[Mb-civic] Run-Down Republicans - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Run-Down Republicans
Where Is the GOP's Agenda?
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By E. J. Dionne Jr.
The Washington Post
Friday, April 7, 2006; A19

Imagine that: Tom DeLay speaking truth to power.

"We don't have an agreed agenda," DeLay told a group of sympathetic 
reporters this week. "Breaking up our leadership has taken its toll."

Self-serving? Absolutely. DeLay is saying the Republicans have been in a 
mess ever since he stopped being majority leader. But with his comment 
on the GOP's agenda shortfall, The Hammer hit the nail on the head.

DeLay's fall is not the moment's most striking political event. His 
departure could have been foreseen at least a year ago, when he 
apologized for his "inartful" attacks on the federal judiciary after 
Terri Schiavo's death. Once DeLay was forced to say he was sorry about 
anything , you knew his days were numbered.

No, the most important development is the collapse of purpose in the 
Republican Party and the sense of exhaustion at both ends of 
Pennsylvania Avenue. Other than the desperate scramble to make something 
go right in Iraq, our national government seems to have no energy, no 
coherence and no sense of direction.

This was brought home to me recently by a very smart Republican 
consultant whom I had queried about the splits in his party over 
immigration. He said something surprising -- and, given the Senate 
breakthrough announced yesterday, shrewd. However divided Republicans 
were over how to deal with illegal immigrants and border security, at 
least they were trying to solve a problem. His point was that there 
aren't many other solutions being proffered in Washington these days by 
either side.

President Bush inadvertently underscored the weakness of the Republican 
agenda when he flew to Bridgeport, Conn., on Wednesday to campaign for 
his health savings accounts, known as HSAs. Virtually no one other than 
the president -- oh, and perhaps a few ideologues and insurance 
companies -- sees HSAs as anything approaching a comprehensive solution 
to the nation's growing health-care problem.

Senate Republicans have already dropped HSAs from their budget, and Sen. 
Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Finance Committee chairman, has been 
openly skeptical about doing anything on HSAs this year. The president 
was thus campaigning for a doomed idea in Connecticut when, just over 
the border in Massachusetts, a bipartisan majority in the legislature 
was passing a visionary plan requiring all residents to buy health 
insurance and providing subsidies for those who can't afford the full 
freight. The contrast between the policy energy that exists in many 
states and the intellectual torpor in Washington could not have been 
more stark.

Meanwhile, DeLay's former colleagues in the House were showing how years 
of incoherent budgeting lead to impasse. House Republicans are having a 
devilish time passing any budget, because conservatives think there 
should be much bigger cuts and moderates think way too many cuts in 
social service programs have been made already.

There is no magic here, nothing complicated. Big spending on war, 
defense and prescription drugs for the elderly, combined with big tax 
cuts, produces a fiscal squeeze. But Republicans are paralyzed because 
they can't deal with the core problems without walking away from their 
earlier policy choices. So they keep feuding.

The maddening aspect of our current stalemate is that it was entirely 
predictable. It took no great genius to see that cutting taxes in a time 
of war and other security threats would create large problems. The 
contradiction between the current majority's small-government rhetoric 
and heavy federal spending has been visible for years. For conservatives 
to be shocked at our big deficits suggests they were unwilling 
participants in government, forced to vote for one budget after another 
at gunpoint. Even The Hammer wasn't that tough.

The day after the 2004 elections, Tom DeLay was ebullient. "The 
Republican Party is a permanent majority for the future of this 
country," he declared. "We're going to be able to lead this country in 
the direction we've been dreaming of for years." Whatever DeLay's 
conservative Republican allies were dreaming of, the current dead end 
can't be where they hoped to arrive.

The collapse of conservatism is not primarily DeLay's fault. It's 
possible to live with contradictions and evasions for a long time -- but 
not forever. Conservatives got a longer lease on life than they 
deserved, partly because the war on terrorism obscured what was 
happening and partly because their opponents on the center-left lacked 
their own driving dream. The point of coming up with a new approach to 
governing is not to win some election or to satisfy querulous reporters 
asking, "What's your alternative?" It is to provide the energy that this 
crowd no longer has and to solve problems that the current majority is 
powerless to deal with.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040601375.html
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