Bob Barr

Parties' Future Depends on Whether They Learned Their Lessons

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

November 15, 2006

The Democrats have won the elections. Now comes the hard part. They have to govern. As former Speaker Newt Gingrich might say, "it's a new paradigm." Yes, the new majority party has been in the majority before—the Democrats controlled the House for fully 40 years until being unceremoniously unseated in 1994—but the dynamics have changed considerably in the interim.

When the Democrats last enjoyed majority status in the House, running the place was a virtual cakewalk. Their majority was a given; few in their party or outside ever expected them to lose it.

For much of that 40-year run, a group of Southern Democrats enjoyed such seniority that their hold on several committee chairmanships was unquestioned. Other chairmen from other parts of the country also enjoyed vast power over their committee fiefdoms because of their longevity. Seniority reigned supreme and unquestioned.

Until the final few years of their majority, the power wielded by the Democrat majority was essentially unchallenged by the Republican minority, which operated largely as a feckless group of lapdogs, content with whatever crumbs fell from the overflowing table at which their majority-rich brethren gorged themselves.

Former House Republican Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois, who retired shortly before the Republicans gained the majority in 1994, for instance, cared not at all for making waves or nipping at the heels of their Democrat masters.

All that changed, of course, in 1994, when more than a decade of hard work by Gingrich paid off in spades. The GOP shocked the Democrats, who had grown immensely lax and dangerously comfortable in running the institution based on reverence for seniority and inbred power. The Democrats paid heavily for their indulgences enjoyed over that 40-year run. But now they're back, vowing to themselves to do everything in their power to avoid a backslide into the minority abyss. Easier said than done.

To be sure, many of the committees in both houses of Congress will now likely be chaired by Democrat members of considerable seniority—Charlie Rangel of New York, John Conyers of Michigan and John Dingell of Michigan in the House; and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Joe Biden of Delaware and Patrick Leahy of Vermont in the Senate. However, the dynamics have changed. Yes, seniority matters to the Democrats, but not with the unquestioned reverence afforded it in their previous majority status.

The self-styled, relatively conservative "Blue Dog Democrats" enjoy significant power in their party's caucus. Moreover, many of the newly elected Democrats ran as conservatives and moderates, and those now constructing their leadership teams will ignore that moderate-conservative predisposition at their peril.

The balancing act that Speaker-apparent Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader-apparent Harry Reid will have to walk might make trapeze artists green with envy. Whether Pelosi, for example, will be able to allow her likely committee chairs sufficient power so they feel rewarded for suffering as ranking members under the Republican majority for 12 years, even as she tamps down the liberal philosophy in which they and she deeply believe, remains to be seen.

Early betting is that Democrats' fear of losing the majority in 2008 if they come across as liberal extremists will trump using the power of their newly regained majority to push pet liberal projects too fast, too openly.

Whether the Republican leaders will be able to regroup sufficiently to seriously challenge the Democrats for supremacy in 2008 is a question of equal intrigue. Gingrich and his team of neophyte leaders faced the same Herculean task a dozen years ago; a challenge they met with decidedly mixed results. Now, lacking Gingrich's intellectual power and energy, and having to contend with a president in some respects more "simpatico" with many Democrats than with conservatives in his own party, congressional Republicans will truly be put to the test.

The first hand has been dealt the GOP team—the White House has told Republicans in Congress it wants U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida , who is indebted to the Bush family for his Senate seat, to head the Republican National Committee.

If GOP leaders fall in line and ratify Martinez, it will serve as a clear signal to the country that the Republican Party has not learned its lessons; that it prefers business as usual and the comfort of minority status to new leadership and direction. Such a move will signal an embrace of the muddled and inconsistent game plan that led the party to the rocky shoals on which it now finds itself beached.

Bob Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.