Is GOP losing grip on power?

By Salena Zito

For the Republican Party, 1994 is the year that was.

The "Republican Revolution" that year gave the GOP its first taste in more than 40 years of being the majority party in both houses of Congress. On that one election day, Republicans gained 54 seats in the House, 8 in the Senate and 12 in governors' mansions around the country.

Now, 12 years later, Republican power -- majorities of 10 seats in the Senate and 20 in the House -- could unravel, or at least begin to, with this year's elections. Already, Pennsylvania's primary showed an anti-Republican incumbent mood. Of 17 incumbent state legislators who lost, 13 were Republicans, including the party's two top state senators.

Polls show that for the first time since 1994, Americans have more faith in Democrats than in Republicans to govern and to guarantee national security. If that attitude persists through the November general elections, Republican power could decline.

"If everything goes bad, Republicans could lose three or four Senate seats and 10 to 20 House seats," said former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, a native Pennsylvanian from a small town near Harrisburg who later served as a House member from Georgia, was the principal architect of the "Contract with America," a policy declaration that propelled Republicans to victory in 1994. Eight years after retiring from the House, he has become the conservative movement's surrogate spokesman for the party.

Is it possible for Democrats to win control of the House?

"Barely," Gingrich said. "They might win a very narrow majority. It is more likely that the Democrats will gain some seats, but Republicans will retain control of both the House and Senate."

He believes Democrats will "focus on being negative and obstructionist, and then they will try to wear a mask of being moderate, even though their leadership is the most left-wing in history."

The Democrats' Senate leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, says his party offers a lot more than negativity.

"The American people are tired of Republican incompetence, they're tired of a Congress that just rubber-stamps President Bush's failed policies," Reid said.

Long-time Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, of Delaware, says Democrats must "come forward with real ideas -- but it is up to the individual candidate to do that, not the party."

Biden says his party must send an affirmative message, and spell out "who is going to protect you better, who is going to solve the energy crisis and who is better to handle escalating health care costs.

"They are the big national issues."

It's important for Democrats to make clear where the party stands on Iraq, Biden said.

"People don't want to hear what went wrong (in Iraq); they already know that things are not going well," he said. "They want to hear, what we are going to do about it?"

Dick Morris, a Fox News political analyst and former Clinton strategist who created campaign messages for Democrats, believes the party that delivers a message and gets out the vote will win the mid-term elections. Republicans kept control in the 2004 elections, Morris said, because of concern about terrorism.

"As that fear fades, which it shouldn't, voters turn to issues which are primarily Democratic historically -- energy, climate change, environment, health care and Social Security," he said.

"Republicans need to take over some of these issues with bold presidential leadership. Look how Bush took away the education issue in 2000, and Clinton used gun control and 100,000 extra cops to take the crime issue" in 1996.

Morris says Republicans have been weakened by the immigration debate, giving an impression that they are confused and divided, much like the Democrats in 1994.

"The Republican Party has worked itself out of a job -- terrorism is at bay, taxes are cut, crime is way down, communism is gone -- all of the GOP issues have gone away because of their own success," he said. "I think that the Democratic trend will continue."

He ticks off a list of possibly vulnerable Republican senators -- Rick Santorum of Penn Hills, Ohio's Mike DeWine, Missouri's Jim Talent and Montana's Conrad Burns.

If those Republicans fall in November, he said, Democrats will "most likely win" Congress and the White House in 2008.

Democratic strategist Steve McMahon sees potential gains for Democrats if they stick to concerns that hit home.

"The domestic gas price issue eclipses every issue," said McMahon, a regular political commentator on Fox News and CNN. "It is going to drown out everything else; there is no relief in sight for the GOP on this issue."

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said his party is "making progress on our goals" to reverse the decline.

In February, fellow Republicans elected Boehner -- an original member of the "Gang of Seven" conservative, first-term Republicans who preceded the 1994 sweeps -- as House majority leader, replacing the king of gerrymandering, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

"November's a long way away," Boehner said, and "our job between now and then is to act on the issues Americans want us to act on."

What voters should remember is that "replacing one party with the other only changes the priority of programs on which the government spends money," said John McIntyre, co-founder of RealClearPolitics, a political Web site that condenses Beltway commentary.

McIntyre believes one problem Republicans have is the "inability to control spending, undercutting their tax-cut message. That gives the Democrats leverage to claim that increased spending is tied to power."

GOP strategists David Carney, in Washington, and Kent Gates, a former Pennsylvanian now in San Diego, said Republicans have the upper hand on one crucial factor in November: a comprehensive, get-out-the-vote machine that traditionally has done a superior job to the Democratic machine. The party's challenge is to excite its base enough so that those voters show up.

The best way to do that is to "remind voters what will happen if Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy are running Congress," Gates said.

"Republicans need to promote a more populist agenda and appeal to the middle-class angst about high gas prices and stagnant-to-declining disposable income. High gas prices, in a peculiar way, are a great opportunity for Republicans to win back a populist message."

If GOP icon Teddy Roosevelt were alive, he "would go after big-oil profits, eliminate the gas tax and promote alternative fuels -- a lesson for today's Republican leaders," Gates said.

Carney agrees, but takes that a step further: "From fiscal restraint to values, to security issues, we could easily retake the offensive -- but we need the national party leaders to begin to communicate their intent on these important middle-class issues."

Yet Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., makes clear his party understands the importance of those efforts, too. The former Clinton policy point-man, now chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said "much is at stake for both parties."

Both parties are going to concentrate on raising money, tightening their agendas and energizing their base to get out the vote, he said.