One day back when Republicans controlled Congress, Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) found themselves talking politics, something both men tend to do when they happen to be awake.
Cole, who has worked behind the scenes for just about every prominent Republican politician in Oklahoma as well as the national party, suggested that House Democrats would need a political pro to win back the majority in 2006, and he predicted they'd choose Emanuel to chair their campaign committee. Emanuel, who was once President Clinton's top political adviser, said he doubted it; he'd clashed too many times with party leaders.
"You don't have to like George Patton to know you need George Patton," Cole replied.Cole was right, and Emanuel ultimately led the Democrats back to the majority. That's why Republicans wanted their own Patton -- their own Rahm -- to take back the House in 2008. And that's why they've elected Cole to chair the National Republican Congressional Committee, where he once served as executive director.
"A guy with that kind of r+¬sum+¬, we'd be paying millions of dollars for him as a consultant," said Rep. Candice S. Miller (Mich.), the head of recruiting for the NRCC.
You'll like this Republican, he's a history buff like me, and like me, and hell, about all of us on this board,off this board,in the United States, throughout Europe, Australia, China and the orient, and any and every country you can name and some you can't, this Republican here, Mr. Cole, he's in touch with reality. You see dear readers, like the vast amount of Washington DC, he makes the tried and true Truman analogy, which at first sounds like the usual '48 speech, but then in a move so unlike other I'm like Harry politicians, he follows it up with and Truman he had Korea in '52 and the Democrats were swept out of the House and the Presidency. Then he said"D'oh". Anyrate back to story:
It's true; Cole has run the Republican National Committee, the Oklahoma GOP and a lucrative consulting business. He has also been a state senator, congressional staff member and Oklahoma's secretary of state. He loves to read cross tabs, and he's a consummate insider. "His Rolodex," says former aide John Woods, "is like all of MySpace plus all of Facebook."
But even the best political consultants know there's only so much they can do with an unpopular client, and congressional Republicans had a 39 percent approval rating in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll -- nearly as low as that of President Bush and the Iraq war. Cole's ascension raises a tough question for a party that's still tied to that unpopular president and that unpopular war: Do Republicans need to change their policies, or their politics? Can they win back the House by distancing themselves from a lame-duck president and burnishing their image, or do they need a more fundamental ideological shift?Some Republicans argue that the party lost its majority by straying from conservative principles, especially limited government spending. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) made similar arguments when his leadership was challenged this past winter, although he now blames the defeats on "Iraq, Iraq, Iraq."
Cole has run the numbers, and he doesn't think the GOP was doomed by appropriating federal money for bridges to nowhere in Alaska. His diagnosis includes Iraq, corruption scandals and a general sense that Republicans "overreached" after taking over Washington. He's a conservative Republican from a conservative district, but he says that the United States is a "center-right country, not a right-wing country." He wants the GOP to woo swing voters, and he believes they can be coaxed back into the fold with better messaging, better marketing and better performance.....
....."That lady from California, can you tell her to stop gallivanting around the world trying to be president?" City Council member Larry O'Connell of Del City asked Cole after the dinner at the air base."Well, we're going to have to change the numbers," Cole replied with a laugh....
But the next morning, a 54-year-old wholesale car buyer named Bill Kirtley challenged Cole about the war at a town hall meeting in Pauls Valley. Kirtley, a Chickasaw, said he talked to a 20-year-old soldier who said he believes that it doesn't matter whether the United States withdraws tomorrow or a decade from tomorrow. He called Iraq a quagmire, a Vietnam War in the sand.
"I've been a registered Republican for 20 years, but I'm so ashamed of the party," he told Cole. "What are we doing in Iraq? Anyone with any sense can see this is crazy."
Cole spent the next 20 minutes debating with Kirtley, conceding that mistakes have been made, insisting that not all is lost, warning that Americans will pay the price if the Middle East is not transformed. "We can't go around the world stomping people," Kirtley said. Cole replied: "That's why you're seeing a different approach to Iran and North Korea."
In the end, the two agreed to disagree. "Tom's a good man," Kirtley said later. "But he's a Republican congressman, and they've just lost their way."
What I like about this part is thinking the country is still in those heady days of Reaganomincs. Then its thinking that Mrs. Pelosi created Bush's mess. And like the Bush error-era, its thinking you can but the blame with the other guys. Its May, the 5th month of the first year Democrats have control. The mess was four years on GOP time.
Many Republicans in Congress agree; their debate is over how to find their way. The 2006 election wiped out many moderate Republicans, leaving the caucus smaller but even more conservative. Now conservatives such as Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Tex.), House Republican Conference Chairman Adam H. Putnam (Fla.) and Chief Deputy Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) want Republicans to return to their austerity principles, while avoiding the corruption scandals that dogged them last year."An indispensable ingredient for us to reclaim the majority is to convince the American people we're serious about accountability and fiscal responsibility," Hensarling said.
But moderate Republicans such as Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (Ill.) think that conservatives have driven the GOP caucus too far right on contentious social policy as well as corporate-friendly economic and environmental policy. Kirk will need independent voters to help him win a rematch with Dan Seals, who received 47 percent of his district's vote last year, and he and other moderates have sketched out a "suburban agenda" aimed at winning over independents by focusing on issues such as health care and education.
"When I hear my colleagues debating on the floor, I think, 'Some of this rhetoric is so20th-century,' " Kirk said.
It is Cole's job to accommodate both wings of the party, and he thinks it can be done by attacking Democrats -- as tax-and-spenders and blame-America-first defeatists. Cole says Pelosi was smart to begin with her "Six for '06" agenda of popular issues such as ethics reforms, the minimum wage and low-interest student loans -- even he voted for the student loan package -- but now he thinks she's showing her true liberal colors, and dragging her caucus along. "We need the Democrats to be Democrats, and thank God, they are," he said.
Here's a thunk. What if the country is liberal? Now I know its a big stretch but what if the country is liberal, going green. This is not to say that America is now for abortion of any kind. I think there will always be differences, but a mid term loss of substantial proportions and in classic Black Knight fashion, the GOP is saying, "it's only a flesh wound" "I can still kick you." Now, yes Democrats did vote for the war and maybe some funding but honestly, its not the Democrats war, its the Republicans war, and the White House's war. How, well you see our president thought it'd be a nice idea to use it in the 2002 mid terms as a political wedge issue,which he did and won handidly. Then he used in the Presidential election of 2004, that also had Congress up, and won again, handidly. So when things started to fall apart, the Democrats used it to their advantage, by asking stay the course Republicans or new direction Democrats. People voted for, um, the Democrats.
Still, Cole knows that if the situation in Iraq deteriorates, Republican prospects probably will, too. His biggest fear is not poor NRCC recruiting or anemic NRCC fundraising but a collapse of the Iraqi government. He says he once had high hopes for Ayad Allawi, who served as prime minister of the interim government until the spring of 2005. "A great pol," Cole recalled.But no Karzai. When Cole was asked whether he would have loved to run Allawi, too, he had to acknowledge that even his political skills have their limits.
"I don't know about that," he said. http://www.washingto....
Anyrate its a great article.