Are the Republicans Missing a Golden Opportunity?

In November of 2006, the Democrats, led by Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representatives, secured majorities in both Houses of Congress. Much of the credit for the Democratic victory in 2006 is due to the national media, who went beyond the call of duty to parrot DNC talking points while second guessing every move the Bush Administration made. The Democratic Party and the mainstream media sounded a constant drumbeat of negativity against the Bush Administration on issues from the war, to Hurricane Katrina, to the economy and gas prices. When the campaign theme of a Republican “culture of corruption” was added to the mix, the recipe for Democratic victory was complete.

Fast forward almost two years to July of 2008. We’re in the midst of a Presidential and Congressional Election cycle. Gas prices are at $4.10 per gallon and climbing. They were under $2.20 on the day that the Democrats assumed control of the House and Senate. The economy is in freefall in the wake of frivolous Democratic-led Congressional investigations and Democratic promises of future tax increases. The continued presence of Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and William Jefferson, among others, has ensured that the culture in Congress is as corrupt as ever. In fact, the only real success this term has been the surge in the Iraq War effort, and that progress was gained in the face of heavy resistance from the Democrats in Congress. In just about every area, the country is worse off now than it was two years ago, the Democrats are promising yet more of the same policies that have plunged the country into this malaise, yet somehow the Democrats are expected to gain seats in both the House and Senate.

It is a measure of the incompetence of today’s Republican Party that the Democrats are viewed as such heavy favorites going into the fall elections. The Republicans could easily go on the offensive by running true conservative candidates and policies against the unqualified failures of this Democratic Congress. They choose instead to go on the defensive, accepting the flawed premise that the failures of the last two years are the responsibility of the lame duck, moderate Republican who currently occupies the White House, not the liberal Democrats who currently run Congress. One of the major reasons that the Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006 was that the Party’s conservative base, having felt abandoned by the President and moderate Congressional Republicans on issues like illegal immigration, stayed away from the polls. Yet today’s Republican Party believes that it will somehow bring back that conservative base in 2008 by nominating a Presidential candidate who embraces the left’s views on immigration, the environment and the economy.

Last week, Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate Majority leader, was questioned on the current energy crisis. When asked about relieving cost pressures on the American taxpayer by loosening the restrictions on domestic supply, Reid gave the laughably inept answer that oil and coal are “making us sick”. Reid actually posited that his party’s pet issue of “Global Warming” was of greater concern in these economic times than the financial well-being of the American people. If the Republican Party was playing with a full deck, its operatives would have pounced on that remark and exposed Reid’s incompetence from now until a crushing victory in November. But the Party seems determined to learn all the wrong lessons from the election defeat in 2006. Perhaps it will take a resounding defeat in November and a disastrous two years of a war, an economy and a society run into the ground by a liberal Democratic President with a filibuster-proof Democratic Congress for the Republican Party to return to the low tax, low regulation, high productivity roots that once made this country so great.