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2006 Mid-Term Elections: The GOP on the Ropes?

Opening Billboard: Funding for this program is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. The 2006 mid-term elections are rapidly approaching, campaigns are swinging into high gear, and the gloves are coming off. This election season promises to be as heated as any with a closely divided Congress and a host of contentious issues. Several of the President’s 2nd term legislative initiatives such as immigration reform and private retirement accounts have stalled or failed. The war in Iraq continues to frustrate many Americans. Will voter dissatisfaction express itself in the congressional races? Can Democrats win back either house of Congress? Does anybody know what will happen?

To find out Think Tank is joined by Norman Ornstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author with Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution of The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track.
The Topic Before the House: The GOP on the Ropes? This week on Think Tank

Wattenberg: Norman Ornstein, old friend, AEI Colleague, former tennis partner, welcome back again to Think Tank.
Ornstein: Always a pleasure Ben.
Wattenberg: We’ve read for a while and maybe still you were the most quoted political authority in America and some newspapers actually put laws on “No more Ornstein”
Ornstein: I had bans for periods of time yes. Embargos
Wattenberg: Embargos Ok. The 2006 mid term congressional elections are much discussed to put it mildly. In a nutshell what’s your verdict. I know we disagree on a few things.
Ornstein: One thing we know for sure there’s a stiff wind at the back of Democrats. Democrats are going to have a good election year. I’m still not sure whether the wind will be strong enough in October to blow them into a majority in either house but at this point I think there’s a very substantial chance of a majority for democrats in the house and a chance at least maybe even 30% of a majority in the senate. You know to put it in stark terms is the wind going to be a category 3 or a category 5 hurricane. If it’s a category 3 they may pick up 12 of the 15 seats they need to make a majority leaving them just short if it’s a category 5 they might pick up 20 seats. And give themselves
Wattenberg: You mean the way congress did in ’94 that kind of thing
Ornstein: you know we’re all looking now to see what parallels we have with 1994 and there are several of them one thing is very clear there is a national tide. And against a national tide candidates in the majority work like crazy to try and set up levees that are local levees and sometimes no matter how tall they build those levees it’s not enough.
Wattenberg: Let me object to a couple of things. One is say when you say for sure I’ve been sort of writing a book sort of my account on my desk public exploit and there isn’t much that’s for sure. I mean you really don’t know. I mean for example a present incumbent has this DUI record expunged the Thursday before the Tuesday of election. *Unintelligle* perhaps exaggerating said that it cost him about 4 million votes particularly amongst the evangelicals and fundamental Christians who don’t like the idea of it. So you don’t know and I’ll give you a hypothetical what happens if 4 days before the election we get Osama Bin Laden?
Ornstein: That’s one of the reasons why I am much more uncertain about what will happen than many of my colleagues. Most of whom now are ready to say flatly the democrats will win the house. Is precisely that. Wind might be blowing very strongly in mid-October and it might have abated by late October for a reason of that sort but I have to tell you Ben the capture of Osama bin Laden may or may not be a good thing for the President. If it’s 4 days before the election it’s a boost and probably a boost for Republicans although how much that motivates turn out in a mid-term remains to be scene but keep in mind the capture of Osama bin Laden is going to remind people that for 6 years of the Bush administration, 5 years after 9/11, almost 5 years after Afghanistan he’s been at large.
Wattenberg: Now Iraq allegedly has become the central issue. My own view, drawn largely from our colleague Karl Zinsmeister my first research assistant who has been there 4 times and then almost got killed and now is the Domestic Policy czar at the White House, is that we are doing very well. *Unintelligble* Our military is all volunteer (Unintelligble). Fewer people have been killed then were killed in the World Trade Center tragedy. They have a constitution the president has constituted a flag etc. And I think we will prevail and I grant you this the doubters (unintelligible) My experience such as it is I don’t know.
Ornstein: We don’t know what ultimately will happen with Iraq. I wish I could be as optimistic as you are I must say watching…
Wattenberg: I’m not optimistic I’m agnostic
Ornstein: Watching generals Abizade and Pace say that we could easily veer into civil war was sobering for me. Iraq is a huge issue out there now. And right now there’s no question it cuts against republicans. But I’m not sure that it’s the only or even itself the central issue in this campaign. Voters are angry. They’re not happy. They see the wheels coming off at home and abroad. There’s a widespread unease about the economy which may not fit objective reality in terms of the indicators that we normally use but people don’t feel good right now and it’s the combination of all of those things. A sense that government hasn’t done what it’s supposed to do isn’t focusing on things that it should be focusing on and it’s not working and 1 party’s in charge that’s led to this wind we just don’t know how strong it’s going to be come late October.
