Rationalizations on the Right

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 9, 2006 8:06 AM

Maybe I'm just dizzy after pulling close to an all-nighter, but the news is flying by at a head-spinning pace.

What a crazy 48 hours. Democrats take the House. First woman speaker. Democrats almost take the Senate. It all comes down to Virginia's 'macaca' race. Bush dumps Rumsfeld. Bush nominates Gates. Bush briefly sounds humbled. Denny Hastert stepping down. Democrats take the Senate, at least if George Allen doesn't demand a recount.

And you have all these amazing subplots that at any other time would have been big stories, but are now reduced to blips. Lieberman survives as an independent. Moderate GOPer Jim Leach goes down. The Tom DeLay and Mark Foley seats, both lost. Arnold's comeback. A black governor in Massachusetts, the second in American history. And on and on.

I spent time yesterday investigating how the right is coping with the GOP debacle. Here's my report from this morning's paper:

Conservative commentators were bloodied but unbowed yesterday.

After a day in which Republicans lost their grip on the House and were on the verge of forfeiting control in the Senate, some of the right's most prominent voices found little cause for discouragement.

"Democrats, in my mind, don't have a mandate because they stood for nothing," radio host Laura Ingraham told her listeners yesterday.

"Republicans lost last night, but conservatism did not," Rush Limbaugh said on the 600 stations that carry his program. "The Democrats beat something last night with nothing. They advanced no agenda, other than their usual antiwar position."

Two distinct camps quickly emerged among the columnists, talkers and bloggers who spent much of the last six years defending the administration. One carried an air of defiance, the other a mood of resignation that what President Bush yesterday called an electoral "thumping" was perhaps deserved.

"People are obviously depressed, but there's also been a sense among conservatives for a long time that Republicans deserved to be taken to the woodshed, and perhaps this will be cathartic," said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. The Democrats "had the virtue of not being the Republicans and benefiting from an unpopular war and not having high-profile corruption issues hung around their necks, but they also made themselves acceptable to voters."

Moments after the interview, as the president announced that he was replacing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Lowry wrote on his magazine's Web site that "a lot of Republicans are probably yelling right now, 'Why didn't you do it BEFORE the election?' Of course, he couldn't have done it right before the election, but a few months ago it might have been a step toward giving the public the fresh look/approach it wanted with regard to Iraq."

Ingraham said after her show that she is "very confused. Wasn't it just last week that the president said Rumsfeld was doing an 'excellent' job? And hasn't the president consistently said that his war policy is driven by what is happening on the ground in Iraq -- not politics or polls?

"Six months ago the White House could have replaced Rumsfeld, tying the decision to lack of adequate progress in the war -- but doing it the day after the election looks weak and defensive, and a move aimed at placating Speaker-to-be [Nancy] Pelosi."

Beyond the Pentagon and politics, there was simply the trauma, known to every high school athlete, of losing the big game. Commentator Sean Hannity sounded like a therapist as he addressed his followers yesterday: "I know a lot of you are sad. I know a lot of you are bummed. I know a lot of you are depressed. . . . I'll give you 24 hours and then I'm going to tell you to get over it. Don't let yourself wallow in what has happened here."

Brian Maloney struck an equally upbeat note on his Radio Equalizer blog: "Unlike Democrats after their 2004 election debacle, it doesn't seem likely that many conservatives will threaten to move to Canada, spend months in therapy, or engage in angry, unhinged public meltdowns. Welcome to the No-Sulk Zone!"

Some pontificators weren't in mourning for their formerly favorite political party.

"The voters gave the Republicans a well-earned kick in the gut," Atlanta radio host Neal Boortz wrote on his blog, adding that the GOP "bore little resemblance to the Republican majority that rode to power 12 years ago. In 1994 we were promised less government. Over the next 12 years the Republicans more than doubled the size of the government. . . . We were promised fiscal responsibility. We got a bridge to nowhere in Alaska."

Liberals are accustomed to dealing with big political defeats, having gotten plenty of practice in 2000, 2002 and 2004 as Democrats were relegated to minority status. Left-wing blogs have flourished, and liberal radio programs have gotten a foothold. Now conservative pundits, who have been riding high for so long, will be getting some practice.

After months of arguing that a Democratic victory would hand over the House to such scary figures as John Conyers, Barney Frank and Charlie Rangel, some conservatives now say that the winners are not just a collection of loony libs.

Attorney Scott Johnson, who writes for the popular Power Line blog, said from Minneapolis that he is "disappointed" in the voting but takes solace in the fact that "a number of conservative Democrats were elected in the House and Senate. I don't know how that plays with the antiwar, McGovernite thrust of the critique of administration foreign policy."

In certain conservative quarters, there was little effort to dispel the aura of gloom. Blogger Dean Barnett acknowledged online: "We made a case to the American people. They didn't buy it because they thought it was a weak case. And you know what? They were right. In the closing weeks of the campaign season, I felt like I was a lawyer who had a bad client while writing this blog."

