The Happy Party
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
February 8, 2009
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| Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. discusses the Republican viewpoint on the economic stimulus package as he meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Feb. 2, 2009. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) |
They took a beating in November, but now, in the stimulus fight, Republicans are smiling again.
You see it all over Capitol Hill, in the hallways, the hearing rooms, the gathering spots. Republicans, coming off a devastating, across-the-board electoral defeat, are … happy. Being in opposition, after eight years of a Republican presidency and 12 years of GOP rule in Congress, suits many of them just fine.
It’s not that they were glad to lose. There are a lot of indignities involved in being the minority, and a pretty small minority at that. But talk to Republican lawmakers and insiders these days, and they speak as if an enormous weight has been lifted from their shoulders. Some of that weight was named George W. Bush, but in a larger sense, Republicans are relieved to be free of the burden of running things.
“We weren’t very happy with the results of the election, and on through the inaugural, but I guarantee you, I’ve never seen the spirit of Republicans as high as it was at the GOP retreat,” Arizona Rep. John Shadegg told me, referring to the House Republican getaway a week ago at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va.
It would be an understatement to say GOP lawmakers were pumped after unanimously opposing the stimulus bill in the House. Although they lost, they were thrilled that not a single Republican voted for what all agreed was a terrible bill; if even one or two among them had broken ranks to join the Democrats, the feeling wouldn’t have been nearly as good.
“When we held our guys together, that had people extremely excited,” Shadegg said. “Then there were the ongoing scandals with Democratic tax cheats, and I think Republicans are beginning to say, ‘Ah, there could be some fun in the minority.’ ”
“I’m much happier,” Sen. Jim DeMint told me between votes on the stimulus. “Our message was so muddled with Bush in the White House, often going the big-spending approach, that we could not define ourselves in any other way.”
Now, unmuddled, Republicans have won the first big message war of the Obama administration — and in the stimulus battle made a better case for spending restraint than they did in the previous eight years.
“We have a focus we did not have before, because we were just trying to hang on to power,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told me. “Instead of hanging our heads, we’re picking good fights. In that regard, there is an energy among Republicans that is counterintuitive to the beating we just took.”
And it’s not just on Capitol Hill. I talked to a lot of outside-the-Beltway Republicans in the days after the election, and they were surprisingly upbeat. They were certainly worried about having Barack Obama in the Oval Office, but none of them felt that John McCain or Republicans in Congress deserved to win. So they were ready to move on to life in opposition.
Still, they couldn’t bear the Obama worship they saw nearly everywhere during the transition. So for a while after the election, many conservatives who are normally news junkies just tuned out. Not watching the news or reading the papers made them feel better.
Now, fired up by the stimulus, they’ve reconnected. According to A.C. Nielsen, Fox News Channel was up 23 percent in total viewers in the two weeks after the inauguration, compared to the two weeks before. In the same period, CNN was up just 5 percent, and MSNBC was down 1 percent. While you can’t conclude too much from that — research shows that Fox has a pretty diverse audience, with more Democratic viewers than CNN has Republican viewers — it’s clear Republicans are no longer averting their eyes. They’re in a good fight, and they like it.
Before the election, a lot of Republicans glumly predicted that the party deserved some time in the wilderness. Now that they’re there, it doesn’t seem quite so bad — at least for now.
“I don’t want to endorse minority status,” another leading House Republican, Rep. Mike Pence, told me. “What I think Republicans are happier about is that we’re getting back to who we were, getting back to limited government, fiscal discipline, reform and traditional values. It’s a very refreshing time.”
Byron York is The Examiner’s chief political correspondent. His columns appear Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts can be read daily at ExaminerPolitics.com.
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