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Senators Must Speak to the Middle Class Paul Weyrich Not a day goes by since the November elections, which the Democrats won big, that some member of the congressional leadership, some candidate for president or some pundit, including those on radio and television, does not prescribe how the GOP can regain power. How many times have we heard that we must return to the issues about which the American people care? Others say that we must return to those principles that, in 1994, brought the Republicans to power after two years of the Clinton administration and a Congress controlled by Democrats. I have news for all of them. The people who turned their back on the Republicans last fall didn't study issues. Most of them would not know a principle if it hit them in the face. Then I listened to Sen. Charles E. ("Chuck") Schumer, D-N.Y., who is smarter than his colleague Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Schumer says he is preparing an agenda to meet the concerns of the middle class. Time will tell if he manages to do so, but at least he understands what would keep Democrats in power. Story Continues Below
The Republicans have many weak incumbents running in 2008, Democrats almost none. You recall that interesting election of 2002. The Democrats were perceived as weak. The president exploited their weakness. The result was unprecedented. No Republican senator running for re-election lost. And sufficient numbers of Republicans were elected to give Republicans narrow control of the Senate and stronger numbers in the House. An election like that almost has never happened. The result was that Wayne Allard of Colorado was narrowly re-elected. (He is now retiring, by the way, and Republicans do not have a suitable statewide candidate to take his place.) John Sununu, R-N.H., was elected following his defeat of Sen. Robert C. ("Bob") Smith in the GOP primary and following his father's having served three terms as governor of New Hampshire. Some voters actually thought they were voting for his father. The problem for Sununu is that the politics of New Hampshire are changing. The State, once reliably red, is now mostly blue. And so it goes. Sen. Norm Coleman, formerly mayor of Minneapolis, who surprisingly upended former Vice President Walter F Mondale by appearing energetic and forward-looking as contrasted with Mondale, who seemed old and tired, now is facing a resurgent Democratic Party. I could go on and on. My former colleague, Stuart Rothenberg, has predicted that after the 2010 election it is possible that senatorial Democrats again may have more than 60 votes. That is because of what Democrats and Republicans are discussing. The problem was that prior to the Ronald Reagan presidency the conservative movement largely was intellectual. We argued passionately and made little headway until Reagan came along with what many claimed were simplistic ideas and statements which the middle class could understand. Thus were born the Reagan Democrats. Newt Gingrich, with his "Contract with America," made another attempt in 1994. While the issues he raised were not entirely what was on the minds of the middle class, they sounded good enough for the voters to give the GOP another chance. But remember this: For Republicans to win with Reagan in 1980, the voters had to be angry with President Jimmy Carter. So it was a combination of Reagan's saying things voters could comprehend along with the performance of the incumbent president. Same goes for 1994. Yes, Gingrich did speak to the middle class. But the middle class also was furious with President Bill Clinton and his Democratic Congress which had enacted the largest tax increase in U.S. history. There were other problems as well. With President Carter, it was the giveaway of the Panama Canal. With the Clintons it was Hillary's attempt to enact semi-socialistic medicine. So in each case the voters had to be angry with the Democrats as well as understand the Republican message. Now comes Sen. Schumer. He says his package for the middle class will be what middle-class people have been seeking. Tax cuts for them, not for the oil companies, some of the executives of which made 400 times the earnings of the average worker. They want to enact tax cuts for higher education. It gets more and more expensive to send kids to college each year. This would help struggling parents. And Schumer says he wants to help veterans who have made the sacrifice by volunteering to serve in the military. He says he wants to help them with their mortgages. He wants to hold them harmless for taxes on the pay they earned when they volunteered. And as for those entering the National Guard, he wants to see to it they are used for Guard service and not as means of creating a volunteer military. Use them from time to time, but don't deploy them for months or even years. Their families were not prepared for this. And speaking of veterans, he wants to be sure that Democrats are on the cutting edge of cleaning up the terrible conditions in which wounded returning veterans have had to live as they try to recover. Yes, the Fisher Houses, privately operated, are very nice to keep families together during their recovery period. Republicans were in control of veterans facilities for twelve years. They did little or nothing about the falling plaster, the rats infecting the homes or illnesses bred in the very facilities in which the veterans are recuperating. Remember, the voters must be angry with the Democrats and Republicans must speak language voters understand. If Schumer really does produce this package of measures upon which his senators could run in 2008 few, if any, Democrats will be defeated. The Democrats could make voters angry by telling the commander in chief how he may or may not conduct the war in Iraq. This is not the issue of whether we should be there. Voters are of a mixed mind in that respect. This is the issue of whether the commander in chief can exercise his constitutional authority. In that case ordinary voters understand. Democrats, in pushing this legislation micro-managing the Iraq war, are catering to their extreme left. It is early. Even if Democrats bring up that issue now, voters are liable to forget about it if it is not a hot issue in the fall of 2008. That would depend on conservatives making it so. They may or many not be competent to do so. To counter what Sen. Schumer has to offer, Republicans can't just talk about issues. They need to craft proposals which also take care of the middle class. On some matters there are Republicans who care about veterans more than some Democrats do. And although the Democrats are highly vulnerable on immigration, if they were seen as merely helping President Bush it would be a wash. On the issue of trade Democrats talk middle-class language because of the manufacturing jobs which have left our shores. Republicans can't hold a candle to Democrats because most Republicans still worship at the altar of so-called free trade. Still, it is going to take leftist Democratic initiatives such as what Harry M. Reid, D-Nev., is pushing in the Senate this week or next. And Democrats may try to block most if not all of President Bush's appeals court nominees. Middle-class voters, for whatever reason, understood that issue and if Democrats do what some have threatened they will make life more difficult for Schumer. So if Republicans want to return to power they need to appeal to the middle class, largely veterans and Catholics. They need to speak the language of the middle class. If they do, and it is a huge if, they have a shot at returning. If they maintain their present course Democrats will be running the Senate for a generation.
Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
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