How many voters, we wonder, could name even one of the Democrats’ vaunted “Six for ’06” legislative proposals? As they prepare to wield power, Democrats don’t have capital from voters; at most, they enjoy a line of credit.
There is no way to spin the election results. They were a repudiation of George W. Bush, his party, his agenda, and his war. The commander in chief argues that he is fighting a war in Iraq that is essential to the survival of the United States. The electorate sent a message: we don’t buy it. Political genius Karl Rove and GOP chieftain Ken Mehlman, with their scare tactics (defeatist Democrats will surrender to the terrorists; Nancy Pelosi will destroy the nation) and below-the-belt ads, were not able to defy popular sentiment. Comeuppance was the order of the day. Because of Bush, R became a scarlet letter. In Rhode Island, incumbent Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee, a moderate who voted against the war in 2002 and against Bush in 2004, enjoyed a 66 percent approval rating; still. voters sent him packing. Children, pay attention. If you’re a president who misleads the nation into war and then mismanages that war, you might sneak past a reelection but then bring ruin upon your party. The Bush-wreaked reality trumped the Rove-designed rhetoric–finally. The voters chose not to stay his course. The market worked.
HERE’S A CROSS SECTION OF WEBLOG OPINION AND SOME BLOG ROUNDUPS ON THE ELECTION:
–Glenn Reynolds, aka InstaPundit, has a ton of links so it’s best to start HERE and scroll down. But here’s one specific take he offers — suggesting that the time may be nearing for a third party:
IN A WAY, IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW IT TURNS OUT: The message for the Republicans — and the Democrats — is that they need to do much better. The GOP, as I noted before, made a number of “unforced errors” that took them from a strong to a weak position — not because they spent political capital, but because they squandered it. They were too busy stuffing their pockets and taking their base for granted, and — whether or not they lose big or lose small — they could have done beter, without sacrificing any of their principles, if they’d had a bit more self-restraint.
Meanwhile, the Democrats, even if they take both houses, will have to actually discover some governing principles — and if they’d had those on display, they’d be running away with this election right now.
I’ve written before that technology, diminishing voter loyalty, and new media make a third party a lot more feasible than it used to be. The two big parties are depressingly inept, each arguing that the other is worse, and both make a strong case. . . .
The House of Representatives has now become a key check on an out-of-control executive. It reflects a big shift in the minds and souls of Americans. The Senate is still unclear – but the Dems have made gains, clearly. The founders knew what they were doing. The country wants to go back to the center, to have a sane, reality-based debate about what to do in Iraq, how to rescue the looming fiscal catastrophe, and how to defeat Islamo-fascism and how to detain and interrogate terror suspects. So we have a re-balancing.
—Blogs for Bush’s Mark Noonan:
Some of you might not be old enough to remember 1981, but I am…back in 1981, Ronald Reagan confronted a Democrat-controlled House and he managed, with this, to get through the largest tax cuts in American history, as well as the defense build up which won the Cold War. How so? Well, that House had about 30 conservative Democrats who simply had to vote with the GOP or else lose their seats at the next election. In the elections yesterday, the Democrats won their House majority due to the fact that they ran a couple score conservative Democrats who managed to eke out wins against GOPers made unpopular by public concern over how we’re going to win the liberation of Iraq and the larger War on Terrorism. Those new Democratic House members, if they want to be re-elected in 2008, will not be able to vote for impeachment, vote for tax increases or vote for a withdrawal from Iraq. Functionally, conservatism still controls the House.
…What we should do is throw down the gauntlet – the President should propose another round of tax cuts, and defy the Democrats to vote against them; the Congressional GOP should move resolutions expressing support for victory in Iraq, and defy the Democrats to vote against them. We can very easily rock the Democrats back on their heels and force them to either abandon their base, or alienating the average American. That done and it only becomes a matter of re-crafting a new “Contract with America” for 2008.
—Balloon Juice’s Tim: “1 AM I’m going to bed. Speaker Pelosi will have endless hours of fun playing with her new subpoena power, marginal Repubs will find this a great time to retire and the “waveâ€? Dems will have a year and a half to convince their conservative districts to keep them on for another term. The Webb-Allen race seems destined for a recount so don’t count on knowing who controls the Senate by morning. That assumes that both McCaskill and Tester win their races, which they probably won’t. So settle with a Democratic House for now.”
