As Republicans tremble from the earthquake out of Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, an old adage surely must occur to a few of them still capable of clear thinking in their moment of disarray: Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
After 18 years of Wayne Gilchrest’s honorable, dignified, centrist Republican representation in the district, the great thinkers in the state GOP whispered to themselves: Nah, this isn’t the kind of representation we really want.
No matter that Gilchrest is one of the most decent men on the planet. No matter that his was considered one of the few safe Republican seats at any level of Maryland politics. The GOP movers and shakers (such as they are) wished for somebody else, and so they bumped off Gilchrest during GOP congressional primaries.
And now, they’ve got somebody new in that office. But it sure isn’t the guy they thought it would be.
It now looks like Democrat Frank Kratovil Jr., and not Republican state Sen. Andy Harris. The agonizing count over absentee ballots and provisional ballots stumbles along. But the numbers are good enough for Kratovil that The Associated Press has projected him defeating Harris.
This would remove the final vestige of what seemed, only a few years ago, like the possibility of the Republicans actually making Maryland a two-party state.
What a concept: political competition. A real exchange of ideas, a real sharing of political power, a real choice for voters.
Instead, repeatedly and unwisely, the Republicans wished for something they didn’t have — and they got it.
Remember?
Back when Robert Ehrlich Jr. was a young man running for governor and still had prospects that seemed limitless, the Republicans decided: We need to get rid of Cas Taylor. The idea seemed preposterous. Taylor, out of Western Maryland, was the highly respected Democratic House speaker. They couldn’t possibly beat him.
Except, on the morning after Election Day, it turned out they had. Not only had they beaten Taylor, but they’d knocked off the Democratic gubernatorial contender, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, for the Republicans’ first trip to State House leadership in four decades.
How do you like this? For a few ticks of the clock there, with Ehrlich running the state and Taylor out of the State House, it looked like the Republican Party was on the move in Maryland.
Except for this slight problem: By knocking off Cas Taylor, they opened the door for another Democrat, Mike Busch, to succeed Taylor as House speaker. Taylor was a great champion of slot machines. And Busch was slots’ greatest enemy.
For four years, Ehrlich made slots the centerpiece of his world. He begged, he bargained, he bullied. He called people bad names.
He ran to the radio microphones every chance he got (and still does), imagining he was charming everyone, right up to the moment he found himself voted out of office — the only incumbent governor in all of America to get bumped off.
But that wasn’t enough self-destruction.
They got behind Harris, because they felt Gilchrest wasn’t a real Republican. Meaning, a conservative Republican. No matter that Gilchrest was a man who reached across party lines for compromise, no matter that he was respected across the state, no matter that he gave the Republicans at least a patina of political muscle in Maryland — not conservative enough.
They muscled Harris past him in the primaries — and then, in the campaign against Kratovil, there was Ehrlich, the man once seen as the rebirth of the Republican Party — putting his muscle behind Harris.
And watching, according to the latest figures, as Harris goes down to defeat.
So here’s the question for the day. With the Republicans now holding only one of eight state congressional seats, and no positions of power in the State House — where do they go from here? And where, after spending his political muscle and getting nowhere with Harris, does Ehrlich go?
There’s always another campaign for him — in fact, his is the Campaign That Never Dies. Even when he was governor, he was on the radio so much that he seemed to be electioneering all the time. Now that he’s out of office, he’s got his own talk show every week.
But what’s his political future? Barack Obama scored as easy a victory here as he did anywhere in the country. Democratic finances here are sky-high. And a recent Washington Post poll showed Ehrlich has lost considerable ground to Gov. Martin O’Malley, should Ehrlich be pondering another run for governor.
O’Malley beat Ehrlich by 53 to 46 percent a few years ago. In the Post poll, O’Malley would beat Ehrlich this time 57 to 36 percent.
Republicans needed to be careful what they wished for. They finally got slots. But almost everything else is gone.
