Scott Brown Campaigning. A Specter of November 2.
Massachusetts’ new U.S. Senator Scott Brown has landed in Washington swathed in well-deserved mantle of triumph. His win is doubtless a huge personal political achievement. An even bigger winner is America, demonstrating again that its fractured, disjointed, decentralized and messy political process renders, when provoked, sharp, decisive, quick verdicts. Winning big also, of course, is the GOP, giving it renewed life if it draws the lesson that big-tent, inclusive Republican candidates can win even in heavily Democrat constituencies.
The big loser, obvious from its reeling disarray since election night, are the Democrats, on Capitol Hill and in the White House. At first glance, it’s hard to fathom why they should be in such pain. After all, just one Senate seat switched hands, leaving them with a still whopping Senate majority of 59-41 (the biggest for any party in more than three decades, though far short of the legendary 76 seats they held after Franklin Roosevelt’s second term sweep in 1936) and an even more whopping House majority of 256 to 178 (biggest since 1993). How then can the loss of this single Senate seat plunge Democrats into such introspective despair?
Bush is gone.
Of course, as has been noted widely, the Democrats last Tuesday lost the 60 vote majority needed to shut down GOP filibusters that could block Democrat proposals. This merely means, however, that Democrats will have to make concessions to win over a couple of Republicans to pass legislation. What’s really spooking Democrats is the specter of this November 2 – the fearsome first off-year congressional election in a presidents first term which historically gives voters a chance to take a second look at and revise their opinion of the party for which they voted in the presidential election. Staring Democrat leaders in the face is a rerun of 1994, the first congressional elections after Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, when Republicans ran the board, grabbing control of both Senate and House. In the wake of Brown’s election, what some Democrats are calling the “Boston Massacre” and Republicans are calling the “Boston Miracle,” Democrats are realizing just how out of step they are with the public and that this November could bring catastrophe.
What now seems clear, though it was far from clear just two years ago, is that in November 2008 many of the voters who gave Obama his great victory margin and sent Democrats to Washington from solid GOP districts and states were voting less for Obama, less for congressional Democrats, less against John McCain, but mainly against George W. Bush (for good reason) and against a GOP establishment seemingly bent on excluding and antagonizing huge segments of the polity. In the days following that huge 2008 Democrat victory, it was easy and even reasonable to talk about a national tectonic shift to Democrats and even to the left.
That, in sharp retrospect, now seems a very flawed reading of what happened. With Bush gone, gone too is most of the tinder igniting anti-GOP anger. This is one message of the startling Brown victory. Meaning: This November 2, Democrats hoping to hold 2008-won seats in GOP areas are extremely vulnerable. Vulnerable enough to flip the House to GOP control? Very unlikely, though several GOP analysts (and, I bet, Democrat analysts too) are running scenarios in which tweaked assumptions do yield just that. Vulnerable enough to flip the Senate? Also very unlikely, though no Washington politico can forget the GOP’s massive, unexpected Senate gains of 1980 and 1994.
The November vulnerability, confirmed by the Brown victory, is what will prevent Democrats from using their otherwise solid Capitol Hill majorities to push the far-reaching health care, environment, financial regulation and other sweeping programs with which they want to shove America much closer to a government-run, bureaucrat-dominated society. Instead, Democrats – as we’ve already been hearing in their talk about diluting or even delaying the health care juggernaut – will tack to the center. Doing so, in fact, well may spare them the massive November losses they otherwise could have suffered had not the Brown victory alerted them to their impending disaster. In that important sense, Brown is doing the Democrats a great favor – if they correctly read the message of his win.
An inclusive big tent.
He also is doing the GOP a great favor – if it correctly reads the message. It is: If the GOP intends to be a national party, it must reflect our nation, all 300,000,000 plus of us. It must be, as Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp repeatedly reminded the party, inclusive, not exclusive. It must be a tent big enough for many (sometimes annoyingly conflicting) views on social and even economic issues. A small tent, exclusive party, rooted in just one or two regions of the nation may make purists feel virtuous, but it cedes to the Democrats and the left the control of national policy.
Brown, after all, certainly is no purist, as social conservatives and the religious right have defined purity and used it as a litmus to test whether aspiring candidates merit support. Example: Brown recognizes broad women’s rights to abortion (opposing only what’s called “late term” abortion), something that typically would have banished him from a GOP ballot. He’s also no economic purist, supporting, as he has, Massachusetts’ sweeping health care programs. Rather, he seems a solid, sensible Republican, just the kind that can get elected from Massachusetts.
If the GOP wants to seat New Englanders and those with similar political complexions on the GOP side of Capitol Hill aisles, then it must be ready to welcome the Scott Browns. And, maybe it now is. “He’s the kind of Republican who will give conservatives heartburn, but it’s better than the other side,” Erick Erickson, a strong opponent of abortion and editor of RedState.com, told the New York Times this week. Indeed, Erickson’s website was telling its readers to contribute to Brown’s campaign. That’s the kind of common sense that once gave the GOP a governing majority. In fact, few political documents were as big-tent and inclusive as the 1994 “Contract With America,” crafted by Newt Gingrich, which swept the GOP to House and Senate majorities. If Brown’s victory signals a return of the big-tent GOP, if it signals the waning of self-destructive culture wars and litmus tests, then indeed his victory is a victory for the GOP and America.
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