But Limbaugh said he felt liberated at no longer having to "carry the water" of Republicans who don't deserve it.

For some, though, there may be a financial silver lining. Lowry noted that National Review's circulation tends to jump when the other side is in power, surging to 280,000 during the Clinton administration, only to decline to 150,000 during the Bush reign. He now expects another bump as conservatives get agitated about the Democrats' new clout in Congress.

"That doesn't mean I was rooting for Nancy Pelosi to be speaker," Lowry insists.

All right, one more from the conservative side and then we'll check out the libs.

Fred Barnes says some of the GOP's losses could be long-lasting:

"This one is pretty easy to explain. Republicans lost the House and probably the Senate because of Iraq, corruption, and a record of taking up big issues and then doing nothing on them. Of these, the war was by far the biggest factor. Unpopular wars trump good economies and everything else. President Truman learned this in 1952, as did President Johnson in 1968. Now, it was President Bush's turn, and since his name wasn't on the ballot, his party took the hit.

"The defeat for Republicans was short of devastating--but only a little short. The House seats the party lost in New York and Connecticut and Pennsylvania will be hard to win back. Just as Republicans have locked in their gains in the South over the past two decades, Democrats should be able to solidify their hold on seats in the Northeast, as the nation continues to split sharply along North-South lines.

"What should worry Republicans most, however, is erosion of its strength in the West and in two states in particular: Colorado and Arizona. Fours years ago, Colorado was solidly Republican. Since then, Democrats have won a Senate seat, two House seats, the governorship, and both houses of the state legislature. At the state level, that's realignment."

John Dickerson wonders whether Bush meant what he said yesterday:

" 'It was a thumping.' It was comforting to hear that candor from the president. Perhaps it was the months of relentless spin or the president's charge that Democrats were the party of 'cut and run' while his Iraq policy moved ever closer to theirs, but it was a relief to hear George Bush say a true, if uncomfortable, thing out loud. Perhaps if he had said the true and uncomfortable things about the war in Iraq, he wouldn't have had to say that about the Election Day result.

"Listening to Bush's press conference, it seemed like the administration's Iraq policy is up for grabs. Last week the president said he was standing by Secretary Rumsfeld, and now Rumsfeld is gone. Bush had said he was satisfied with the progress, and now he's not. All previous statements had been rendered inoperative by the election result. They were no more meaningful than election-year slogans.

"But is that right? Is the president now being as candid about Iraq as he is about Tuesday's election? We'll see if the president shows the same kind of post-election flexibility on the more complex questions related to Iraq. Is he willing to rethink his approach, or is he shedding Rumsfeld the way he dropped the 'stay the course language,' only to stay fixed on all other points of debate."

Slate Editor Jake Weisberg doesn't trust the new breed of Dem:

"Many of the Democrats who recaptured seats held by Republicans have been described as moderates or social conservatives, who will be out of synch with Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi. The better term, with props to Fareed Zakaria, is probably illiberal Democrats. Most of those who reclaimed Republican seats ran hard against free trade, globalization, and any sort of moderate immigration policy. That these Democrats won makes it likely that others will take up their reactionary call. Some of the newcomers may even be foolish enough to try to govern on the basis of their misguided theory."

Arianna Huffington doesn't want to hear about the mushy middle:

"Everywhere you look, 'experts' are sifting through the rubble of last night and offering standard-issue, conventional wisdom-approved explanations for the GOP's defeat. For a perfect example, check out Ron Brownstein's reading of things in the LA Times, where he divines that the 'GOP ceded the center and paid the price.' Or DLC founder Al From, who -- surprise, surprise -- claimed Tuesday as 'a victory for the vital center of American politics over the extremes.'

"Nonsense. The GOP lost for three reasons: Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. Period. End of discussion. Election Day 2006 was an unambiguous repudiation of the Bush administration's failed and tragic policy in Iraq. In race after race after race, Democrats who were unequivocal on Iraq prevailed. Democrats who ran campaigns by the book, listened to their consultants, and veered to Al From's 'vital center', lost."

As for the Rummy fallout, his critics are still steamed. None more so than Andrew Sullivan :

"This was the final insult - to you and to me:

"In brief remarks, Rumsfeld described the Iraq conflict as a 'little understood, unfamiliar war' that is 'complex for people to comprehend.'

"He then compared himself to Churchill. Yep: still clinical. The truth is: it was Rumsfeld who little understood and was unfamiliar with the actual conflict he was tasked with managing. It was not too 'complex for people to comprehend.' It was relatively easy to comprehend. If you invade a post-totalitarian country and disband its military, you better have enough troops to keep order. We didn't. Rumsfeld refused to send enough. When this was made clear to him and to everyone, he still refused. His arrogant belief in a military that didn't need any actual soldiers was completely at odds with the actual task in Iraq. But he preferred to sit back as tens of thousands of Iraqis were murdered and thousands of U.S. troops died rather than to check his own ego.

