Not quite two dozen members of the U.S. Senate voted for either of Sen. Tom Coburn’s two modest amendments to the Water Resources and Development Act earlier today.
Senate Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, voted more thantwo-to-one against the amendments, which essentially put the Senate on record favoring funding higher priority projects before lower priority projects.
Coburn’s first amendment was to delay funding of construction of what would be the fourth visitors center within a 77-mile radius of Morgan, Louisiana, before making sure everybody displaced by Hurricane Katrina is properly housed. The vote against was 79-11, with 28 GOPers joining the unanimously opposed Democrats.
Coburn’s second amendment would have held up funding of beach restoration at Imperial Beach, California, until completion of badly needed flood control projects to protect the state capital in Sacremento. The vote against was 77-12, with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, joining 11 GOPers in support of Coburn.
Coburn also co-offered with Feingold and Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, an amendment to establish a temporary commission to establish funding priorities for such projects. That amendment went down to defeat, too, on a 69-22 vote, including a dozen GOPers. Not voting among the GOPers were Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim Demint of South Carolina, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Pete Dominici of New Mexico.
Notable among Democrats who supported the third amendment were Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Carper of Delaware, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Lieberman of Connecticutt, McCaskill of Missouri, Sanders of Vermont and Nelson of Florida. Lieberman and Sanders technically are independents but they caucus with the Democrats.
After the votes, Coburn said:
“Not since defending the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ by a vote of 82 to 15 has the Senate expressed such overwhelming opposition to common sense spending practices. Today’s votes only reinforce the perception that Congress is out of touch and worthy of its 29 percent approval rating.”
He added:
“Sand castles on
Imperial Beach
San Diego
Morgan City
Louisiana
Coburn was referring to the latest Gallup Poll which shows Congress’ approval rating among the public at a low point since Democrats took over following their November 2006 election triumph. President Bush’s rating is higher, at 33 percent and holding steady, while the congressional rating has been declining for several months.
Coburn’s pointing back to the overwhelming 2005 vote of a GOP-controlled Senate against defunding the infamous Bridge to Nowhere earmark indicates the fundamental problem facing conservatives – America now effectively has but one party, the party of Government, with two competing wings. There is no genuine second party or systematically organized loyal opposition to the expansion of government.
One wonders how many more Coburn amendments will go down to defeat with the votes of a majority of Senate Republicans before conservatives come to grips with this fact. Until they do, they will continue wasting time struggling to recapture or reform the GOP.
Because they could mold it into an anti-establishment, insurgent party of outsiders, the GOP was the conservatives’ chosen vehicle for attaining political power and implementing their vision of limited government, individual liberty, economic freedom and national security, beginning in 1960.
But for a number of reasons the GOP is no longer the insurgent party of rebellion against the Liberal Democrats and the Big Government Establishment. Much of the GOP congressional caucus has become part of the same establishment and has zero interest in being anything else.
Similarly, there are legions of GOP political operators for whom the expansion of bureaucracy and proliferation of earmarks simply mean more jobs when a Republican is in the White House and a steady flow of lobbying contracts and related opportunities regardless of who is chief executive.
That is why the party lost its majority in November and why its prospects for ever again regaining control of Congress and the White House as an insurgent political force are slim and none. The GOP has lost the ability to present itself credibly as the party of change in Washington.
Yet, conservatives who wish to change the situation have for decades been told they “have nowhere else to go.” Much as I hate to say it, nothing that has happened since May 2006 has come as any great surprise to this analyst. I said then on this blog that the most likely outcome was:
“The GOP Establishment won’t/can’t seize this opportunity and so will lose in November, but the Moonbat extremism that afflicts the Democrats will quickly squander their gains.
“With Bush finally using the veto, the period leading to the 2008 presidential race will be stalemate in Congress and continued opportunity for the creation and articulation of a credible new conservative alternative. The Democrats only hope will be a triangulating Hillary, but even that won’t work if her negatives remain at their typical level.”
The GOP did indeed lose and the Democrats have managed to put exactly one significant piece of legislation on Bush’s desk, the Iraq emergency funding bill, which he vetoed. Congressional Republicans have won some minor legislative victories here and there, but are still counting on some variation of “we’re not them” to appeal to voters.
This isn’t divided government, it’s political stalemate, except on earmarks which drives the metastizing of the cancer of Big Government, as illustrated by the results on the Coburn amendments. Afterall, even Bush only wants to reduce earmarks by half. The party of Government is firmly in control.
