The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century

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Tuesday's primaries set the stage for November's battle for control of Congress. Democrats are trying to pick up the six Senate seats and fifteen House seats that will give them majorities in each chamber.

In the face of Republican scandals, growing public disapproval over the Iraq war and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a number of analysts are predicting a shift in power on Capitol Hill come November.

So will the Democrats succeed in the upcoming elections? A new book shows how the Republican party may still have the edge. It's called "One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century." It reveals how the Republican party owns a clear advantage in the fundamentals of campaigning and has built up a series of structural advantages that make it increasingly difficult to beat.

• Tom Hamburger, investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, specializing in the White House and executive branch. He is co-author of the book, "One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century."
• Peter Wallsten, covers the White House and national politics for the Los Angeles Times. He is co-author of, "One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century."

AMY GOODMAN: I’m joined here in Washington, D.C. by the book's authors, Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten. Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, specializing in the White House and executive branch. Peter Wallsten covers the White House and national politics for the Los Angeles Times, as well. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

TOM HAMBURGER: Thanks. Good to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: One Party Country. Tom Hamburger, you spent a lot of time going to Wednesday meetings. Can you describe what they are?

TOM HAMBURGER: Sure, Amy, thanks. The Wednesday meetings refer to the gatherings of conservative activists at the offices of Americans for Tax Reform, the activist organization established by Grover Norquist, effective organizer and gadfly on the right, who brings together the conservative coalition every week for a private -- generally closed to the press -- meeting to hash out, to discuss both issues of the day and to sort of get the message from the White House, from the Republican National Committee, from the constituent groups of the conservative coalition. And it's a place where the disparate members of this group can come together, and do come together, every week to plot strategy and to air their differences, but to do so in private.

AMY GOODMAN: Why were you allowed in?

TOM HAMBURGER: Well, this was an important part of our reporting. And to get in the door, we did agree to some ground rules, which included our going in agreeing to accept some things off the record, that is, not publishing everything that took place, because there's a lot of strategic material that's discussed, and so forth. But we very much wanted to get inside this meeting, to understand how it is that this coalition on the right has become -- we argue in this book and we believe -- unusually successful, both in organizing the disparate wings of the Republican Party and of the conservative movement and getting them to focus on both short-term and long-term goals. We wanted to see how it worked, and it was important for us to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, what’s the secret? How does it work?

TOM HAMBURGER: Part of it is that -- part of the success is that groups with different short-term goals -- say the business wing of the party, corporate interests, versus the social conservatives -- are able to come together with the idea of saying, how can we -- what is it that we can compromise on? What is it that we can come together on for a short-term -- sort of paper over short-term differences for long-term gain?

An example, we were there when the Medicare proposal, Medicare drug proposal, was backed by the White House, and the White House came to make the argument that this drug proposal, even though it was antithetical to some traditional conservatives, would be good for the movement in the short term, because it could bring seniors into the Republican fold and encourage votes in the midterm elections for Republicans. And so, we watched as conservatives were asked to basically tamp down your disagreements over this, what was considered a non-conservative expansion of a federal entitlement program, in order for Republicans to make gains short-term in the midterm elections.

AMY GOODMAN: And Grover Norquist's significance within the Republican Party, the man who said -- what was the famous quote about the bath tub?

TOM HAMBURGER: Oh, ‘My goal is to -- I don't just want to shrink the size of government, I want to bring it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.’ I think that's the quote.

Grover Norquist is a guy who grew up in conservative politics. He was a leader in College Republicans, notably came to know, while he was in college, Karl Rove, also a leader in that movement, and guy called Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, a whole cadre of the sort of leaders of the movement who came of age roughly at the same time.

Grover then worked for the Reagan White House and then came to lead this anti-tax wing of the Republican Party, which became -- is a very important part of the conservative movement today and, we argue in the book, also introduced discipline in the party, in a sense. When the father of the current president was in the White House and broke his pledge -- remember this, “Read my lips: no new taxes” -- Norquist and his organization and this group of anti-tax conservatives really went after that first President Bush. And we argue in the book that that was an enormous lesson to his son, which is, understand the power of these movement conservatives and don't cross them.