Which bipartisanship will Bush choose?

The Right Coalition
Which bipartisanship will Bush choose?

BY NEWT GINGRICH
Thursday, November 16, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

The election results pose two enormous strategic choices for America. First, the obvious outcome of a Democratic-controlled Congress and a Republican White House is the need for bipartisan cooperation in order to get anything done. The key question is: Which kind of bipartisanship will emerge? Will there be a Ronald Reagan approach to bipartisanship which appeals to the conservative majority of the House? Or will there be an establishment bipartisanship which cuts deals between liberals and the White House? Second: Will the departure of Donald Rumsfeld and his replacement by Robert Gates lead to a tactical effort to minimize the difficulties of Iraq, or to a fundamental rethinking of the larger threats to American safety?

These two choices are strikingly interrelated. An establishment bipartisanship between the White House and liberal congressional leaders will almost certainly make it necessary to focus narrowly on how to minimize difficulties in Iraq and postpone consideration of the larger threats to America for the remainder of this and into the next presidency. By contrast, a conservative bipartisanship that knits together the House Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats into a floor majority, working with a White House that emphasizes popular issues at the grassroots, would make it much easier to focus on the larger threats to American safety. (Such a bipartisanship could stress making the cap gains tax cut permanent; controlling set-asides and discretionary spending; oversight on failing bureaucracies and waste; English as the language of government; and biofuels as part of an energy policy.)

How these bipartisanship choices are made will do a great deal to define our government and politics for the next few years. Each strategy cross-pressures a different part of the House and Senate. Each requires some members to choose between their loyalty to their values and those held by their districts on the one hand and their party leadership on the other.

A liberal establishment strategy will almost certainly split the GOP and lead to a grassroots rebellion against the kind of policies which a Pelosi-Reid alliance would force on the White House. House Republicans would find themselves split again and again as their leadership cooperated with Nancy Pelosi to bring forward liberal legislation. Conservative senators would find themselves blocking and filibustering liberal legislation brought forward by the Senate establishment Republican leadership and Harry Reid. Their supporters at home would be angrily insistent on active opposition to a liberal establishment legislative agenda.

On the other hand, a conservative populist grassroots strategy would almost certainly make daily interactions with liberal leaders more confrontational as they found themselves nominally chairing committees but losing votes on the floor and having their initiatives rejected by a conservative grassroots coalition. With a conservative populist grassroots strategy it is the 44 Blue Dog Democrats who would find themselves cross-pressured. In the House, some 54 Democrats won by claiming they were much more conservative than Nancy Pelosi, and much more conservative than the San Francisco values she represents. Here, they would be forced to choose between their voters back home and the promises made to them during the campaign, and their leadership.

Ironically, the very nature of the Democratic victory makes it possible to re-establish the conservative Democrat and House Republican coalition which made the Reagan legislative victories of 1981-82 possible. Tip O'Neill was the liberal Democratic speaker when Reagan became president, but he did not have a liberal majority in the House. Yet despite a seemingly liberal Democrat lock in a 242-192 majority, they lost control of the floor on the most important bill of Reagan's first term. His tax cuts were initially passed 238-195 with 48 Democrats splitting from the leadership and siding with Reagan and the GOP. The final passage of the conference report passed 282-95, with a 113-vote Democratic majority siding with Reagan and only 95 liberal democrats voting "no."

I was a sophomore during this exciting Reagan first term and I learned from him the art of appealing to the American people to win votes in Washington. When we passed welfare reform in 1996, the Democrats split 98 "yes" and 98 "no." When we passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the Democrats split 153 "yes" and only 52 diehard liberals voted "no."

If President Bush decides to govern as President Reagan did, he will work to unify the Blue Dog Democrats with the Republicans to win a handful of very large victories while accepting a constant barrage of unhappiness from the liberal leadership. That is what conservative bipartisanship is like. If on the other hand, President Bush decides on an establishment strategy of cooperating with the liberal leadership, he will guarantee splitting his own party and will see his legacy drift further and further to the left as the Pelosi-Reid wing of their party demands more and more concessions.

This choice of which strategy to follow domestically has an enormous implication for national security. A liberal coalition will focus narrowly on Iraq and seek to avoid thinking about the scale of threat we face internationally. A conservative bipartisan coalition will look first to the larger threat to American security and will then seek to find solutions in Iraq to strengthen American security. It is hard to see how a liberal coalition will be able to look at the larger threats to our safety, even when the threat, articulated in this warning by Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, is clear: "What we are talking about today is an ideology that thrives on murder, intimidation and fear. It puts innocent people at risk, particularly those in open societies. What we are talking about are people who worship death itself."

Thus the decision about which bipartisanship to pursue with regard to a legislative agenda and the Iraq war becomes for the Bush administration a decision about how safe and how prosperous America will be under divided government.

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