Mr. Wattenberg: You know, the -- I mean, the economic data are a little hard to follow, but two things; one is with all this turmoil, the market’s kind of moving sideways. There are fossil fuel experts who say that the price for a barrel of oil is going to go down to single digits. People are finally coming around, so they say, to nuclear power and again, we’re being fed so much stuff, thanks to Al Gore’s 500-channel universe and the internet and all that kind of stuff that I just remain agnostic.
Mr. Ornstein: It may very well be that oil prices will decline even before the election.
Mr. Wattenberg: They’ve already started.
Mr. Ornstein: They’ve already started. I would be hard pressed to make the case that that will be an asset for republicans. People who have been paying $3.50 a gallon are not going to go to the polls saying, “Gee, it’s come down to $2.80. Thank you!” to the party in power. That’s just not the way politics work.
Mr. Wattenberg: Let me ask -- there’s another one that I think has people muddled which is immigration. I mean, Pat Buchanan, who I have had some very contentious arguments with -- I do not believe he’s an anti-Semite -- has written a series of books -- (unintelligible) sounds like Oswald Spengler -- The Decline of the West...the Mexicans are coming and yet they are Roman Catholics, traditional values, family values, most hard workers. Our -- in every immigrant group in America, our forbearers -- the Jews, the Irish, the Hungarians, even the English, has faced this sort of mindless hatred.
Mr. Wattenberg: So why can’t we get it right on immigration?
Mr. Ornstein: You know, this is an issue that actually astonishingly to me raises emotional levels in parts of the country where there isn’t a whole lot of immigration out there, like Connecticut. To astonishing amounts. I can’t quite figure it out, although you’ve hit on a part of it. It’s a historical tension that we have faced. I’m with you on the immigration issue. I -- I believe that it’s what’s made this country great and I think as we look to the future where we’re going to have an aging population and we’re going to need young workers who can expand the pie to pay for us old people, that immigration is going to be a key for us.
The republican party has a real difficult moment now because they’re between a rock and a hard place. They have made this the signature priority as the president has -- domestic affairs. If they don’t act on it after months and months of deliberation, and it’s all amongst themselves, then it really is a do-nothing Congress. It might not be exactly the same thing as the Clinton healthcare plan failing, underscoring that, you know, here’s a party in charge and they can’t get their act together, but it would be very bad.
If they do act, they’re going to alienate in significant ways, a substantial portion of the republican base.
Mr. Wattenberg: You said a couple of magic words. One was Connecticut. I’m an old friend of Joe Lieberman’s; you’re an old friend of Joe Lieberman’s. I knew Joe Lieberman when I lived in Stamford, a hundred years ago when he was a teenager doing political (unintelligible) speaching and I remember at the back of a crowd (unintelligible) speech some of the old Jews would say, “That boy’s going to be president one day”. He’s a brilliant guy.
Mr. Ornstein: Came close.
Mr. Wattenberg: He did. He came very close to being vice president. And he was in a primary -- a democratic primary with this guy, Ned Lamont who’s only worth 300 million dollars and is from Greenwich where they have that -- had wasp only priorities and five-acre zoning. I mean, you know, not...
Mr. Ornstein: He’s not too shabby, as they say.
Mr. Wattenberg: Was not too shabby. He was 14 points down. He closed to 4 and apparently the Lamont people -- we don’t know, the FBI’s investigating -- sabotaged Joe’s website. My own thought is that he has an excellent chance of winning as an independent, and in my dream world, he and either Rudy Giuliani or John McCain would team up a fusion ticket. And you know, Ross Perot was ahead until he went ballistic. Abe Lincoln was a third or fourth party candidate. George Wallace once states in the north he carried Cambridge, Mass in 1972 and it breaks up the iron triangle, you know -- Congress, K Street, the presidency. Is that plausible?
Mr. Ornstein: You know, I’ve actually joked that Joe coming back as an independent who would caucus with the democrats will be joined by another independent who will get elected to the Senate and caucus for the democrats --Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Mr. Wattenberg: The only socialist.
