Advocates say voters should know what they’d get with a Republican majority. GOP pols want policy manifesto

A faction of Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham is agitating for party leaders to unveil a policy manifesto in the midterm elections, detailing for voters what the GOP would attempt with a Senate majority its members are increasingly confident they’ll achieve.

Advocates of the strategy, which has triggered a closed-door debate in recent weeks among the party’s current 45 senators, say it would serve as a firm rejoinder to Democrats casting the GOP as the “party of no.” They say voters should know what they’d be getting by pulling the lever for Republicans in November.


With many election handicappers pegging a Senate takeover as a better than 50-50 proposition, the quandary of how specific they should get during the campaign underscores the difficulties Senate Republicans face transitioning from opposition party to governing party. While Republicans are in broad agreement over their principles, such as repealing Obamacare and opposing higher taxes, a new GOP majority would have its own challenges unifying behind an ambitious agenda.

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The policy agenda would be modeled after the “Contract with America,” the 10-bill document that Republicans campaigned on en route to a historic takeover of the House in 1994.

Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 4 Senate Republican who chairs the Republican Policy Committee, has asked all ranking members of Senate committees to send him legislative proposals they would want to pursue if they become chairmen next year. It’s not clear, at this point, whether the exercise will yield more policy papers or be presented as a unified GOP agenda, but Barrasso said it would help showcase a slew of GOP economic ideas either way.

That may not be enough for some in the caucus.

“I think it’s a strategic mistake for our party leadership not to come up with a document that has four or five action items,” Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the House class of 1994, said in an interview. “I’ve tried to allow those in leadership to do this. If they don’t move forward soon, there will be a rebellion among the rank and file.”

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But the idea has met a cool reception from other senators, including some in leadership such as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who faces a tough reelection race this year. Skeptics say it would be difficult to unite ideologically diverse candidates around a uniform set of ideas and argue the plan would give Democrats a fat target to attack. Better, they say, to keep the focus squarely on the shortcomings of President Barack Obama and his party than to make promises Republicans might not be able to keep.

“Even if we have a good election, President Obama is still going to be president,” Sen. John Cornyn, the minority whip from Texas, said when asked if his party should unveil a Contract with America-style agenda this year. “I don’t think we should be in the business of overpromising.”

Even if Republicans win the Senate majority for the first time since 2006, it would be far short of filibuster-proof; best case is perhaps a two- to four-seat advantage. Any substantive legislation would need eight or nine Democratic votes.

A small Senate GOP majority would also have its own internal divisions — with a handful of conservatives probably running for president and several Republicans in blue and purple states moderating in the face of potentially tough reelection challenges. And the demands of House conservatives and a Democratic White House present their own difficulties.

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In the view of Graham and a small but vocal number of other Republicans, those concerns don’t outweigh the benefits of laying out an agenda on issues ranging from education to health care. Barnstorming his state ahead of a June 10 primary, Graham is telling voters that the GOP needs to stand for something — and should put its ideas on paper. Doing so would help restore credibility to the GOP brand and give the party a mandate should it win in November, he said.

Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, a Republican battling in a two-person runoff for a Senate seat in the Peach State, has developed a six-point plan of proposals to bolster national defense, cut spending, push back on administration regulations, flatten the Tax Code and promote energy development. He also says the GOP should promote “workfare over welfare” programs, calling for measures such as work requirements for food stamp programs.

Kingston has distributed the plan to all GOP Senate candidates but has yet to hear back from them.

In an interview, he said the party should follow the route taken by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who spearheaded the Contract with America effort two decades ago. Kingston wants the party to craft a document that could unite all wings of the GOP and be presented to voters throughout the country.

“I’m interested in supporting Senate leaders who are interested in a contract approach,” Kingston said. “What Newt did was unite the Northeastern moderate Republicans with the Southern social conservative Republicans with the Western libertarian Republicans and got everybody behind one contract.”

McConnell hasn’t stated a preference on how to proceed with an agenda. He could yet embrace one if there’s a groundswell of support within the caucus. Some senators privately said the GOP leader appeared skeptical of the Graham approach, but a senior GOP aide said no decisions have been made about the matter as discussions continue among Republican senators.

At a Friday press conference in Louisville, McConnell demurred when asked about a GOP agenda if the party takes the Senate.

“I’m not prepared to announce what the agenda is going to be in January,” he said. “We’re not measuring the drapes.”

McConnell has begun to aggressively make the case about something he could control if he becomes Senate majority leader: the schedule. If he survives his own reelection challenge this year, McConnell has vowed to”restore” the Senate: Allow for more votes on amendments on the floor, empower committee chairmen and reinstitute a five-day workweek.

At a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week, McConnell spoke broadly about GOP ideas but was more specific about how his leadership style would be different than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s, whom he said has done “tremendous damage” to the institution.

“If Republicans were fortunate enough to reclaim the majority in November, all this would change,” he said. “A Senate majority under my leadership would break sharply from the practices of the Reid era in favor of a far more free-wheeling approach to problem-solving.”

Some top GOP political hands say those types of promises are the kind Republicans should be making: arguments aimed directly at appealing to voters frustrated at gridlock that a GOP Senate majority could actually do something about. Moreover, with the ability to set the agenda in the majority, Republicans would be able to launch new oversight over the administration and change the tone of the national debate.

“It would be valuable for us to be outlining how different the Congress would be,” said Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “And I would start with just the broad, not just partisan Republican issues, I would start on how the Senate would work differently.”

Part of the risk of presenting a detailed platform is that even if the GOP highlights a handful of measures much of the party supports, Republicans will be lashed from the left and the right for leaving items off the list. For instance, South Dakota Sen. John Thune said the party would almost certainly leave social issues like abortion out of any policy platform.

“Our focus is going to be on economic issues — pocketbook issues,” said Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican who chairs the messaging arm of the caucus. “I think that’s what’s going to drive the electorate in this election.”

There is still time for the GOP to unify behind a coordinated approach. After all, many Republican senators noted, it wasn’t until the fall of 1994 when Gingrich and GOP leaders unveiled their plan.

“I feel an obligation that we would let people know what we would do if we were in charge,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who noted he is already developing proposals he’d act upon as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “It may be that we end up with a consensus document of some kind closer to the election.”

Still, there are significant differences between now and 1994. In particular, the party controlling the House majority can rule with an iron fist; in the Senate, the minority party can derail virtually anything. And the candidates running for Senate tend to be more ideologically diverse, with conservatives running in states like Nebraska and moderates in places like Oregon.

With Republicans on the offensive this election season, Gingrich, for one, isn’t so sure the “Contract with America” should be reprised in 2014.

“I don’t know that’s necessary this year,” Gingrich said in an interview. “I think they want to think about what they want to be positive about and what they want to do the first six months if they got the House and the Senate. I don’t know if I would try to turn that into a really formal structure at this point.”

Gingrich added: “They should be very careful.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.