GOP Borrows Strategy From Bible, Bolsheviks

Badly outnumbered by the Midianites, the biblical general Gideon in the Book of Judges made an unconventional call. He winnowed his army to its 300 most reliable warriors and led this hardcore cadre to victory.

More than 3,000 years later, a very different leader named Vladimir Lenin adopted another less-is-more strategy as head of one of several competing parties in revolutionary Russia. Instead of expanding their membership, Lenin & Co. regularly trimmed their numbers so as to maintain focus, discipline and unity of purpose. In the critical months after the Romanov dynasty's collapse, Lenin and his Bolsheviks wound up in charge.

It's safe to say the current leadership of the Republican Party in Congress draws more inspiration from the first of these historical examples than from the second. But both models are applicable, and both offer insight into the conservative minority's mind-set.

The Grand Old Party has just been through a double disaster in the elections of 2006 and 2008. Taken together, the two cycles cost Republicans the White House and majority control of both chambers of Congress. The last time the party experienced a comparable trifecta of power loss in so short a time was in the 1930-32 elections that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Given their long sojourn in political exile that followed that episode, Republicans might be expected to be chastened -- if not terrified -- by recent events. Instead, the GOP of our day has chosen a mode of defiance. Its leaders in Congress insist they have been dead right about both economic and foreign policy over the past eight years. So there.

Indeed, as the stimulus package cleared its key procedural hurdle this week on a vote of 61 to 36 in the Senate, the heart of the no-voters' argument was the inevitability of failure for any effort by the government to revive a distressed economy.

And, not content to push back on current history, many on the right feel led to insist they were right about the economics in the 1930s, too -- that it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who deepened and prolonged the Depression by imposing his New Deal on the economy. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland was among the first Republicans to sound the anti-FDR alarm in the House debate over the economic stimulus package. He said it was the definition of insanity to try the same old stimulative spending tactics "over and over."

One might say Mr. Bartlett defines a certain ultratraditional wing of the minority party. But soon we heard much the same rhetoric from Senate Republicans -- including that chamber's minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Democrats can scarcely believe their good fortune at having this particular debate revived. It is hard to imagine a historical battle they would rather reprise than the one between FDR and Herbert Hoover. Several generations of Americans can tell you who came out ahead on that one, not just in 1932 but for several decades thereafter.

Still, Republicans in Congress see their situation quite differently. They hark back to their comebacks from the Democratic landslide of 1964 (big GOP gains in Congress in 1966, capture of the White House in 1968) and the Democratic tsunamis of 1974-76 (big GOP gains in Congress in 1978, capture of the White House and Senate in 1980) and 1992 (capture of the House and Senate in 1994).

In all three cases, they see their recovery grounded in a consistently conservative line. Looking at 1994 in particular, they believe they bounced back by resisting virtually everything President Bill Clinton and his Democratic majorities attempted on strict party line votes.

Like Gideon's army, the GOP's ranks have been thinned to a shocking degree. But like the Bolsheviks, the Republicans see in this a potential source of strength. They know they have lost nearly every seat they can lose in the House, and that the survivors are more worried about primary opponents coming at them from the right than about Democrats beating them in the fall.
This means the leaders can maintain a near-absolute discipline that maximizes their strength in the stimulus fight and beyond.

Moreover, they have learned an invaluable biblical lesson about message control. On the eve of battle, Gideon's remnant exaggerated its size by making lots of noise breaking crockery and blowing trumpets. In our time, much the same effect can be achieved in the blogosphere, not to mention on cable TV and talk radio.

The clear calculus of the minority party here is that President Obama will be overwhelmed by this economic downturn, much as his electoral rival John McCain and predecessor George W. Bush were last year. If this judgment proves correct, the new president will plummet in the polls and the uniform opposition of Republicans will give them a bitter but potent weapon going into the next election season in 2010.

Is there an alternative way for the GOP to plot its way back? Yes, say the "Big Tent" Republicans who have urged greater outreach to younger voters, women and minorities -- especially Hispanics -- throughout the past 20 years. These Republicans take hope from the election of Michael Steele as the new chairman of the Republican National Committee. Steele is an important break in the symbology, being the first African-American chairman of the party. He is also regarded as a moderate on the issues, devoted to widening the base.

But Steele will be sorely tested in his new role, because the RNC that elected him did not do so in search of a moderate but in disarray over what kind of conservative to prefer. And his efforts at outreach will have to contend with other party leaders' clear preference for the Gideon-Lenin gambit.