I don’t think anyone can honestly look at the results tonight and say that we saw anything less than a trip to the woodshed for the Republicans. We may hold the Senate by the barest of margins, but the House is gone in a substantial manner. Some will make comparisons between this six-year election and those past (1986, 1974, 1958) and claim a moral victory in containing the losses, but that simply won’t fly.
This is a big loss, and it will hurt the GOP and the Bush administration. Even if we do hold the Senate, we will have to find compromise candidates for the federal bench, and also look forward to more taxes and regulation. Free trade is a goner. The prosecution of the war on terror will get limited by a probable repeal of the Patriot Act, or at least an attempt to do so, and I’m very sure the Democrats will move to defund the operations in Iraq by a date certain in order to force a “phased redeployment”.
And that’s not even counting the myriad investigations that Democrats will launch against the Bush administration. Republicans will keep it from getting out of hand, but the Democrats will want to build enough damaging allegations to win again in 2008. However, in terms of policy at least, the American people have spoken.
So much for the purported genius of Karl Rove and his vaunted plans for a permanent Republican majority.
Americans have voted tonight for checks and balances. By turning the House over to the Democrats, and by putting the Senate within reach (thanks to competitive races in three red states, no less), the voters have basically honored James Madison’s dictum that it is wise to divide power between “opposite and rival interests,” in order to “control the abuses of government.”
Americans have put the breaks on one-party rule. They have judged the GOP to be guilty of hubris – a vice that typically afflicts those who wield clout without accountability – and so they have decided on the punishment, which is that now President Bush, in his lame duck years, must share power with those whom he only recently demonized as bad for America. He has basically spent the political capital that he boasted about in November of 2004, and now the bill has come due.
First, I’m pleased to see that Arnold beat that wimp Angelides to a pulp; he’s currently up by a margin of about 30 percent. So Californians do have some good sense, after all.
Second, congratulations to the Democrats for winning control of the House for the first time since 1994. So, now that you have some power again, what are you going to do with it?
Finally, control of the Senate remains very much in doubt at this moment; it looks like it may come down to a few hundred votes in Virginia and/or Missouri. With recounts and challenges, we might not know which party will control the Senate for several weeks. Oh, joy.
—My DD’s Chris Bowers: “I can smell it now. The Senate is clearly moving towards us. We will take both. No one will steal it from us this time.”
All the post-mortems will start manana. Right now I think I’m more furious with the GOP for fielding such deplorable candidates in so many races, and for the fact that we lost at least a half-dozen seats due to ‘corruption’. Sorry, but we are Republicans. I think maybe some of the people who lost deserved to lose. I hate saying that. We need to be more careful about who we chose to run in the primaries. The candidates they fielded here in NM were a disgrace – some of the worst I’ve ever seen. How can we win when only losers get through the whole primary system. I don’t know why conservatives kept propping up Santorum who consistently had the lowest approval numbers in the Senate.
Now Congress hasn’t gotten much done the last few years, in large part because the Republican majority has been more interested in doing things for itself than for the country as a whole. But the Idiot has a feeling about the Democrats. If they control the House, the bills it passes will be designed to show themselves as solutions for the whole country. If they somehow manage to pull off the Senate, the bills sent to the president will, again, be carefully tailored to, not a constituency, but the entire nation, and George W Bush will have to say whether he, as de facto head of the Republican party, agrees with such a vision.
This is a change. No matter what happens from here on out, no longer will laws be made in cloakrooms and caucuses. That is something new, no matter what the talking heads have to say.
If true, Gridlock is Back and the government will be better for it. This blog was created to track and discuss the difficulties of a government operating under Gridlock.
Funny thing is over time, it has rapidly been demonstrated just how poorly things can go in the absence of Gridlock. A party with free reign that rains down incompetence needs a little gridlock to slow it down. That appears to be very likely now coming from the House and could yet be distantly possible in the Senate.
—Joe’s Dartblog did live blogging.
Just finished a longish interview on CNN Pipeline with Rob Bluey and Ed Morrissey. We’re pretty much on agreement that the Republicans brought their losses onto themselves, should have fired Denny Hastert, and that George Allen has run an awful campaign. Rob thinks this may be a good thing because it’ll put the conservatives in charge of the House GOP delegation, whereas Ed and I think losing is always bad. Further, I argue that the reason conservatives did better than moderates this go-round is because the latter ran in Blue states, not because they weren’t conservative enough.
