I see that Roll Call currently believes that the Democrats will pick up about eight seats in the House of Representatives, which is far short of the twenty-five they need to retake the House. I have not done my independent race-by-race analysis for this cycle yet, but my instincts tell me that they are a bit bearish on the Dems’ chances. The Republican Party is beginning to show multiple signs of internal stress. For example, one of Speaker Boehner’s closest friends, Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), abruptly announced his retirement this week, citing a toxic environment for independent-minded thinking within the GOP caucus. In another example, Reps. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) and Robert Dold (R-IL) confronted Eric Cantor on the House floor last night to complain about their vote on a bill that would in some circumstances force victims of rape and incest in the District of Columbia to carry their pregnancies to term even if the health of the mother is as risk.
Those events came on the heels of the harsh comments Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) leveled at his party.
“If all people do is go down there [to DC] and join a team, and the team is invested in winning and you have something that looks very similar to the shirts and the skins, there’s not a lot of value there,” he told The Syracuse Post-Standard editorial board on Monday, according to the paper. He called his Democratic friends “much more congenial” than Republican ones.
He then went on to warn that House Republicans are becoming “incapable of governing” by habitually deferring to “extremes.”
It is not just a few backbenchers from swing districts who are upset. Sen. Linsey Graham of South Carolina is begging Mitt Romney to authorize the party members to strike a deal on revenues, in defiance of Grover Norquist. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who is known as Doctor No for his willingness to obstruct procedure, recently attacked Norquist and his “tortured definition of tax purity” in the pages of the New York Times.
You don’t see any equivalent infighting on the Democratic side of the aisle. The Democrats seem to know what they want to do. The Republicans are struggling to come to a consensus on their mission. Rep. LaTourette explained it nicely in his retirement announcement:
[LaTourette] also singled out legislation he said used to sail through Congress “like a hot knife through butter”: the farm bill, a student loan rate extension and especially the transportation bill, which stalled in the House until a short-term extension was passed and used as the House position in a conference with the Senate.
“We’re talking about building roads and bridges for Christ’s sake. We’re not talking about big Democratic and Republican initiatives. … I think [it is] an embarrassment to the House of Representatives,” he railed. “But more than being an embarrassment to the House of Representatives, it was indicative of the fact that people are more interested in fighting with each other than they are in getting the no-brainers done and governing.”
At its root, the problem is that a sizable percentage of the GOP caucuses in Congress are opposed to so much of what the federal government does that those who want to actually legislate are being marginalized and ostracized. The GOP tends to walk in lockstep, but there is no consensus on where they’re going. On top of that, Mitt Romney isn’t helping. His campaign is totally opaque and utterly lacking in any kind of ideological leadership. It even seems likely that many Republicans would prefer that he lose rather than turn over control of the party to his Massachusetts-based team. In any case, I’m beginning to suspect that commentators like George Will and Charles Krauthammer feel that way, considering their willingness to blast Romney for, respectively, not releasing his tax returns and allowing his wife to enter a dressage horse in the Olympics.
With the weakness of Mitt Romney as a candidate and the lack of coherence and loyalty within the Republican caucuses, it may be a mistake to predict the outcome of congressional elections based on the 2008 results in those districts. It’s hard to say. The wheels definitely came off the GOP clown car in September and October of 2008. I think the wheels are starting to come off a little earlier this time around.
Can the GOP avoid terrifying swing-voters at their convention? Can Romney overcome his foot-in-mouth disease? Will outside money make all the difference?
I have said for a couple of years that this would not be a close election. I have believed for a long time that the American people would be more decisive this time, one way or the other, than they have been in recent times. I still believe that. And my gut tells me that the House of Representatives is in play.