There should be no surprise in the rapid descent of Congress’ approval rating in recent months. The Democrats promised to clean up the GOP’s “culture of corruption,” but have instead stalled on such reforms while obsessing on timetables for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
Consider in the context of the present Gallup results for Congress this passage from my May 2006 post, which was inspired by a Washington Post/ABC News survey:
“Look at question 19, which asks if respondents are inclined to look around for somebody besides their incumbent congressman to support in November. A clear majority of 55 percent said they would look around, even though 62 percent said previously in the survey in response to question 17 that they approve of the job being done by their incumbent.
“Put these data together and we see an electorate that is disgusted with both parties in Congress and would very much like to have an alternative. That shouldn’t surprise us, considering how the GOP majority promised conservative legislation but has on so many issues acted more like the Democrats.
“This Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum factor is the dynamite waiting to be exploded under both parties. The last time the “look around” response was as intense as it is now was October 1994. Then the GOP’s ‘Contract with America’ provided the alternative.”
I remain of the “Tapscottian” view that America is ripe for the creation of a new, genuinely conservative second party, but so far nobody on the Right has stepped forward to lead the way. Maybe no one ever will. It’s so hard to think outside the box the Republican Establishment has kept conservatives in for so long.
UPDATE: The “Republicans Conscience”????
Bruce Kesler of Democracy Project read the above and concluded that it hasn’t been the Republican establishment’s box in which conservatives have been held, it’s a box of the conservatives’ own making:
“The ‘Republican establishment’ has not kept conservatives in a box. Conservatives control the Republican Party. Conservatives have kept themselves in a box of their own making, being politically pragmatic. However, being conservative also means being cost-effective and that means reforming their investment, not abandoning it or trashing it.
“Republican politicians, who after all, or before all, largely exist to be elected and wield power, need to be led, and with the reasonable expectation of winning. The most damning criticism among Republicans of George Bush is that he hasn’t led or has repeatedly reversed course after stirring Republicans to another course.”
Bruce always makes his case in impressive fashion and you ought to read it closely.
UPDATE II: “Four pages of crap” from the GOP on immigration
That’s how Hugh Hewitt is describing talking points being circulated tonight by Senate Republicans in defense of the “grand compromise” on immigration reform that has been put together by President Bush, congressional Democrats and Senate GOPers led by Sen. John McCain, R-CA.
Here’s what a clearly shocked Hugh says:
“White flag time on the border, and a national security and thus a political disaster.
“The GOP are sending around talking points attempting to make this ‘compromise’ defensible, but it won’t and shouldn’t fly.
“Agreeing to it takes the party down the tubes on the issue of border security –because it doesn’t provide what the public understands to be border security, a very long, very high fence with a very wide gate.
“This is McCain’s continuing gift to the GOP, and the immigration absolutists’ legacy: Lots and lots of promises and no fence worth calling a fence.
“Aren’t there 41 GOP senators willing to fight for border security? Apparently not. And they will see the result in their depleted coffers and diminished numbers come November ’08. All they have to do is fight for border security, but they won’t even do that.”
The coffers are already being depleted, according to what I am hearing from folks with direct knowledge of such matters. As for depleted numbers come November 08, that is what you get with a party whose leadership routinely puts perks, preservation of privilege and petty self-interest ahead of principle.
The most interesting part of the talking points is the very last point, which says: “If Republicans had not fought for these limits, Democrats would have passed an automatic amnesty bill without any of the restrictions that Republicans have now guaranteed.”
In other words, just like they always do, they are telling conservatives they have no place else to go and they better settle for whatever “compromise” crumbs the GOP pros have salvaged because if they don’t, look what those terrible Democrats will do.
Ronald Reagan called this mentality “bribing the alligator to eat you last.”
UPDATE III: What the “party men” squandered
Joshua Trevino takes a look at these issues and contends that there are “party men” and “movement men.” The former have made a mess the latter must now clean up:
“The men of the party took the 1994 and 2000 victories won by the men of the movement, and squandered it all on — well, the party. Common sense tells us that it’s time to reverse the priorities and put conservatism ahead of Republicanism if we want to begin the climb back.”
And the most direct analogy Trevino sees for the struggle between the GOP’s party hacks and the men of principle is the Netroots on the Left:
“The conservative movement online evolved in an era when putative conservatives controlled the whole of the national government; now that they do not, that movement is slowly defining itself apart from the party that serves as its policy vehicle, and making demands that the party has not experienced before…..the Republican Party will have to face the same trauma of adjusting to an empowered base that the Democratic Party has faced for several years now.”
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