Winning Republicans Refrain From Gloating

WASHINGTON —  For a party that just made history, Republicans seem remarkably low-key.

Since they won control of the Senate and expanded their House majority on election day, President Bush and his fellow Republicans have deliberately avoided exulting in their victory and unfurling ambitious partisan plans.

That’s not just to be gracious. It is part of a deliberate strategy to avoid the kind of partisan chest-thumping that could alienate swing voters who will be crucial to keeping their majority and reelecting Bush, GOP sources say.

Republicans say they are determined to avoid squandering the opportunity voters have given them -- as many believe the party did after the 1994 election gave them control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.

The cautious tone also reflects a pragmatic assessment that tempers postelection euphoria: The GOP may have the majority in the next House and Senate, but only by wafer-thin margins that are hardly the stuff of a Republican revolution.

Bush has set the tone from the top. He has modestly refused to take credit for the gains he worked so hard to achieve.

Asked late last week what he would do with the new power voters gave Republicans, Bush focused on an agenda of legislative retreads -- unfinished business of the current Congress, such as homeland security legislation, federal insurance against damage from terrorist acts, and appropriation bills. He described the election message not as an endorsement of his policies or a repudiation of Democratic ideology, but as something blander: a desire among voters for “getting things done.”

After Tuesday’s vote, the Republican National Committee circulated a memo to congressional Republicans to guide them in analyzing the election outcome in non-ideological terms.

“The White House has been very careful to make sure we are not chest-thumping,” said a senior GOP congressional aide who asked not to be named.

It remains to be seen how long Republicans maintain this circumspect tone. The new Congress will come under heavy pressure to tack to the right from key party constituencies that expect much from an all-GOP government.

The American Life League, an anti-abortion group, already has issued a “pro-life wish list for the new Republican Congress.” The group’s proposals include new restrictions on federal money for international family planning groups.

The Family Research Council, an organization of social conservatives, tells its members that the election results mean “we can expect the GOP to advance the social issues agenda,” including a ban on human cloning.

“Conservatives should, however, manage their expectations,” the council’s president, Ken Connor, said. “Obstacles remain.... Yet President Bush, having achieved a historic victory, is in a very strong position to advance his conservative agenda.”

For now, the party line is that Republicans are interested in accomplishments, not ideology.

“Democrats had a conscious, deliberate strategy to obstruct things,” said Mitch Bainwol, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “We have a conscious, deliberate strategy to get things done.”

To do so, Republicans probably will have to be more willing to compromise than they were after their stunning sweep of the 1994 elections. Most analysts say Republicans erred in interpreting their 1994 election results as a mandate for radical reduction in the size of government, rather than largely as a backlash against President Clinton’s first two years in office.

GOP leaders were so confident of their clout that they allowed the federal government to partially shut down, rather than cut a budget deal with Clinton. That standoff helped Clinton resuscitate his political fortunes.

“We need to have learned from our experience in 1994 and try to get some things done,” said Dan Meyer, a lobbyist who was chief of staff to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). “We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Even House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a leading conservative who helped push Gingrich’s agenda, said: “We learned our lesson. You can’t turn this country around on a dime.”

Republicans are also hoping to avoid the mistakes that cost them their Senate majority in mid-2001, just six months after the 2000 elections gave the GOP control of the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time in 46 years. They rammed through the centerpiece of Bush’s agenda, a $1.35-trillion, 10-year tax cut. But their exuberant commitment to conservative principles was key to alienating Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords. His decision to defect from the party and become an independent cost the GOP its one-seat Senate majority.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), in line to regain the Senate majority leader’s job he lost when Jeffords defected, said he has learned from that experience and will try to run the party in a more inclusive way.

“I am humbled,” he said last week. “I’m not in a gloating sort of mood. I’m in a mood of getting some results.”

David Winston, a GOP pollster, agrees that there is nothing like losing majority status to make lawmakers more circumspect in managing the power they have reclaimed.

Moderate Republicans are anxious that GOP leaders not use their new power to jam through a conservative agenda -- especially since such centrists as Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois and George Voinovich of Ohio, are up for reelection in 2004.

“If these senators are going to be successful in those states, the agenda is going to have to be fairly moderate,” said centrist Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.).