Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, held a press teleconference today in response to the third straight special-election loss this year. Losing Roger Wicker's Mississippi seat stunned the House GOP caucus, which now has three more seats to recover in what looks like a very bad year for Republicans.
"My sense is--we had a leadership meeting this morning--the sense of the group was we need to pull together as a team. The message of a candidate being 'too liberal' or 'too out of sync' is not what voters want to hear...It just didn't work. But what does work, though, is a realization that the paradigm has been shifted. This country is tired of excuses and doesn't want to hear about 'too liberal' or 'too this' or 'too that.' What they want to hear is solutions."
House Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida agreed with [Deputy Whip] Cantor's analysis.
Holy crap, when was the last time top Republicans questioned the wisdom of using "too liberal" as a campaign tactic? The GOP have been rocked. There's rumours of firing the leadership. 3 more Democratic votes in the House (and 3 less Republicans).
I picked SCHIP as the most obvious big-ticket bill that failed due to a close vote in the House vice the usual obstruction in the Senate.
It's probably not the only thing worth trying again, and I think even GOP senators will be feeling a little uneasy about the ceaseless roadblock obstructionism they've been practising to date. So even a few things that failed in close cloture votes in the Senate would be worth another try. I'm sure the new Junior Senator from Missouri, who just saw his former House seat go to a Democrat might be a tad more pliable than he was yesterday.
Now the closest vote on veto-override was 273-156 which put it 13 "yeas" short of override. Childers and Cazayoux explicitly and prominently support SCHIP expansion in their campaign web sites. Foster was more generally for UHC so I imagine he's on board for SCHIP. So that narrows the margin to 276-153 at least. So we'd only need to flip another 10 votes to override.
With the GOP reeling I'm sure even some of the staunchest nay votes in the darkest red districts must be sweating a little. Doubting the surety of their re-election just a little. Back in 2007 they could assure themselves that Democrats would trip-up and the Republican situation would improve. It hasn't and the trendline isn't good.
I think Pelosi should test the waters again. I think they're cracking, more from that Politico link above:
Asked if Republicans need to break with President Bush, Cantor dodged the question, noting that "this election is going to be about John McCain."
Of course, McCain voted Nay too so by all means let's tie Bush, the House Republicans and McCain together with a giant SCHIP ribbon.
Congress hasn't exactly gotten any more popular lately, but taking advantage of a weakened foe who are openly questioning themselves would be worth trying. This isn't just politicking of course, because passing SCHIP would be a valuable step in the right direction towards UHC and a much-needed untainted domestic policy victory for the Democratic Congress (minimum wage was passed with the first Iraq supplemental which kind of dampened enthusiasm for the measure).
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