Mr. Ornstein: And I’ve said, “Maybe they should just form a new party and call it Kadeema (ph.)”. But, I think this is an interesting test case right now in many things. We have a sharply polarized country, tribal partisan politics and a lot of people growing uneasy about what that does to the fabric of the society and the ability to grapple with problems. And a lot of evidence out there that people are looking for something different, and that’s Joe’s campaign. Joe Lieberman is running as somebody who will transcend those differences.
Coming back to the Senate, he would be in a very strong position. And frankly, strong in part because democrats may or may not win a majority there, but they’ll get within striking distance and there’ll be a handful of votes that’ll be the key votes.
Mr. Wattenberg: Well, you know, when Dick Scammon and I coauthored that book, The Real Majority, and we had something about the man in the middle, you know, it takes -- and people say, “well, the middle has collapsed”, but there’s always a middle by definition, and they go this way instead of that way and “Teddy Ballgame.” There you have it. So he could be, it seems to me...
Mr. Ornstein: Could be a significant player. A national campaign again, I’d be a little skeptical. But I do think that if Lieberman wins it will give a boost to the kinds of candidates for president whose theme will be “I will genuinely govern as a uniter, not a divider.” And McCain has the strongest credentials on that front. Mitt Romney is another who could do something like that. And Mark Warner and Evan Bayh on the democratic side would get a boost.
Mr. Wattenberg: Let me ask you a question. This is something we’ve chatted about and we disagree on. When Ned Lamont won in Connecticut, the photo op was framed that the two people next to him were going to be Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Now, Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Jesse Jackson in my judgment -- and I’ve sort of sparred with him over the years, but he has some redeeming features. Al Sharpton is an indicted thug. Those may be the most two unpopular figures you can have. Connecticut, I’ve lived there, like Minnesota which is allegedly, you know, so liberal. There’s racist feeling there. I mean, you know that. That was -- and I said if I were the Joe Lieberman campaign manager and it’s gonna happen with ‘em or without ‘em, I’d just run that without any comment. Put it up there.
Mr. Ornstein: I think that acceptance speech by Lamont showed that his campaign was not ready for primetime. That was not the message you want to send, especially if you’re trying to say to everybody “I’m not this far left candidate; I’m a centrist, too in some ways”. But he didn’t demonstrate that at all, and it’s another hole that he dug himself in I think as we head towards the final stretch of this fall campaign, and it was a big mistake on his part.
Mr. Wattenberg: Which wing of the democratic party is now driving the bus? Is it Ned Lamont and now John Murtha, of all people? The get out of Iraq thing? Is it Hillary Clinton, who I actually think it’s shown that she has her eye on the main chance and is a very capable woman? I have some problems with her. Is there such a thing as a party strategy? I mean, Dick Scammon always used to say that, “Look, people in off-term elections, off-year elections particularly -- they often vote to get their brother-in-law elected so he can move out of the house.” I mean, it’s a -- is there any real coordination?
Mr. Ornstein: Look, a party that’s out of power rarely has coordination. 1994 was an exception because of the extraordinary personal strength of Newt Gingrich.
Mr. Wattenberg: Yeah, and for all his flaws he’s a brilliant political strategist.
Mr. Ornstein: And recruited candidates, gave them the themes, created the central focus.
Mr. Wattenberg: Contract with America.
Mr. Ornstein: Well, the contract with America remember, didn’t come ‘til the end of September, but part of what Newt did before that was to drive a discipline in the minority party to run against a party in power that wasn’t getting it done. Most often you don’t have that kind of central focus and the democrats don’t have it this time.
You ask who’s driving the bus? It is at this point far more the left wing of the democratic party than anybody else, and that’s a danger for them and it’s one of the reasons why the republicans are stressing these security issues. But having said that, I think they’re still in a position where they have not messed up enough as a party that they’re there to pick up the pieces in what is almost always a referendum on the party in power. And that’s where republicans have trouble and that’s where democrats are looking to win.
Now, whether they have anything to say after they win and if they win a majority, that’s another issue. Whether the democratic party can develop a coherent national security and homeland security strategy, including Iraq, that doesn’t look like they can’t be trusted in fending off evil people trying to kill us, that they’re too weak and too clueless, that’s a critical element for the democrats heading towards 2008 and it’s actually where Hillary Clinton ironically may be among the best position to reassure Americans that if you’ve got this person at the helm they’ll be tough on those terrorists.
Mr. Wattenberg: Here you have Ned Lamont and now John Murtha who was a real Scoop Jackson democrat when I knew him, saying let’s, quotes, “cut and run”. I don’t think for all their distaste with Iraq, that Americans want to see that happen.
