Some Republican members — including Boehner — had complained that Cole’s committee got off to a slow start. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Republicans plot fall offensive

Confronting a dire outlook for next year’s elections, House Republicans have begun to fight back with a new three-pronged strategy: painting the new Democratic majority as part of an unpopular Washington status quo, forcing Democrats to make unpopular votes on tough issues and locking arms around a new GOP issues agenda.

House Republicans might well be expected to be watching their better-funded, in some cases cocky, Democratic competitors from the fetal position.


Public opinion remains sour about the White House and the war in Iraq, and some House Republicans in tough districts have exacerbated the party’s weaknesses by deciding to retire, giving Democrats a better chance of picking up some choice swing seats.

Indeed, many strategists in both parties see a likelihood that the GOP minority will lose even more ground in both the House and the Senate come Nov. 4, 2008.

The current lineup in the House is 233 Democrats and 200 Republicans, with two GOP seats vacant because of members’ deaths.

But House Republicans came out punching this week after a slow start to the election cycle, filing a respectable quarterly financial report and vowing to make Democrats’ lives as miserable as possible.

A crucial aspect of their new offensive: Make Democrats the public face of Capitol Hill at a time when polls show the public is disgusted with Washington in general and Congress in particular.

The new spirit of resistance was on display Tuesday night when the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP’s House campaign arm, seized on a weaker-than-expected showing by Niki Tsongas (D), who won a special election for the Fifth District of Massachusetts, garnering 51 percent to her opponent’s 45 percent.

The heavily Democratic House seat was once held by her late husband. She will succeed former Rep. Marty Meehan, who resigned to become chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

In an overstatement that Democrats regarded as laughable, the NRCC blared in a Tuesday night e-mail to supporters: “THE DEMOCRATIC WAVE BREAKS.”

The e-mail went on to argue that “Democrats Won’t Get Two ‘2006’s in a Row,” and contended: “In what is clearly shaping up to be a change election, Democrats have reason to worry, as they are no longer seen as the solution to the problem in Washington — Democrats have become part of the problem in Washington.”

Brian Kennedy, communications director for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said the GOP plans to portray its opponents as “the same old tax-and-spend Democratic Party people remember from the 1970s.”

At the same time, Kennedy said, his party is working to “re-establish the Republican brand” by using parliamentary maneuvers that require Democrats to take tough votes on problematic provisions that have been added to popular legislation.



Kennedy said Democrats, especially those from conservative districts, have been backed into a corner on immigration and whether to provide government benefits to undocumented aliens, national security, intelligence and taxation — all “red-meat Republican issues,” he said.

“We are increasingly defining the differences,” Kennedy said.

As a third part of the strategy, Republicans will unveil an agenda after January 2008 that Boehner has described as “innovative, dynamic solutions to the challenges Americans face every day.” However, the GOP leader has yet to spell out exactly what those solutions are, and the promised agenda is already months late in being formulated.

Jessica Boulanger, the NRCC’s communications director, added that the tight Massachusetts outcome reflected the price Democrats are paying for anti-Washington sentiment, and said the race provides a blueprint “for how Republicans can win in this environment.”

“There really is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

Democrats chortled at the Republican professions of confidence. Jennifer Crider, communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, accused Republicans of “trying to use the same playbook” that Democrats had when they were in the minority.

“When average Americans think about Washington, they think about George W. Bush,” Crider said, adding that Democrats would portray their opponents as rubber stamps for the White House.

Asked about the tough votes Democrats had been forced to take, she said: “Our members are representing their districts, and their votes reflect their districts.”

Nevertheless, Republicans could smile this week when they reported that their targeted House members had posted strong fundraising numbers in the third quarter.

The 17 GOP members running for reelection on the campaign committee’s ROMP program, designed to protect vulnerable incumbents, narrowly outraised their Democratic counterparts: Those incumbents raised an average of $274,400 for the quarter, while the 29 members on the Democrats’ Frontline program raised an average of $259,000.

It was the first bit of good financial news this cycle for the House Republicans, whose campaign committee is nearly broke and has a small fraction of the money that the DCCC has amassed.

The NRCC chairman, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), met with reporters Wednesday and said he plans a decentralized approach that leaves many key decisions to individual campaigns.

Cole said he believes that the country’s unabated anger toward Washington makes that the perfect approach this election cycle, since voters are distrustful of anything that smells of the Beltway.

“We’re not going to be able to control the battlefield, and it’s useless to think we can,” said Cole, a former campaign manager himself.

Money and retirements remain the biggest challenges for House Republicans this cycle, Cole said. Democratic lawmakers have transferred twice as much money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as Republicans have transferred to the NRCC through the third fundraising quarter of this year.

While fewer GOP incumbents have called it quits this year than during the last Congress, the party is more sensitive to those retirements this time around because some represent unsafe seats and because each departure affects morale in some small way.

Some Republicans welcome the retirements because the party needs new blood, and because a younger member will be willing to work harder than many of the entrenched incumbents who have retired or considered calling it quits.

“The best time to do it is in a presidential election year,” said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), since candidates will benefit from the high turnout in some of the safer districts. “I’d rather have the retirements this year than in the next cycle.”

Members laud Cole as a strong recruiter, and the campaign chief often touts his current crop of candidates.

Republicans have scored recruits with varying backgrounds. Several candidates have been touting their military experience, like retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Rick Goddard in Georgia (against Rep. Jim Marshall) and Naval Reserve Officer Pete Olson in Texas (against Rep. Nick Lampson).

Others, like Chris Hackett in Pennsylvania (against freshman Rep. Christopher P. Carney) and Andrew Saul in New York (against freshman Rep. John Hall), have backgrounds in business and the ability to pay for their own campaigns in whole or in part.

Some Republican members — including Boehner — had complained that Cole’s committee got off to a slow start. But after Boehner went public with his ire in an unusual public spat with Cole, a House GOP leadership aide says the message was clearly received from the “kick in the pants.”

“There’s been an uptick in their productivity,” the leadership aide said. “They’re ratcheting up their fundraising and there’s a stronger communications output.”

Josh Kraushaar contributed to this story.