I'VE LOOKED AT LIFE FROM BOTH SIDES NOW...THIS ONE SUCKS

Two Sides of Political Reality for New Lawmakers (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 6/30/03, NY Times)

Candice S. Miller was riding high last week, flush with the glow of being a freshman Republican in the House of Representatives.

On Thursday, she dipped into Washington's famous pork barrel, when the House approved a military construction bill that included $9.6 million for a new health care center at a base in her Macomb County, Mich., district. Next, in the wee hours of the morning on Friday, her party squeaked out a one-vote victory on the Medicare prescription drug benefit bill.

Then Representative Miller jetted off to Rome, to spend the early part of her July 4 recess talking with European leaders about hydrogen fuel and bioengineered foods as part of her first "Codel" --a taxpayer-financed trip abroad by a Congressional delegation.

"I feel very optimistic," she said shortly before she left.

Optimistic is not exactly the word one would use to describe Raul M. Grijalva these days. Resigned is more like it. Representative Grijalva, a freshman Democrat from Tucson, voted against the prescription drug bill, just as he voted against the repeal of the estate tax and every other piece of legislation Republicans have pushed through this year. For the July 4 recess, he is going home to Tucson, where he expects to tell constituents, "We're putting up a fight."

For Mrs. Miller, a self-described "George W. Bush Republican" from a middle-class neighborhood outside Detroit, and Mr. Grijalva, an unabashed liberal from one of the poorest corners of Tucson, the last week was not much different than any other since they joined Congress in January. These lawmakers, whose first year is being chronicled by The New York Times, represent a microcosm of life in the House, where the political reality these days is stark and simple: Republicans win and Democrats lose.

People have been wondering in recent weeks iif Democrats aren't becoming more frantic and hysterical in their hatred of George W. Bush. Given the President's rather pleasant demeanor and the lack of hugely controversial issues at the moment it seems like on odd time for the Democrats to go postal. To the contrary, as stories like this and the one last week in the Post, on the takeover of lobbying by the GOP, suggest, Democrats are waking up to the cold hard reality of what it's like to be the permanent minority party, a reality that Republicans had to live with for sixty dispiriting years. You can hardly blame them for raging at the dying of the light.

MORE:
Republicans Rule (Howard Kurtz, June 30, 2003, Washington Post)

Is D.C. becoming a one-party town?

With the Republicans controlling all the levers of power -- 1600 Penn, both Hill chambers and the high court -- have Democrats slid into a state of near-irrelevancy?

That's debatable, to say the least, but it's hard to think of a time in the past half-century -- even during the Reagan years, they controlled the House -- when the Dems had less power inside the Beltway. The only Democratic weapon of any potency at the moment seems to be a Senate filibuster. And the party is not wildly optimistic about ousting Bush in '04.

Now the question is whether GOPers are cementing their hold on power by installing their folks in a sort of quasi-permanent government around these parts: the lobbying community.

On one level, Republicans aren't doing anything different than the Democrats did when they ruled Congress. You try to use your clout to soak up the available sources of big corporate cash, and you try to strong-arm the trade associations to support your legislative needs. The lobbying firms, in turn, realize that they need to hire folks (often former officials) with high-level entree to the party that controls the Hill machinery, including such basics as which bills get brought to the floor.

But the Republicans have gotten really, really good at this.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 30, 2003 1:48 PM