Mr. Ornstein: I don’t think Americans want to see us pull abruptly out of Iraq, or in any form that people would see us cut and run. I think what the sort of “core” democrats are trying to come to is some sort of -- they’re not going to get a consensus -- they’re democrats -- but some sort of common judgment surrounding a kind of phased withdrawal. That’s very tricky business, let’s face it. You know and I know that any timetables that you set are not going to work very well. But the fact is, an awful lot of republicans a few months ago were also talking along those particular lines, and we’re likely to see some phase down of American troops regardless, sometime in the next -- in the next few months. Whether that can happen without democrats losing any credibility by being seen as too weak or naïve about how politics works in the real world is an interesting question.
Mr. Wattenberg: Alright. Give it to us in the short form. What’s going to happen?
Mr. Ornstein: Democrats are going to have a good election and I think the odds are now significantly better than even that they will capture a narrow majority in the House and come within an eyelash in the Senate. But let me give you a bottom line here that unfortunately reinforces all the unhappy conclusions that I have with Tom Mann in our book, The Broken Branch.
Mr. Wattenberg: You and Tom do wonderful work, I must say.
Mr. Ornstein: Thank you. Keep that part in.
Mr. Wattenberg: I will.
Mr. Ornstein: But the basic problem we’ve got here is there’s a 90% chance that we’re going to end up with a House and a Senate with majorities, whichever party, in the low single digits. That is not a formula for governance. And the challenge we’ve got in what’s going to be two lame duck years for George W. Bush facing a very tightly contested, bickering, rancorous Congress with enormous challenges facing the country. He wants to do something about entitlements. We need to, but you can’t do that without broad bipartisan cooperation. We’ve got to develop some kind of consensus or at least end up without the poisonous reaction to America’s role in the world.
And we’re going to have a campaign which is going to be run more on national security lines with a lot of republicans in Congress talking about the defeat-o-crats that is going to make it even harder afterwards to submerge differences and make things work.
I don’t think it’s any exaggeration, Ben to say that the county’s at a crossroads. We’ve got a budget disaster looming ahead in a few years unless we can grab control of entitlement spending and figure out how to get the revenues we need for the government that everybody agrees we want.
Mr. Wattenberg: Yeah, but Norman, compared to any other nation in the world, our budget’s shortfall because of the aging -- the baby boom is peanuts. I mean, we have immigrants coming in paying in Social Security; we have a higher fertility rate than anyone else...
Mr. Ornstein: Well, let me put it in numbers, Ben.
Mr. Wattenberg: The European countries are indeed due to China, India there and they’re investing their money in the United States because its got the only stable transparent markets.
Mr. Ornstein: The fact that other countries are doing worse gives me scant comfort. But, let me put it in -- in basic terms. Our federal revenues are right now just under 17% of our gross domestic product, and they’re heading probably toward 16 in a few years.
Mr. Wattenberg: Sixteen.
Mr. Ornstein: Yes. Our expenditures right now are just under 20% of our gross domestic product, and unless we reign in the growth of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, what the congressional budget office tells us, using very modest assumptions of health inflation, is that those three programs alone are going to be 22% or more of GDP by 2040.
Mr. Wattenberg: But Norman...
Mr. Ornstein: That leaves not a dime for defense or homeland security or transportation or diplomacy or the environment, you cannot sustain...now we can; we’ve got deficits of 3%. You can sustain that for a long time. Seven, eight nine percent, you can’t.
Mr. Wattenberg: Norman, let me tell you something. Let me see if I can put it in pungent language. The idea that they’re going to let Social Security have a -- go bust, is preposterous; not because of the numbers, but because these members of Congress are whores and they are not going to take a third of the electorate who vote disproportionately highly and say, “Oh, by the way; we’re cutting your Social Security.” Not going to happen.
Mr. Ornstein: I don’t disagree with that at all. Ultimately we deal with these issues. the question is whether you deal with these issues by having a crash landing, or by having a nice glide path. And I don’t want a crash landing. And that’s what we have facing us ten years down the road unless we start to build in a glide path now.
Mr. Wattenberg: Okay, Norm, on that note, we will have to end it. Thank you again for joining us on Think Tank. And thank you. Please remember to send us your comments via email. We think it makes our program better. And now we have a blog which is a fun and frustrating vice for which to communicate with our viewers so participate if you can. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg.
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