Editorials
For Resurgent GOP
‘Just Say No’ Won’t Cut It Anymore
After the elections two years ago, the Republican Party was a smoking ruin, ejected from the White House and left with weak House and Senate minorities that rendered it almost irrelevant in Congress.
Voters — tired of President Bush and the scandal-plagued, big-spending congressional Republicans — had turned sharply against the GOP. As House Republican Caucus leader Mike Pence of Indiana put it, "We lost our way."
Now, sooner than most expected, they have an opportunity for a do-over, or what Florida U.S. Sen.-Elect Marco Rubio calls a "second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago."
Tuesday's elections infused new talent such as Rubio into the Grand Old Party, handed the House back to Republicans and put them within a handful of seats of controlling the Senate. They got there largely by following a just-say-no approach to virtually everything the Obama administration has proposed.
The all-gripe, no-responsibility strategy works for disempowered minorities. It's not likely to be good enough anymore. Now that they're in charge, House Republican leaders are obliged to put forth a positive agenda, and choose between compromise and confrontation. It's obvious which would be best for the country. The economy, the national debt, dependence on imported oil, and an unstable immigration situation all cry out for bipartisan cooperation between Congress and the White House.
Inevitably, Republicans will spend part of the next two years trying to score political points by forcing the Democratic Senate to block, or President Barack Obama to veto, doomed gestures such as a repeal of health care reform or an unwinding of what's left of the economic stimulus act. That would be red meat for core voters, but it would achieve nothing of substance.
GOP leaders' pre-election rhetoric was not promising in this regard.
"This is not a time for compromise," U.S. Rep. John Boehner (Rep., Ohio), who is in line to become the new speaker of the House of Representatives, declared last week. MR. Pence, an
influential conservative who stepped off the House leadership ladder Wednesday, echoed Congressman Boehner. "There will be no compromise on repealing ObamaCare," Congressman Pence told radio host Hugh Hewitt. "There will be no compromise on stopping Democrats from growing government and raising taxes. And if I haven't been clear enough yet, let me say again: no compromise."
Actually, this is exactly the right time for compromise, and Congressman Boehner for one has been around long enough to know that. He lived through the Republicans' disastrous government shutdowns in the winter of 1995-96, when GOP leaders' refusal to reach common ground with President Bill Clinton alienated voters and cost the party severely.
The incoming Republican leaders would be wise to replay that bit of history for themselves and for their newly elected colleagues, especially Tea Party stalwarts who have vowed never to temper their core demands for smaller government and balanced budgets.
Congressman Boehner was among the leaders who helped Republicans win back voter support by negotiating legislative deals with President Clinton and the Democrats in 1996. That gave both sides achievements such as welfare reform. In 1997, a modest compromise on a budget bill allowed Republicans to claim credit for helping President Clinton balance the budget for four years, beginning in 1998. And, in 2001, Congressman Boehner worked closely with liberal U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (Dem., Mass.) on the No Child Left Behind education law.
Today, working together would give both parties something to brag about in several areas, starting with how to handle the expiring Bush tax cuts in the forthcoming post-election session of Congress. The parties could also find common ground on improving (but not repealing) the health insurance law, by adding malpractice reform and deleting burdensome paperwork requirements, for example.
Refusal to compromise not only robs the nation of the responsible decision-making the citizens need, it also can carry serious political costs. If Republicans insist on proving that once more, they could find two years is just long enough in politics for results-oriented voters to change their minds all over again.
The above is an editorial of USA Today.
