Republicans Jumping Ship

Recent weeks have seen a significant uptick in the number of Republican opinion-makers who are stating publicly that it might be good for the GOP if they lose the House this fall. Why? They recognize that Americans are angry with the President for a whole host of reasons and that the Congress has done nothing but rubberstamp his policies.

The latest issue of the liberal magazine Washington Monthly has articles by seven conservative Republicans who state the case for Republican losses. In today's Los Angeles Times, one of my least favorite columnists Jonah Goldberg, makes the case:

The rub of it, from a conservative perspective, is that Republican control of the House doesn't equal conservative control. It may not seem that way to liberals who think Joe Lieberman is right wing, but from the vantage point of the conservative movement, GOP dominance has been an enormous disappointment — good judicial appointments and tax cuts not withstanding. Our hopeful joy upon the 1994 takeover of Congress was like finding a new pony by the Christmas tree. Now it's more like finding it slumped over dead on top of the presents.

This may be why some of us aren't contemplating the possible, if not probable, Democratic takeover of the House with too much dread. (Losing the Senate would be something else.) Yes, the thought of Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker and John Conyers Jr., Henry Waxman and Alcee Hastings as potential committee chairmen does cause an involuntary gag reflex and a shudder for the future of the republic. And yes, the image of all those Democratic staffers returning to Capitol Hill like the marauding caddies during open-pool hour in "Caddyshack" does churn the stomach.

But what would actually happen? Well, the first thing we'd hear would be the metaphorical snap of the rubber glove as the House prepared to investigate the executive branch with a zeal and thoroughness normally reserved for prison guards who enjoy looking for contraband just a little too much. Subpoenas would fly. Perhaps printers would churn out bills of impeachment.

BUT AS UGLY as some of this might be, the silver lining would be fairly thick. First, as a matter of simple gitchy-goo good government, one has to admit that the executive branch could use an independent audit. Amid the orgy of spending and deal cutting, the GOP-controlled House has largely abdicated its oversight responsibilities. Someone's got to check the receipts.

Second, as a matter of rank partisanship, letting the Democrats run wild could be good for both the GOP and conservatives, as my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru recently pointed out in the New York Times. If you think Americans are itching for change now, wait until they break into hives after two more years of Republican monopoly on power.

But a Pelosi-run House could so horrify voters that it would probably prepare the soil for a Republican presidential candidate in 2008. Pelosi is, if anything, a moderate in the Democratic caucus, but she is indisputably far to the left of the American center, in part because she and her colleagues mistake passionately angry bloggers for the mainstream. Letting voters see this crowd try to have its way for two years would only help the GOP in the far more important 2008 election.

Moreover, it could very well boost President Bush's popularity in his final two years — popularity he would need to conduct foreign policy, which tends to dominate the final years of all presidencies.

What's ironic about this is that I have recently read some Democratic pieces suggesting that the best thing that could happen to the Democrats in this election is that they almost take over the House and Senate. The thinking is that thanks to the mess that Republicans have made of the economy and foreign policy, regardless of who controls Congress the next two years things are likely to get worse before they get better. Having bare majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans would be unable to enact any more scorched earth legislation they have cooked up, like Social Security privatization, but would also be unable to blame Democrats for Bush's mess as it continues to unfold. This would set them up well for the next election. Or so the thinking goes.

Republicans, of course, are worried about exactly this scenario. So some of them think a Democratic win in the House would be a good thing. In any case, it's interesting to see all of these Republicans who supported the war and everything else this President and Congress have done, and who have benefited from the friendly access they have had all over Washington, now running away from it all as the ship sinks. What is that they say about rats?