Analysis: Legal Problems Add to GOP Woes

Analysis: Legal Problems Add to GOP Woes

Saturday December 17, 2005 6:01 PM

By TOM RAUM

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - In President Bush's first term, the Republican congressional leadership stood solidly behind him at every turn, delivering on tax cuts, authorization for the Iraq war, homeland security and Medicare overhaul.

That GOP discipline is clearly gone now.

Neither House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., nor Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has been able keep the troops in line as a fractious Congress limps toward its year-end recess. Their leadership woes are compounded by legal troubles that are confronting Frist and that have sidelined former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Bush's low approval ratings add to the problem.

There have been many setbacks over the past few days for Bush and the Republicans:

-the Senate blocked Bush's request to extend the Patriot Act.

-Congress was poised to leave town without approving a tax bill that was a GOP priority.

-Republicans were deeply divided on immigration and spending issues.

-Bush had to bow to bipartisan pressure and accept a proposal by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to ban abuse of suspected terrorists.

Republicans are nervous as they monitor the antics with an eye toward next year's congressional elections.

``We'd kind of like us to get our act together a little bit, instead of standing in a circle shooting inward,'' said Tom Rath of New Hampshire, a senior member of the Republican National Committee.

He said people are concerned about the government's deficit spending. ``The extent to which there's a perception that everybody in Washington is buying into big government programs, that's been harmful'' to Republicans, Rath said.

It isn't the first time that the congressional majority has become unruly at year's end. It won't be the last.

``They'll get their jobs done,'' said former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo. ``They'll get their appropriations bills done. And everybody will get together in one big, sweaty, hot room and say, `We don't want to look like a bunch of idiots here, gang. We want to go home and get re-elected.'''

Simpson said lawmakers today ``get too much tangled up on social issues'' such as abortion, stem-cell research,and gay-lesbian issues.

As to Frist's leadership, ``I think he's done the best he can,'' Simpson said. But he suggested Frist erred in getting involved in the Terry Schiavo tube-feeding case and in proposing a change in the Senate's filibuster rule to make it harder for the minority party to block judicial appointments.

``Unfortunately, you're not always in the majority. And you better be careful when you mess with the rules of filibuster and other things. Because 10 years from now, you're on the outside. And it's like an automatic butt-kicking machine. It will come right around and nail you in the fanny,'' Simpson said.

Frist's influence also has been undercut by a Security and Exchange investigation into his stock sales and by the fact that he already is a lame duck, having announced he is not running for re-election next year.

In the House, Hastert has been hobbled by the loss of DeLay. The Texas Republican had to step aside in November as majority leader - a job he performed with an iron hand - after his indictment on election-law charges in his home state.

Veterans of past end-of-year congressional squabbles and logjams said this year's difficulties rank among the nastiest.

``Over the last 10 or 15 years, there's almost been a deliberate strategy to push all the tough decisions to the very end of a Congress, with the hope that you can ram them through as members try to get away for the holidays,'' said Leon Panetta. The former Democratic congressman from California served in the Clinton White House as budget director and then chief of staff.

If a leadership vacuum or gridlock results, ``leadership has to bear a lot of the responsibility. Because, in the end, it's up to them basically to be able to put discipline together to get both the House and the Senate to work,'' Panetta said.

Panetta said Republican leaders should be mindful that House Republicans and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich suffered politically after forcing a government shutdown in a 1995 budget veto fight with President Clinton.

``I was at the White House at that time. We were concerned that when the president vetoed these things, he would bear responsibility for the shutdown. But Congress in the end became the vocal point for public anger. And that could be the case with this Congress as well,'' Panetta said.

A reality not lost on any Republican running for Congress next year is that Bush is not the one up for re-election. ``He gets a pass, they don't. And that's obviously created a lot of nervousness on Capitol Hill,'' Panetta said.