GOP looks nervously to its base

WASHINGTON —Republicans consolidated power in the George W. Bush era by building a foundation based largely on the pillars of moral clarity and accountability.

Now the scandal over alleged sexually predatory behavior that triggered the resignation of Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., undermines those core GOP strengths, and with the approaching midterm elections, at the worst possible time, even prompting some calls from prominent conservatives Tuesday for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., for his handling of the matter.

Republicans in power find themselves in a vise, squeezed of course by newly energized Democrats, but perhaps more important by their most fervent supporters on the right, the very voters who cast their ballot based on social issues.

It was those voters — stoked brilliantly by Karl Rove's support for amendments to ban gay marriage in swing states, among other strategies — who provided Bush with the bare majority he needed for a second term, and that Republicans needed to maintain control of the House and Senate. Whether the GOP can count on those voters to show up in November is now in some doubt.

In the days since Foley resigned, talk of national security and the Iraq war has been replaced by the scandal — for Republicans and Democrats. Control of Congress is at stake, with Democrats needing to gain 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to take control after a dozen years of Republican rule.

"I'm hopeful that five weeks out, that it's a news story for a week or so and then it will die down," said Ted Welch, a Republican fundraiser in Nashville, Tenn., a state with a hard-fought Senate race. Welch said the GOP base in Tennessee sees the Foley matter "as just another mistake that Republicans have made, not dealing with it when they first learned of it."

Some conservative activists, however, said they worry that the Foley affair could be the last straw that pushes so-called "values voters" to yield to their nagging impulse to stay home this Election Day.

That little voice in conservatives' heads is nothing new, the strategists said — they have been demoralized for months with a president and congressional leaders they view as insufficiently committed to so-called "pro-family" issues such as banning gay marriage and restricting abortion — but the latest scandal may have increased its volume and urgency.

"I'm certainly hoping that a few bad apples don't spoil the whole bunch, but it certainly could," said Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council.

"If people are disgusted with Congress, especially Christian conservatives or social conservative voters, they realize that on their issues, the Democrats are going to be even worse, but if these [Republicans] aren't showing the backbone on defending key values, people will just stay home."

Economic conservatives had sounded their own complaints about the Republican Congress earlier, angered by record congressional spending. Some foreign-policy conservatives oppose the war in Iraq as an unwise — and un-conservative — attempt to remake the world. So in several significant ways, the coalition that had once seemed so solid in fact had been cracking for the past several years.

The president's aggressive post-Labor Day push on fighting terrorism, coupled with the sharp drop in gasoline prices, had seemed to halt a long slow slide. But the Foley controversy now dramatically and negatively reshapes the race for Republicans, leaving them with diminishing hopes of maintaining control of the House chamber that they so famously wrested from Democrats in the midterm elections of 1994.

And Washington now seems to again be engaging in its tribal ritual of assigning blame. On the plank for the moment is Hastert, who is being accused of inattention at best for his reaction to the Foley mess, and trying to cover up a scandal at worst.

Hastert moved quickly over the weekend to call for a Justice Department investigation, which had the benefit of high-mindedness but also raised the prospect that the probe would not be finished by Election Day. Bush offered his support for the speaker Tuesday, reminding Americans of Hastert's prior life as a teacher and coach as measures of Hastert's concern for the well-being of children. But even that backing might not be enough. "There will be dramatic change," said one Republican consultant with ties to some of the House leadership. "It will either be imposed by a new set of leaders in the party or it will be imposed by the voters.

Indeed, there is an increasingly gallows view among Republicans about what November will bring. As several noted, things were not going well even before the news of Foley's salacious electronic messages. Congress essentially closed shop for the term without major accomplishments on issues that voters said they cared deeply about, such as immigration.

The energy that brought the Republicans to power in 1994 seems to have given way to near exhaustion. And now, one of the central issues that solidified their power — a perception of holding the moral high ground — has been turned inside out.

"There is just a general disgust across the board," said one Republican lobbyist. "We hold huge amounts of fundraisers for members of Congress, and they all come by and tell us how they will maintain control of the House. But not one person in the last four or five or six months has said we are going to win because we have better ideas than the Democrats. I just think they have lost their way."

Information on Christian conservatives' views was reported by The Baltimore Sun.