WASHINGTON -- House Republicans turned on themselves Wednesday after a third straight loss of a GOP-held House seat in special elections this year left both parties contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November.
In huddles, closed-door meetings and hastily arranged conference calls, some Republicans demanded the head of their political chief, while others decried their leadership as out of touch with the political catastrophe they face.
GOP leaders sought Wednesday to "re-brand" the party with a new slogan and renewed pledges of fiscal rectitude and limited government. But the slogan -- "The Change You Deserve" -- came under mocking fire, because it parallels Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" motto and it mirrors the advertising slogan for the antidepressant Effexor.
"What we've got is a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence in the American people that we will do what we say we're going to do," conceded Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The losses of conservative House seats in Louisiana and Illinois this spring were explained away by many Republicans as setbacks in which they were hampered by bad candidates. But Tuesday's loss in northern Mississippi was devastating. The district had given President George W. Bush 62 per cent of its vote in 2004. To reverse its losing streak, the NRCC pumped $1.3 million from its depleted coffers into the race. Freedom's Watch, a conservative independent group, pitched in. Vice President Dick Cheney appeared at a last-minute rally. Bush and Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, lent their voices to automated phone calls imploring Republicans to vote for Southaven Mayor Charles "Greg" Davis.
Davis lost the contest by eight percentage points, a wider margin than in either of the two previous special-election defeats.
As soon as the results came in Tuesday evening, Democrats were already gloating, some even talking publicly of a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst, scoffed at 60, but he said he now could see gains of as many as seven Senate seats and 15 to 25 in the House. Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority in the House, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago.
Even Republican strategists were downcast about their prospects for the fall.
"These races were not in New Jersey or New England, where Republican erosion has taken place over the last decade. They were in the heart of the Bible Belt, the social conservative core of our coalition," Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., fretted in a 20-page memorandum given to House Republican leaders Wednesday and provided to The Washington Post.
"Members and pundits, waiting for Democrats to fumble the ball so that soft Republicans and Independents will snap back to the GOP, fail to understand the deep-seeded antipathy toward the President, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures and, in some areas, the underlying cultural differences that continue to brand our party."
-- The Washington Post
PREVIOUS
