The Republicans' One-Two Punch
When polls close Tuesday, Republicans are overwhelmingly expected to win enough seats to take back the House. Just two years ago, the GOP was all but left for dead. How did Democrats squander the major electoral gains they achieved and snatch defeat out of the jaws of long-term victory?
The answer, both Democratic and Republican pollsters agree, is two-fold: Democrats over-promised on their first major initiative, then overreached on their most defining legislative effort. That combination has doomed Democrats to a disastrous election as voters take out a mix of frustration and anger on the party in charge.
It all began with disappointment. Just weeks after Pres. Obama was inaugurated, Democrats passed a massive $787 billion economic stimulus package, a bill that was supposed to revitalize the economy and halt the rapidly-rising unemployment rate.
The package, a mix of government spending and tax cuts, had some success. It raised the gross domestic product by nearly 3 percent; it lowered unemployment by up to 1.8 percentage points; and it created or saved between 2 million and 4.8 million jobs, all according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
But the package either spent too much, according to Republicans, or didn't go far enough, as some liberals said. Unemployment skyrocketed past 10 percent, and voters are so worried about government spending that the deficit now ranks as one of their top concerns.
The worst part is that voters don't believe the stimulus plan has worked, despite Democratic efforts to highlight local projects that are creating jobs, either through news events or through actual signs posted at ubiquitous construction sites around the nation.
Just 42 percent of Americans, including 40 percent of independents, believe the stimulus bill was a good thing for the country, according to a Newsweek poll released Oct. 21. An ABC News/Washington Post poll, released Oct. 3, showed just 29 percent of national adults believe the money allocated in the stimulus bill has been spent well, while 68 percent think money has been wasted. The bill left the impression with independent voters, according to surveys taken by Republican pollsters and provided to Hotline On Call, that a member voting for it was little more than a rubber stamp for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Not a single House Republican voted for the stimulus package, and just three Senate Republicans -- one of whom, Arlen Specter, later became a Democrat -- voted for it. Republicans, therefore, were able to characterize the bill as belonging to Democrats, giving the majority full credit if it succeeded, and full responsibility if it failed.
If Democrats' signature effort to revitalize the economy failed to turn things around in voters' eyes, a constant focus on creating jobs may have been enough to help win those voters over again. Instead, Democrats embarked on a nearly year-long effort to overhaul the nation's health care system.
That overhaul, whether one supported or opposed it, contained types of legislative maneuvering that bring to mind comparisons with sausage-making. In the age of 24-hour cable news coverage, deals offered to Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) (The "Cornhusker Kickback") and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) (The "Louisiana Purchase") became fodder that fired up the Republican base.
After voters in Massachusetts expressed anger at the process by electing Republican Sen. Scott Brown, Democrats had to figure out new ways to get around a 41-member Republican conference willing to filibuster. That brought to mind obscure legislative practices, like "deem and pass" rules and the budget reconciliation process, that appeared to skirt easier to understand rules.
The bill passed on Sunday, March 21. Democrats were convinced their party would benefit from a fuller explanation of the bill's contents. But Republicans made effective arguments, pollsters said, that the health care reform overhaul contained lurking passages worthy of suspicion, from Sarah Palin's inaccurate "death panels" to the more widely accepted claim, advanced by virtually every Republican candidate running this year, that the bill represents an unwanted takeover of private health care plans by the federal government.
Democrats say their surveys showed the bill seriously hurt their party's appeal to key voters whose support they enjoyed in 2008. Seniors didn't trust the bill, which Republicans said would take $500 billion out of Medicare. And male voters subscribed to the overreach theory. Now, both groups are breaking heavily for Republican candidates.
Obama's party started off the 111th Congress facing some of the worst economic circumstances any incoming administration and Congress have faced. Their efforts to turn the economy around had a real and substantial impact -- it just wasn't as big, or successful, as voters expected. That hurt the Democratic camel; the party's efforts to reform the national health care system broke its back.
Few can argue that the current Congress has been one of the most successful in decades. Democrats have passed financial regulatory reform and measures aimed at fixing student loan and credit card industries, as well as a host of jobs bills, virtually all over the objection of the Republican conference. But that success, and the Republican unanimity, has been the Democrats' downfall, and the Republicans' best one-two punch.
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