Spot-On

Newt Gingrich caused a stir this week when he warned Republicans that 2006 could be a mirror image of the 1994 election that swept him into the Speakership, giving Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman and Russ Feingold a chance to push for impeachment, gain subpoena power and to raise our taxes. That thought had crossed my mind, and I've come to the conclusion that if the beating is bad enough, it may not be such a bad thing.

I don't want President Bush impeached, I don't want the nightmare of investigations which clouded the Clinton Administration and I sure as heck don't want higher taxes—and I doubt most Americans do, either. However, we just might have to put up with two years of a Democratic-controlled Congress to save the Republican Party from itself.

While the ideas that swept Republicans into power in 1994 were strong ones—balancing the budget, cleaning up corruption in Congress and creating greater accountability in Washington—these are no longer the signature issues of the Republican Party.

The national Republican agenda no longer promoted "smaller government" but offers a different role of the expansion of government into people's lives. While Democrats are tax-and-spend, the GOP is borrow-and-burrow. Borrow from future generations by mortgaging the Social Security system and burrow into our personal lives wherever possible so as to hopefully make us all god-fearing members of the Religious Right. The thought of "Pork Busters" has been relegated to a blogosphere campaign.

Meanwhile, George Bush has generally resisted the temptation to give in to these elements of the Republican Party—pushing moderate proposals on immigration and seeking bipartisan consensus on Social Security—but he always seems to get caught in a no-man's land in the middle with no allies. Folks like me are getting tired of defending the President from both Right and Left.

But if the GOP is going to get beat in this election, I hope they get beat good. With gerrymandering in the States, it's hard to see how more than 30 seats change hands in the House of Representatives. But if 60, 80, 100 or more switch from Red to Blue, meaning that even "Republican" districts are rejecting the firebrand politics of the xenophobic, corrupt, spendthrift, Religious Right wing of the GOP, maybe they'll get the message and we can start taking back our party.

Then, after the Democratic Party has shown their true colors (to more than just those of us who read their blogs), we can go into 2008 with a clear choice and a clean slate to renew the Contract with America.

Posted by Scott Olin Schmidt at 2:14 PM | Print this article