GOP House Members Must Control Their Fear

October 2, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Economic issues, Election 2008, Republican Party 

Reagan Republicans in the House must be in their agony. Passing a rescue bill that seems to defy conservative principles is bad enough. Doing so as Sen. Obama’s lead over Sen. McCain appears to lengthen (to nearly 6% in the RCP average this morning) makes it worse. Their own reelection chances aside, their worst nightmare is being in the minority with a Democratic President next year as the nation’s financial woes are laid at their feet in a series of rigged hearings and solved, or so we’ll be told, by wrapping the economy in layers of regulatory gauze. And that’s not to mention the possible tax increases (which helped trigger the Great Depression, it would be wise for all to remember).

So suspicious conservative tribunes such as Laura Ingraham and Robert Tracinski stick up for “the people” and “Main St.” Tracinski blames Rep. Barney Frank for the crisis and even brings Obama into it:

Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama’s former employer as a “community organizer.” It turns out that a big part of ACORN’s “community organizing” was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.

Fortunately, the public has the good sense to smell that something is rotten. I just got an e-mail recounting what Virginia Representative Jim Moran told Fox News: that calls from constituents commenting on the bailout were running 50-50–50% “no” and 50% “hell, no.”

And yet if ever there was a moment when two bromides are true — “There’s plenty of blame to go around” and “We’re all in this together” — it’s this one. For every leftist maumauing a bank for a loan, there were a thousand families grasping for the American dream by taking out a no-money-down jumbo mortgage they couldn’t afford. As for our shared interest in a functioning economy, in a thoughtful analysis yesterday, the New York Times demonstrated how those urging Washington not to bail out the fat cats today could be out of work a year from now as a result of credit markets seizing up.

It might not happen that way, but it did before. At a moment like this, a non-economist may be excused for not having full faith and trust in a GOP House member worried about his reelection and waving a What would Reagan do? sign in his face (especially since I’m pretty sure President Reagan would be all for it). At a moment like this, Rep. Moran should pay less attention to his call lists and more to history and to the need which sometimes emerges in a crisis for responsible, nonideological pragmatism.

But those are bad words among many Republicans. So is moderation. So are accommodation and compromise. Seeing Sens. Reid, McConnell, Dodd, and Gregg speaking so collegially last night must’ve horrified ideologues of the left and right. And yet in their exhausted faces I thought I caught glimpses of authentic pride in what they’d accomplished. Reid even looked like he choked up for a moment.

It’s true that you’d need a supplemental appropriation to buy enough lipstick to disguise the pork, but as Instapundit noted last night, that probably wouldn’t have happened if the House had passed the earlier version. The way you get 74 votes — enough to impress the American people and maybe even the House — and all those bipartisan smiles is to put something in for everyone.

And so it’s back to the House, where on Monday a substantial group of Republicans defeated the measure on Monday, rebuking President Bush and Sen. McCain. It may be that history will long remember, for good or ill, what that same group does tonight or tomorrow. Anyone who has a crystal ball should provide it as quickly as possible so we can see what things will look like in a year or five years after the measure passes. Absent that, perhaps there is something meaningful for the open-minded skeptic in the fact that George W. Bush and Harry Reid are in wholehearted and indeed desperate agreement.

What if some of the House members lose their reelection bids as a result? What if the measure is spun for Obama’s benefit?

As to the latter point, House members might have thought about that on Monday, when McCain urged them to vote aye. Their defiance made him look ineffective and fueled Obama’s current rise in the polls.

As to the former worry, assuming the measure passes it will be up to McCain to give fellow Republicans as much cover as he can by making a persuasive case about his own plans for the economy. Until now, both candidates have campaigned on the economy and the crisis by scapegoating the other side. With Bush as unpopular as he is, that may continue to work for Obama, but it won’t for McCain. He must dominate the next two debates by proclaiming his own vision and by making Obama either affirm or repudiate his plans for tax increases. McCain is still close enough to be able to turn the election around, but he’ll have to appeal aggressively to moderates and independents. He’ll have to remember that his 2000 candidacy caught fire because of his pragmatic, maverick’s temperament and message (including on issues such as immigration and campaign finance), not the half-hearted doctrinaire 1980s Reaganism that characterized his campaign this year.

As for congressional Republicans and their media darlings, it’s time for them to get to work and support their candidate for a change. Ed Rollins has already said that some Republicans would rather rebuild their party with someone other than McCain. That kind of thinking — suggesting that Republicans would benefit by losing the election and searching in the wilderness for a new Reagan, modeled on the fiscally conservative Reagan who never really existed — is a ticket to a generation in Goldwaterland. But if House Republicans risk destroying the economy just to save themselves or defeat Obama, they may well earn for themselves an even deeper obscurity.

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