Congress

last updated 8 January 2015

Democrats can hardly wait for November, said James Traub in The New York Times. Ever since 1994, when the Republican revolution relegated them to the unhappy role of minority party on Capitol Hill, they've been 'œvowing to retake Congress every two years.' This time, they actually have a chance of doing it. This fall's midterm elections are likely to be a referendum on George W. Bush's troubled presidency—and Republicans are plenty worried. Over the past few months, their president has endured one political debacle after another—the failed Hurricane Katrina response, Harriet Miers' embarrassing Supreme Court nomination, the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal, and, of course, Iraq. At the same time, mainline Protestants and independents are abandoning the GOP as it becomes 'œthe party of intelligent design and the ban on stem-cell research.” Voters seem ready for a change. A new Newsweek poll finds that 50 percent of the public would prefer to see the Democrats in control of Congress, with only 34 percent preferring the status quo of Republican rule.

It doesn't help that the GOP is a party divided, said Dan Balz and Jonathan Weisman in The Washington Post. For his first five years in office, Bush 'œset the Republican agenda, and congressional Republicans followed his lead.' Now, said Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey in Newsweek, 'œRepublicans are beginning to look and sound like their own caricature of the Democrats: disorganized, off message, and unsure of their identity.” Small-government fiscal conservatives are seething over soaring federal spending. Bush's proposal to grant amnesty to illegal aliens and his support for the Dubai port deal have outraged nativists. Conservative congressmen are in revolt, 'œtired of being taken for granted by an overbearing White House,' and eager to distance themselves from a president whose popularity ratings languish in the mid-30s. 'œRepublicans once happily attacked Democrats for second-guessing the commander in chief on Iraq and the war on terror. Now they are daring to do the same.”

'œGleeful liberals and conservative Chicken Littles' have it all wrong, said Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online. It's true that 'œthese are trying times” for the conservative tribe. But that's the price of running Congress for 11 years, and the White House for five. Majority parties usually brawl among themselves 'œfor the same reason that pirates fight over buried treasure after they find it: They have something to fight over. They have to govern, which means pleasing some constituencies and infuriating others.' That was also true during the decades of Democratic rule, when the party included Northern liberals, Southern segregationists, blacks, and Western populists. Now that Democrats are out of power, 'œthey think ideological purity is everything.” But it isn't, and there is still 'œa center-right majority in American politics.”