GOP: new salesman, new pitch

WASHINGTON — One day back when Republicans controlled Congress, Reps. Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., found themselves talking politics, something both men tend to do when they happen to be awake.

Cole, who has worked behind the scenes for virtually every prominent Oklahoma Republican politician as well as the national party, suggested House Democrats needed a pro to win back the majority in 2006, and he predicted they would choose Emanuel to chair their campaign committee. Emanuel, a former top political adviser to President Clinton, said he doubted it; he'd clashed too many times with party leaders.

"You don't have to like George Patton to know you need George Patton," Cole replied.

Cole was right, and Emanuel ultimately led the Democrats back to the majority. That's why Republicans wanted their own Patton — their own Emanuel — to take back the House in 2008. And that's why they have elected Cole to chair the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), where he once served as executive director.

"A guy with that kind of résumé, we'd be paying millions of dollars for him as a consultant," said Michigan Rep. Candice Miller, the NRCC's head of recruiting.

By the numbers

233

House seats now held by Democratic Party

202

House seats now held by Republican Party

30

House seats that shifted from GOP to Democrats in 2006

16

House gains needed in 2008 for GOP to regain control

Seattle Times staff

It's true; Cole has run the Republican National Committee, the Oklahoma GOP and a lucrative consulting business. He also has been a state senator, congressional aide and Oklahoma's secretary of state. He loves to read cross tabs, and he's a consummate insider. "His Rolodex," former aide John Woods said, "is like all of MySpace plus all of Facebook."

But even the best political consultants know there's only so much they can do with an unpopular client, and congressional Republicans had a 39 percent approval rating in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll — nearly as low as that of President Bush and the Iraq war.

Do Republicans need to change their policies, or their politics? Can they win back the House by distancing themselves from a lame-duck president and burnishing their image, or do they need a more fundamental ideological shift?

Some Republicans argue that the party lost its majority by straying from conservative principles, especially limited government spending. Cole doesn't think so. His diagnosis includes Iraq, corruption scandals and a general sense that Republicans "overreached." He's a conservative Republican from a conservative district, but says the United States is a "center-right country, not a right-wing country." He wants the GOP to woo swing voters.

"Oh, I don't think the problem was spending," Cole said. "People who argue that we lost because we weren't true to our base, that's just wrong."

The good news, Cole said, is that things can't get much worse. There are 61 Democrats in House districts that Bush won in 2004, and eight Republicans in districts that he lost, so Cole plans to "play offense." He said he believes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is too liberal for the country, and he can't wait to attack moderate Democrats for "marching in lock step" with her. He's also eager to have a new GOP standard-bearer for a Bush-fatigued nation.

So far, no Republicans in Congress have retired, and Cole said his recruiting efforts have been, "quite frankly, far better than I had anticipated." He is enthusiastic about candidates trying to win back the seats of Republicans Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota, Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, and Sue Kelly and John Sweeney of New York.

"We don't need to conquer new territory to win back the majority," Cole said. "We need to reclaim lost territory, which is easier."

Training new candidates

Cole last week distributed a report highlighting what he called his "untold successes." The memo describes how the panel has attracted and helped prepare candidates: Nearly 30 arrived in Washington last week for "candidate school."

But Cole doesn't deny that "it's a tough environment." House Democrats raised more money than Republicans last quarter, and they have a 4-to-1 advantage in cash on hand. The corruption theme that plagued the GOP in 2006 is back. The FBI recently raided businesses connected to Reps. John Doolittle of California and Rick Renzi of Arizona and grilled Rep. Tom Feeney of Florida about a junket with now-disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And Cole acknowledges that he is looking at a tough 2008 if the situation in Iraq doesn't improve.

"I think we've hit our floor," Cole said. "For us to lose more seats, it's going to take a catastrophic presidential election." He didn't hasten to say that couldn't happen.

For a hard-nosed partisan, Cole is unusually amiable. Emanuel calls him "a shrewd, smart operator, and — the highest compliment — a mensch."

Like Emanuel, Cole is more of a policy wonk than most political operatives are, but he's all about winning. He's a pro-war social and fiscal conservative, but sources say he hasn't pushed conservatives such as Jim Ryun of Kansas or Richard Pombo of California to try to reclaim their House seats, because he thinks more moderate candidates might fare better.

"We're not getting recruits with the ideological fervor of 1994," Cole said. "It's more professionals: ... They're looking at Republican seats with Republican infrastructure, and they might take a shot."

Almost all Republicans interviewed for this article think the party's new face in 2008 will be a more popular one than Bush's. But Democrats say they won't let Republicans run away from their support for Bush.

Cole, a history buff, said he thinks history will see Bush as a courageous president who helped transform the Middle East. He said the Bush administration has made mistakes in Iraq but remains convinced that Americans want to win, and that demands for withdrawal are bad politics and bad policy.

Many Republicans agree they've lost their way; their debate is over how to find it. The 2006 election wiped out many moderate Republicans, leaving the caucus smaller but even more conservative. Conservatives want Republicans to return to their austerity principles, while avoiding the corruption scandals that dogged them last year.

"An indispensable ingredient for us to reclaim the majority is to convince the American people we're serious about accountability and fiscal responsibility," said Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas.

Too far to the right?

But moderate Republicans such as Rep. Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois think conservatives have driven the GOP caucus too far right on contentious social policy as well as corporate-friendly economic and environmental policy. Kirk and other moderates have sketched out a "suburban agenda" aimed at winning over independents by focusing on issues such as health care and education.

"When I hear my colleagues debating on the floor, I think, 'Some of this rhetoric is so 20th-century,' " Kirk said.

Cole's job is to accommodate both wings of the party, and he said it can be done by attacking Democrats as tax-and-spenders and blame-America-first defeatists. He said Pelosi was smart to begin with her "Six for '06" agenda of popular issues such as ethics reforms, the minimum wage and low-interest student loans — he voted for the latter — but he now thinks she's showing her true liberal colors, and dragging her caucus along.

"We need the Democrats to be Democrats, and thank God, they are," he said.

Still, Cole knows that if the situation in Iraq deteriorates, GOP prospects probably will, too. His biggest fear is not poor NRCC recruiting or fundraising but a collapse of the Iraqi government.