On Jan. 5, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl gave an interview to Roll Call laying out his vision for how to bring Republicans back from minority exile.
Kyl, who battled through a tough campaign himself and has just become Republican Conference chairman, had already informed senators and lobbyists that he plans to reverse the K Street-friendly M.O. of his defeated predecessor, Rick Santorum; push for a return to core party principles like small government and family values; and force veteran Republicans to really show they can still govern.
But in his agenda-setting interview, Kyl revealed another focus besides substantive soul-searching on where the party had gone wrong: fixing Republican P.R.
“It’s not enough to develop the message,” he said. “You’ve got to get it out.” In the 110th Congress, he’ll be concentrating on getting senators to persuade the public misjudged them by going on TV, radio and the Internet to promote the party message.
Kyl seems torn: Sometimes he believes Republicans lost the midterms because they supported the wrong policies for the wrong reasons; sometimes he believes they were whipped because they didn’t successfully control their image.
This difference of interpretation splits the party as a whole.
Some Republicans, like Reps. Jeff Flake and Mike Pence, think the November loss was a mandate for party reform, for soul-searching and cleaning up of acts. Others are sure the distractions of Mark Foley and Bush’s unfortunate little war in Iraq did them in, not any fundamental problems of governance — meaning that, if the capricious winds of fate decide to blow a little differently next time, Republicans can easily win back Congress in 2008.
Which of these two theories wins out will determine what Republicans do during this Congress: Prioritize policy, reconsidering and refashioning Republican ideology to better reflect conservative principles and social realities; or prioritize style, needling Democrats and mounting in-your-face offensives to try to make an unchanged message more powerful.
For a party that really comprehends that it’s in trouble with voters, the first approach is the better and more honest one.
Congressional Republicans certainly would have lost the House without Foley, and they might even have lost it without the outrageous blip of Jack Abramoff: Their hard-line approach to stem cell research is over-reasoned and against the wishes of most Americans; their pork-barrel spending is out of line with conservative basics; they’ve shown no independent leadership on national security. This election wasn’t won on ethics or hatred of Washington; it was won on economic populism, on more conservative fiscal policies than most conservatives have recently been willing to espouse.
In early February, Republican representatives will go on an intense retreat to plot their strategy for the next two years.
I have a hunch the second strategy, the one that doesn’t re-examine the Republican platform and congressional behavior but sets out to make Democrats look bad, will prevail.
The brightest young thing emerging from the Republican freshman class suggests it: During the campaign, new Idaho Republican Rep. Bill Sali was slammed by his own state party colleagues for being a boorish “opportunist” and for not possessing “one ounce of empathy in his whole fricking body,” but he’s already been elected president of his freshman class, was allowed to attend a prestigious meeting with Bush, and was selected to deliver a floor speech during last week’s minimum-wage-hike debate.
As he gave his speech — a sneering parody that suggested that, if congressmen can vote for a minimum-wage hike, they can also vote to federally reduce the power of gravity — the few Republicans present in the House chamber for the debate hooted in appreciation, and the presiding Republican senator beamed like a proud daddy.
I imagine these elders believe Sali’s mocking, theatrical stylecan keep them in the news while they’re in the minority. It might. But not in the right kind of stories.
Eve Fairbanks is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.