The Unblonde: “Though I am thrilled about the (apparent) results of the election, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of foreboding, as if the idea of things shifting politically is a sign of the apocalypse. Still, Ken Blackwell? SPANKED. Rock.”
Given that Burns is trailing badly as I type this and given that MO is leaning Democratic, I am getting that sinking feeling the the balance of the Senate is going to tilt on Virginia. The sinking feeling is not horror over who will control the Senate, rather it is about the fact that we are likely about to go through weeks of legal fights and procedural maneuverings over this final seat.
I don’t think that that is healthy for the republic, but we shall see.
—Bring It On!: “Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate too as voters across the United States sent a message to lawmakers in every corner of the nation. In what will rightly be seen as a referendum on the Bush Administration and the culture of corruption that permeates the Republican party, this was an election when the people put national interest ahead of their own local concerns.”
—The Locust Fork: “In a repudiation of the policy failures of the administration of president George W. Bush, the American people returned power in “the people’s House” back to the Democratic Party Tuesday in a historic awakening vote.”
—Wizbang:
I can think of no other word than “disaster.” I honestly do not want to get into extensive analysis tonight of what happened, what went wrong. I think it came down to Iraq. However, the losses have been terrible. We lost the Senate and the House. It may take us a generation to once again to win majorities such as those we had from 2004 through 2006.
Today the party must start to rebuild. And that means conservatives cannot and must not run around screaming that it was RINO Republicans. I have long argued that we were the governing party and had to act as such to earn the confidence of the American people. We have lost their confidence. We must regain it.
—Talk Left: “What Republicans are trying to spin is that the tsunami tonight as not a loss for conservative policies. But look who was defeated or is headed to defeat tonight – Santorum, Allen, Burns, Talent. Not to mention the conservative congressmen defeated. These are four of the most conservative politicians in America. If that is not conservative defeat, then what is?”
–Our coblogger Michael Stickings did extensive live blogging.
—Kevin Drum gives a host of reasons for the defeat and says a prime one is that Bush and the GOP lost the country’s center:
Did Republicans lose because they weren’t conservative enough? With all due respect to folks like Andrew Sullivan and Bruce Bartlett, I doubt it. The American public has shown over and over that it’s operationally moderate, and I suspect that George Bush has actually pushed conservatism about as far as it can go. If you take a look at the exit polls, Republicans lost because they lost the center, not because they lost their base.
On a similar note, this idea that the Democratic Party is getting “more conservative” because it backed several center-rightish candidates in red states is just weird. Both parties compromise where they have to, and Dems have run plenty of moderates before. They just haven’t won. This year some of them did, but their actual numbers were pretty small and I doubt they’re going to have much of a concrete effect on anything. (On the other hand, the Republican Party did lose a bunch of its moderates, and it didn’t have many to lose. It looks even more extreme today than it did yesterday, which doesn’t bode well for its future.)
–Kiko’s House has a great roundup.
—Maggie’s Farm: “No pontificating about the elections here – this was a normal and predictable swing of sentiment and energy at this point in a Presidential administration but, still, each individual election has to be understood in its own local context.”
—Michelle Malkin says conservatism didn’t lose:
The GOP lost. Conservatism prevailed. “San Francisco values” may control the gavels in Congress, but they do not control America. Property rights initiatives limiting eminent domain won big. MCRI, the anti-racial preference measure, passed resoundingly. Congressman Tom Tancredo, the GOP’s leading warrior against illegal immigration–opposed by both the open-borders Left and the open-borders White House–won a fifth term handily. Gay marriage bans won approval in 3 states. And as of this writing, the oil tax initiative, Prop. 87–backed by deep-pocketed Hollywood libs, is trailing badly in California.
John Kerry’s late-campaign troop smear galvanized bloggers and talk radio hosts, but it was not strong enough to overcome wider bipartisan voter doubts about Iraq.
A big roundup at Pajamas Media.
It should be interesting to see what happens next. Democrats are going to be in a position now where they have to produce results rather than just constantly carping and whining. I also predict that at least some partisans who got used to doing nothing but criticizing Republicans will be stung and shocked when they hear some of their own arguments flung back in their faces. It’s extremely easy to criticize anything and everything someone does. It’s entirely another to have to defend your own actions.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the White House handles this, and how the new Speaker and Majority Leader form a relationship with this White House. This could be an opportunity for all parties to forge new and positive directions. Or we could see two more years of food fights. I guess we’ll see.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.