AS HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER, Tom DeLay had a crisp and clear style. He coupled an agenda with an unwillingness to compromise and an iron resolve to produce narrow victories based entirely on Republican votes. At the moment, his successor, John Boehner, is working on a mission statement--an official vision--for House Republicans. The comparison is not meant to belittle Boehner, but to point out where Republicans now find themselves.
Times have changed. DeLay is gone and Republicans, both at the White House and in Congress, are struggling just to figure out what their agenda is. So far, they're sure of only two issues. They want to pass an immigration bill and extend the tax cuts on dividends and capital gains.
DeLay believes the House worked best when it was "the echo chamber for the president." President Bush would propose and the House would dispose, just as the old saying has it. By doing so, the House became "the engine" for enacting Bush administration policy. The House would lead, and the Senate would follow. That was the story of Bush's first term.
But can the House again lead? Not for now. Boehner has been out of the Republican leadership for eight years. His skills are rusty. More important, he doesn't yet have the trust of House conservatives, the 100-plus who are hard core. He may gain the trust of the entire Republican majority, but it won't be easy with an unpopular president and a potentially disastrous election coming in November.
The media and even some inside the
administration never recognized how talented--brilliant, even--a congressional leader DeLay was. He wasn't The Hammer, the nickname used mostly by the press. Believe it or not, DeLay was usually a gentle persuader, not an arm-twister. He could tie micro issues to the macro purposes of the party and the nation. Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said DeLay could convince members to vote with him "just for Tom and the cause and the team."
Boehner has to pull the team together. On some substantive issues like immigration, Republicans are hopelessly divided. Boehner will have difficulty getting more than half of the 232 House Republicans to vote for a bill that includes any guest-worker program or process allowing illegal immigrants here in America to earn citizenship. Democrats will play a crucial role on that vote.
But Boehner can get Republicans working to help each other get reelected. A test of this was last week's vote to curb the unlimited spending of so-called 527 independent expenditure groups. They are a tool to evade campaign finance laws and have been used by rich liberals and Democrats to finance TV ads against Republicans at saturation level. This year they are being used to target vulnerable Republican moderates.
The problem is that many conservatives take the principled position that political spending should not be regulated. For them, it's a free speech issue. Boehner's lieutenants argued at a Republican caucus that the 527s were circumventing the McCain-Feingold restrictions that Republicans, like it or not, have been forced to accept. It shouldn't violate anyone's principles to make the 527s comply with a law intended to apply to them, they argued. Besides, sparing moderates massive TV attacks might be critical to their reelection.
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