The GOP Could Lose in '06 (Have congressional Republicans lost their way?)

By John Fund
OpinionJournal.com

With Rep. Tom DeLay's forced departure as majority leader, Newt Gingrich says, the Republican Party stands at a crossroads as important as any it has faced since nominating Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. "It must decide if it is going to be a party that fundamentally reforms government or one that merely presides over existing institutions and spends more money," he says. Which path the GOP now takes may determine not only how much damage it suffers in next year's elections but also whether it can hold the White House in 2008.

Mr. Gingrich knows something about dramatic intersections. He helped lead the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress from a Democratic majority that had associated itself with tax increases and a government takeover of health care. In 1996, the Democrats partly recovered when his party let President Clinton seize the moral high ground during a government shutdown. Two years after that, a Republican Congress preoccupied itself with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and adjourned just before the midterm elections by passing a budget-busting spending bill. Demoralized GOP voters stayed home, allowing the Democrats to pick up more seats. Mr. Gingrich stepped down shortly after that, turning over the Speaker's gavel to Dennis Hastert.

Since then Mr. Hastert and his fellow GOP leaders have skillfully used their narrow majority to win an amazing number of close votes without having to negotiate much with Democrats. But gradually the fear of losing their majority has also begun leading them to behave more and more like the big-spending Democrats they unseated. "Holding the majority used to be viewed as a means to an end--the end being promoting freedom and limited government," laments Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona. "Now, holding the majority seems to be an end in itself--holding onto power for the sake of holding onto power."