I’m not going to lay it all out, but the House Republicans are most likely to lose seats in blue and purple states. For example, they stand to lose multiple seats in a band from New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania-Ohio-Michigan-Illinois-Minnesota. They could lose as many as 22 seats just from in that band. And most of those seats are of the center-right/moderate variety. They also have multiple vulnerable seats in Florida and California, and a smattering of seats in the Southwest, Mountain States and Pacific Midwest: Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. There as many eighteen vulnerable seats in these states.
What’s significant about this is that a post-realignment Republican House will be even more Southern in flavor and culture than the one we have now…but also more discredited in the rest of the country. To be sure, the Republicans have vulnerable seats in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. But even if they lose all of those races they will still dominate the South. And this will make it all the harder for them to adjust, retool, and rebrand themselves as an attractive alternative to the government in power.
When the House Republicans were riding high and could control the flow of federal spending, they ran up huge deficits and completely forgot about their branding as the party of small government. Now they blame their losses on a lack of fiscal discipline, which is amusing because what they really oppose is federal spending that goes to someone other than their allies. Here’s their explanation for opposing the Housing Bill that was (ultimately) supported by the president and the Treasury Secretary.
For his part, according to lawmakers who had discussions with the Treasury secretary, Mr. Paulson privately complained that House Republicans just did not grasp the severity of the economic threat posed by a potential housing collapse.
But what they do grasp is the need to draw some sharp distinctions with Democrats and reassert themselves as ardent foes of wasteful government spending. They are convinced that traveling a wayward fiscal path in recent years was the reason for their undoing in 2006 and that they must purify themselves.
“We learned our lesson after the 2006 election,” says a chastened Mr. Boehner. “I’d be the first to admit that I think some of my colleagues lost their way leading up to the ’06 election.”
Senior Republican officials acknowledged privately that there was another factor at work in the Republican tide against the housing bill – a potential leadership fight after the fall elections. Looking at potential losses in November, the current leadership team is not assured another term at the top. And Mr. Boehner, other Republican leaders and potential challengers are doing what they can to certify their conservative bona fides given the rightward tilt of the House Republican membership.
“I believe rewarding, encouraging and reinforcing risky investments should not be the role of the government and certainly shouldn’t be financed by taxpayers,” said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 Republican, in explaining his stance against the bill.
Boehner and Blunt are going to be hard-pressed to win another term in the leadership after presiding over a disastrous electoral loss. But they recognize that the vote will be even more dependent on Southerners after their Midwest brethren are purged from Congress. The cultural gap within the party between the South and every other part of the country is going to be initially quite pronounced. It’s likely that there will not be a single House GOP member left from New England next January. And their decline will be sharp in the Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest, Mountain States, Southwest, and Pacific Rim. More than ever, the Democrats will own a percentage of the Libertarian-center that opposes social conservatism, deficit spending, and invasions of civil liberties.
If the Democrats continue their success in picking off southern seats with a mix of social conservatism and economic populism, the Republicans’ troubles will just be magnified. Their temptation will be to stick to their social conservative/big business base as a way of shoring up their southern flank and avoiding a complete rout. But that very act of defense will worsen their minority status elsewhere.
It’s really quite a pickle. How to rebuild?