"So let me put this as simply as I can: Rumsfeld has blood on his hands -- American and Iraqi blood. He also directly ordered and personally monitored the torture of military detainees. He secured legal impunity for his own war crimes, but that doesn't mean the Congress shouldn't investigate more fully what he authorized. He remains one of the most incompetent defense secretaries in history (McNamara looks good in comparison). But he is also a war criminal: a torturer who broke the laws of this country. The catastrophe in Iraq will stain him for ever. His record of torture has indelibly stained the United States."

The presidential swagger has been downsized, declares Dick Polman :

"The new mantra, apparently, is that Bush, seeking to make a virtue out of a necessity, intends to return to the governing philosophy that worked in Texas, when he broke bread with state legislative Democrats. This was a big theme during the distant 2000 presidential campaign (the 'compassionate conservative' campaign), when we in the political press were regaled with stories about how Bush always reached across the aisle to crusty Texas Democrat Charles Bullock. Today, he insisted he can behave likewise with Nancy Pelosi. In the president's words, 'this isn't my first rodeo.' Hence, as peace offering, the delivery of Rumsfeld's head on a platter.

"When a cocksure guy like Bush admits that he took a 'thumping,' you know that the damage must have been bad enough to pierce the presidential bubble."

In American Prospect, Spencer Ackerman wonders what the pro-war crowd will do without Rummy to kick around:

"Rumsfeld's departure is, indeed, great news. Notwithstanding the claims of no-nothings like Michael Novak that Rummy was 'the best Defense Secretary the U.S. has ever had,' Rumsfeld was incontrovertibly, and by a wide margin, the worst. No defense secretary in history ever consciously sought to antagonize the Army on matters great, small, and otherwise. No defense secretary in history devoted more resources to refuting editorials about his mismanagement than looking into what might have caused those criticisms to arise. And no defense secretary in history has ever managed to preside over two deteriorating wars, let alone simultaneously.

"But there's an additional upside to the end of the Rumsfeld era: no more will Iraq hawks be able to wash away their sins in the blood of the defense secretary. It's no accident, after all, that Rumsfeld has been the hawk's favorite whipping boy. It's part and parcel of what my colleagues Matt Yglesias and Sam Rosenfeld called 'the incompetence dodge' -- a none-too-subtle way of shifting the blame for a disastrous war away from the failed ideas that made it possible and onto the lesser beings in charge of implementing a stillborn strategy. Now, to mangle a line from Bob Dylan, in the post-Rumsfeld phase of the Iraq war even the president of the United States will have to stand naked. And so will the war's defenders."

Let's slip in a little day-after MSM analysis. The New York Times wonders if the Democrats' big tent is big enough:

"The results of some close races remained in question Wednesday but Democratic officials said they thought they would be seating at least 28 new members, bringing the party's totals to at least 230 in the 435-member House. They are still trying to get a handle on exactly who some of these people are, but it is clear they present a different tableau from the liberal lions who will be taking and retaking the chairmanships of some important House committees.

"The diverse viewpoints and backgrounds they are bringing to Washington could pose problems for Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the newly empowered Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, as they quickly move to line up lawmakers behind the party's stances on national security, economic and social issues. The rank and file was eager to be unified when it meant a chance to overturn Republican rule; now Democrats must set the agenda and deliver."

The L.A. Times sees the outcome in geological terms, with talk of "new beachheads" for the Dems:

"The rolling realignment of U.S. politics accelerated Tuesday, as Democrats strengthened their hold over the Northeast and opened new beachheads in the Midwest and Mountain West that could prove critical to their hopes of winning the White House two years from now . . .

"The results sent Republicans a message of retrenchment: the Democratic surge reversed President Bush's gains in the 2004 vote among women and Hispanic voters and saw the GOP virtually obliterated across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. In all, the election dealt a powerful blow to Republican hopes that Bush's re-election in 2004 had established a narrow but lasting political majority for the party. Instead, the U.S. appears to have reverted back toward a 50-50 political nation, with Democrats, if anything, claiming the momentum."

And this is a great lead:

"It was a sex scandal that made Dennis Hastert the House speaker and a sex scandal that helped unmake him," says the Chicago Tribune .

"The 'Accidental Speaker,' whose unlikely rise to the top ends with Hastert as the longest-serving Republican speaker in history, was plucked from an obscure junior position in the party leadership during the chaotic moments after newly nominated Republican speaker Bob Livingston resigned in December 1998 after the disclosure of an extramarital affair.

"This fall, controversy over Hastert's response to the sexual misconduct of another colleague, former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who sent sexually explicit electronic communications to underage male former pages, largely sidelined the speaker as his party struggled mightily but unsuccessfully to retain control of the House."