Gingrich has seen this before

August 4, 2005

Election-starved political observers are diligently analyzing Ohio’s Paul Hackett-Jean Schmidt special election, looking for signs, trends, or even hints about what’s to come.

There is a risk, of course, of reading too much into this either way. Dems are noting that a terrific Dem candidate nearly beat a Republican in one of the reddest congressional districts in the Midwest and we’ll build on this performance next year. Republicans are noting that the Ohio GOP is enduring a massive scandal right now and the Dem candidate is an Iraq war veteran — and not every Dem candidate will be in 2006.

Who’s right? Newt Gingrich, who did pretty well watching the winds blow in 1994, seems to believe his party isn’t taking their situation seriously enough.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) warned fellow Republicans yesterday not to ignore the implications of the party’s narrow victory in Tuesday’s special election in Ohio, saying the public mood heading into next year’s midterm elections appears to helping Democrats and hurting Republicans.

“It should serve as a wake-up call to Republicans, and I certainly take it very seriously in analyzing how the public mood evidences itself,” Gingrich said. “Who is willing to show up and vote is different than who answers a public opinion poll. Clearly, there’s a pretty strong signal for Republicans thinking about 2006 that they need to do some very serious planning and not just assume that everything is going to be automatically okay.” […]

Gingrich, the architect of the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, cited evidence that voter unrest is fueling Democratic hopes.

“There is more energy today on the anti-Iraq, anti-gas-price, anti-changing-Social Security and I think anti-Washington [side],” he said. “I think the combination of those four are all redounding to weaken Republicans and help Democrats. . . . I don’t think this is time to panic, but I think it’s time to think. If we don’t think now, then next September [2006], people will panic when it’s too late.”

Given my perspective, I hope the GOP ignores the advice and continues to ignore thinking about voter unrest altogether, but the fact that Gingrich sees a very real opportunity for Dems in this environment is encouraging for those of us anxious for change.

Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin said the GOP should be nervous about next year’s elections, given the gap between Bush’s support last November and Schmidt’s on Tuesday.

“We got a lot of warnings in ’93 and ’94 that voters were unhappy and dying to send a message,” he said, recalling when Democrats lost control of the House and the Senate in 1994. “What happened in Ohio is very consistent with what we’re seeing around the country.”

The next question is, what will Republicans do about this?

In U.S. News & World Report, conservative Michael Barone encouraged the GOP to go right.

[T]he Ohio 2nd result probably is not a harbinger of a Republican bloodbath in 2006. But it is bad news for Republicans nonetheless. The reason is that in the present state of polarization of politics, turnout is the key to winning elections. […]

[I]f I were Karl Rove or Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman, I would be thinking hard about how to motivate the Republican base.

As always, that’s a double-edged sword. Self-described independents, moderates, and swing voters are already displeased with what they’re seeing from the GOP. What’s more, the more the party motivates the far-right wing, the more it paradoxically motivates progressives in the opposite direction.

Republicans are in a bit of jam here, aren’t they? The base won’t let the party move to the middle, they can’t realistically go too much further to the right, and the status quo isn’t working well.

Pass the popcorn.

A lot of us were extremely skeptical that a furious GOP base could really drum up the numbers required to outdo the mighty GOTV efforts on our side. We were wrong, and by a good bit.

But can even Karl Rove set things up to get them even more riled, without losing enough Independents to the Dems to tip the scales? Having been so wrong last time, I’ll try to restrain my skepticism. But after Schiavo, I think any attempts to Talibanize the next election will need to be pretty subtle.

  • Karl Rove doesn’t do subtle. I have been smelling a ’94 coming for some time, but don’t forget what happened first: Dems had been in power for a while, not just a few years, and the Republicans had refused to exploit the situation, so an upstart took over.

    I think the astonishingly ugly way Karl & Co. operate, and the speed with which they have lost any desire to cloak their actions in even slightly believable rhetoric might hasten this political turnaround. But I still hope many Democratic leaders (read: DLC) stuck in “loser mode” will go down first. The DLC is a corporate machine as much as it is anything else, and it has to go. Both sides aren’t out for the people of America, so replacing one for the other is a lesser of evils choice at best. When brave and thoughful leaders run the show, America is poised to lead the world into a very promising future.

  • I share Eadie’s unease about the DLC. I am so tired of the “pros” who have cost us so much electorally and simply in terms of idealism. We need something new (and I’d include a *new* (pre-2000) Al Gore in that if necessary, as we’ve already discussed here a bit).

  • I’d think the Base would get outrage fatigue at some point. How much more can you pump from that well? And yeah, at some point, the Base makes normal people get uneasy. I think that’s on the verge of happening in some states. I thought 2004 was going to be 1994 but that was a little premature. Though you can always count on the dems to blow a winning hand. Find more Hacketts.

  • I’ve long believed that Newt is an excellent politician and political strategist, so when Newt speaks, I listen.

    I agree that republicans shouldn’t panic just yet. But I do think they are headed down the road to losing some seats in 2006. All the buzz seems to be breaking democratic, at present.

    BUT elections are a long way off! (How profound is that?)

  • Ed and Eadie – much as I share your progressive
    philosophy, I just don’t see any possibility of the movement
    rising from the ashes in the near future. Certainly not
    in 2006 or 2008.

    And CB has pointed out that Gore is not in the picture.
    He’s a self-described “recovering politician,” on step
    9 of the 12 point program. He’s not going to run.

    So the best we can do is Republican Lite (DLC), the
    lesser evil. That’s actually not so bad, considering
    the barbarians in charge today, who threaten our
    most cherished liberties and world peace if they
    continue in office. Our first step is to get the bastards
    out of there. Even if that means supporting what
    few moderate Republicans there are left.

    As a matter of fact, sometimes I think the most
    effective action Democrats could take would
    be to join the Republican Party, and campaign
    like hell for moderate candidates. The radicals
    wouldn’t win another primary if that happened.
    Whimsical, though.

  • 1994 is a good model for changing the House, but how about 1986 when the Dems stormed the Senate in the midyear of a 2nd term Republican President? Can we get some historical comparisons of voter trends from that period?

  • Hark,

    Newt was in the losing party for a while, but rather than switching teams, he took over. I respect that.

    think the join ‘em to change ‘em is an interesting and thoughtful way to look at it, but don’t forget that plenty of Republicans are really great people, who have no voice or representation right now. I mean, Bush in 2000 wasn’t a creep. I can jump ship, but if the pirates already hijacked the sucker, I’m out of the pan and into the fire.

    Dems need all the interesting and thoughtful people they can get (and keep)–besides, it’s easier to grab the reigns in a losing party, so why not the losing party that represents progress?

    P.S. I was on vacay.

  • The problem with Hackett doing so well is that nearly winning is still barely losing, and apparently a minimal margin is now a mandate to force the country hard right.

    The problem with DINOs, DLCs, Republican Lite, or whatever their going by now is that they don’t motivate the swing voters.
    Swing voters see Republican and Something A Lot Like a Republican By a Different Name.

    The DINOs are chasing a middle that is further right everyday, and no matter what, I think there are core progressive issues the party should not cave on.

    I’d much rather lose with a candidate I can really support, like Dean, than lose with a candidate whose just the other guy, the lesser of two evils, or anyone not named Bush, like Kerry.

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