Enter Center

Last year, we published a book called Off Center, in which we argued that Republicans were governing well to the right of the U.S. electorate -- and getting away with it. Americans, we wrote, remained resolutely centrist and, if anything, had moved slightly leftward in recent years. But Republicans had managed to translate their razor-thin electoral margins into a well-financed political machine that pushed policy to the right while providing Republicans with what we called "backlash insurance" -- the capacity to protect GOP incumbents against voter retaliation for their extreme positions.

Backlash insurance had worked so well for so long that many congressional Republicans seemed to think they were invincible. Talk of a Democratic wave began more than a year ago. Yet Republicans made little effort to move to higher ground. After Hurricane Katrina, they slammed through a budget that slashed benefits for the needy then eked out another big tax cut for the rich, all the while defending one tarnished incumbent after another as scandals began to pile up.

But, while the machine they built was capable of withstanding a Category Three storm, what hit Republicans this year was more like a Category Five -- mainly thanks to Iraq. And, now that they have lost their majority, Republicans are in even bigger trouble than they may realize. That’s because many of the gambits they used to obscure how far right they had moved depended on majority control. Savvy use of their narrow House and Senate majorities was how, in a 50-50 nation, Republicans governed as if they had an overwhelming advantage -- as if they were the American center rather than its right-most flank. Now that its congressional majority is gone, the GOP’s "off-center" positions will be more exposed than ever. And, if Democrats play their cards right, voters will be reminded of this every day until election night 2008.

Political pundits fixate on what candidates say and do, but Republican backlash insurance was mostly about organization. The Republican machine -- and the tight network of elites who ran it -- was a formidable asset in the GOP’s intense competition with the much less coordinated Democrats. Republican leaders used this organizational edge to tightly control political access, constructing a "pay to play" system that mobilized powerful interests behind their initiatives while building unprecedented war chests. The leadership’s control over the meetings where laws were drafted and pork was distributed (often with lobbyists sitting in) allowed it to shut out Democrats and gave rank-and-file Republicans strong incentives to follow marching orders.

Just as important, but much less recognized, tight organization allowed the GOP to manipulate the legislative process. Bills inimical to Republican interests were kept off the agenda. Anything allowed a hearing was steered sharply right. The Republican leadership became adept at using moderate packaging to obscure the radicalism of specific measures. In battles over the Bush tax cuts -- overwhelmingly tilted toward the rich -- Republicans didn’t just twist the facts; they wrote the bills so that all the goodies for the middle class came up front, while the real budget effects and big benefits for the rich only came later or were hidden with budgetary sleight of hand.

Meanwhile, procedural tricks ensured not just that crucial bills squeaked through, but also that GOP "moderates" would have ample opportunities to posture as mavericks. For example, moderates would vote for bipartisan bills that would get rewritten along ultra-conservative lines by a handpicked group of Republicans in House-Senate conference committees. (Bills crafted by conference committees can’t be amended.) Thus, a reasonable prescription-drug bill backed by Ted Kennedy in the Senate became a give-away to drug and insurance companies larded with money for Health Savings Accounts in a Republican-controlled conference. Vulnerable Republicans came to specialize in highly publicized displays of faux independence -- displays carefully orchestrated to pose no real obstacle to an aggressively conservative agenda.

Of course, if all else failed, Republicans could always drown pesky challengers with eleventh-hour spending. Revealingly, even amid the GOP trainwreck of 2006, Republicans still managed to win most of the closest House races, in part because of these potent organizational weapons.

Yet these weapons weren’t nearly as effective in 2006 as they had been in the past. The main reason was Iraq, which effectively nationalized the election while disrupting Republican control over the political agenda. Instead of a series of beauty contests between local candidates -- which advantage incumbents and play to the strengths of GOP organization and obfuscation -- 2006 became an issues-oriented referendum on the president and his allies, a disadvantage Republicans could not fully overcome.

To be sure, the perks of majority control weren’t the only thing that enabled the GOP to win elections despite its steady rightward march. There was an institutional factor at work, too -- one that, unfortunately for Democrats, won’t disappear with this election: The House and Senate electoral maps give Republicans a substantial advantage in translating popular votes into congressional seats. In 2004, Bush carried nearly six in ten House districts while winning less than 52 percent of the vote -- in part because of Republican gerrymandering after the 2000 census. The Senate, meanwhile, is institutionally biased toward conservative, rural states, since all states have two senators regardless of their population. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote but carried 30 states.

These advantages didn’t evaporate in 2006. According to David Mayhew of Yale, the popular-vote swing since 2004 was 5.5 points, while the Democrats gained 30 House seats. Compare that with 1994, when the Republicans achieved a six-point swing in the popular vote but picked up 52 seats. The story is similar in the Senate. Assuming senators represent half their states’ residents, the 49 Democrats in the new Senate represent approximately 40 million more Americans than the 49 Republicans. Put more bluntly, the center of Congress is still not the center of the U.S. electorate.

Still, the 2006 election shows that the GOP’s institutional advantages aren’t enough to guarantee victory. And, now, Republicans are in serious trouble. Not only is their pay-to-play alliance with K Street in ruins, but they can no longer use their majority power to obscure their radicalism.

The conventional view is that the Democrats are the ones who are in for a tough two years, as they try to reconcile their basic liberal instincts with their unexpected 2006 victories in relatively conservative regions. But this conclusion -- reflective of some mysterious pundit geometry in which the electoral center is always halfway between the two parties -- simply misses the extent to which middle-of-the-road voters support the main elements of the Democratic agenda. Nearly every new Democrat in Congress ran not just against the war, but against privatization of Social Security and in support of raising the minimum wage, expanding health insurance, and protecting middle-class economic security -- even in red states like Virginia and Montana. As long as Democrats stay focused on these issues, Republicans will remain in a difficult position.

After all, the GOP took its heaviest losses within its moderate ranks. In an even more conservative Republican caucus, there will be a powerful faction that blames defeat on insufficient clarity and urges a further pull to the right.

Democrats should give this faction the clarity it wants. In pursuing their own agenda, they need to put the GOP between the rock of its intense base and the hard place of swing voters on every key issue -- from basic kitchen-table concerns (like health care and college tuition), to reform issues (like reestablishing pay-as-you-go budget rules and ensuring electoral fairness), to less controversial social issues (like stem-cell research).

Majority power also gives Democrats the capacity to ensure the accountability that was sorely lacking in recent years. High-minded commentators fret about a subpoena frenzy, but judicious use of congressional oversight and self-policing provides an unmatched opportunity for Democrats to correct past abuses while reminding voters of how, and for whom, the GOP majority used the tools of government authority. Here, too, Democratic control means that what was once carefully hidden can be exposed.

For a sense of how this might play out, look no further than Rick Santorum. In his voting record, Santorum was actually a run-of-the-mill GOP senator, only moderately to the right of his caucus’ middle. His distinctiveness came from his willingness to run as who he was, rather than as a fake moderate. The result? Despite spending more than any senator not named Clinton, Santorum lost by a staggering 18 points. One has to go back 26 years to find a Senate incumbent thrown out by a similar margin.

Republicans say they lost because they abandoned their principles. Santorum’s plight suggests that embracing those principles won’t help, either. The GOP is off-center. If Democrats want to retain their edge, they need to make that clear over and over again.