Newfound GOP Unity in Senate Jolts Democrats

WASHINGTON — Only two months ago, the Senate’s 43 Republicans were at odds with themselves, squabbling publicly and privately over whether they should try to find common ground with the new Democratic Administration or devote all their energies to opposing President Clinton’s agenda.

With members representing virtually every point on the GOP ideological spectrum, from moderate Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon to firebrand Phil Gramm of Texas, and lacking a leader in the White House for the first time in 12 years, the Republicans seemed all but incapable of presenting a united front in major fights with the Democratic majority.

But something changed over the intervening weeks, a transformation that enabled the Senate’s band of minority party lawmakers to derail Clinton’s $16-billion economic stimulus plan and call into question the President’s ability to push through other key legislative initiatives such as health care reform.

If the stimulus package had been presented in the first months of the Administration, “it probably would have passed,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said in an interview. “I hope that we’ve made a statement that, first, when we stand together we can make a difference, and secondly, that we have to be reckoned with.”

Dole is hardly exaggerating. Simple arithmetic dictates that if Senate Republicans stand united, they cannot be easily overcome. That’s because the Democrats are three votes short of the 60 they need to break a filibuster, a parliamentary maneuver in which senators can take the floor to debate legislation and simply refuse to stop talking. It worked with the stimulus bill, and Dole and his followers are evaluating the possibility of using the same tactic to block the Administration’s proposed campaign finance reforms and other pending Clinton proposals.

Yet Republicans fully understand the danger of overplaying their hand, and thus being blamed for “gridlock”--the voguish term for the Washington paralysis that the rest of America has found so exasperating. “Most Americans want President Clinton to succeed,” Dole conceded in a speech on the Senate floor.

Clinton’s next major piece of economic legislation, a budget reconciliation measure containing the detailed tax hikes and spending cuts proposed in his long-term economic agenda, will be even more controversial than the stimulus bill.

But the budget measure is protected under congressional rules from filibuster. Its most crucial test will be in the Senate Finance Committee, where Democrats hold a slim 11-9 majority. The Republicans would need to pick off only one Democratic vote to block the legislation.

Clinton’s proposal to overhaul the nation’s health care system could be vulnerable to filibuster, although many lawmakers consider it a less likely target than the stimulus bill. Reflecting that view, Dole said he hopes the huge and complex health legislation will not provoke a partisan battle. The outcome could hinge on whether Clinton repeats his mistake of failing to enlist the support of at least a few Senate Republicans as the package is being crafted.

Clinton, for his part, conceded that he made a strategic miscalculation on the stimulus bill by discounting the possibility that all 43 Republicans would hang together. “I thought that at least four of them would vote to break (the filibuster), and I underestimated that,” he said at a news conference Friday. “I did not have an adequate strategy of dealing with that. . . . It was a strange set of events.”

Ironically enough, Dole noted, it was the Republican moderates, whom the White House had counted upon to break ranks, who showed the most resolve to block a bill that they considered old-fashioned political pork-barrel spending.

“It was really the moderates who got up in our meetings and said this is where we have a fundamental difference; if we don’t fight them on this, we can’t fight on anything,” Dole said. “Once we understood we had a pretty broad base, we knew the question was not modifying (the bill), but putting it to sleep.”

In general, argued Rutgers University political scientist Ross K. Baker, Republicans can be counted upon to present a united front on pocketbook questions. “On social issues, they can become a little frayed, but on core economic stuff, the Republicans are remarkably cohesive,” he said.

The telling moment came last Tuesday, as the Republicans huddled in Dole’s office, plotting their end-game strategy.

Clinton had offered to scale back his plan by one-third and, for the first time, to offset some of the new spending with $5-billion cuts in other areas. Moderate Republicans, led by Hatfield, were trying to shrink the spending by half, and require $2 billion in extra cuts. If the Republicans sweetened their offer further, there was a good chance of winning the support of enough Democrats to pass it, allowing the President at least a partial victory.

Republicans decided to go for broke. With no compromise in sight to break a 12-day filibuster, Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) the next day withdrew all but $4 billion in emergency unemployment benefits that the Republicans had supported all along.

While Dole downplayed the President’s defeat as just “a bump in the road,” he warned that Republicans will not be bashful about blocking Clinton when they feel they have “a fundamental difference of philosophy.”

Agreeing upon and articulating that philosophy is an enormous challenge for a party that finds itself out of power and leaderless for the first time since 1980. With Republicans badly outnumbered and constrained by the rules of the House, “the only place the party can clearly be defined is in the Senate,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “It’s the one institution in the country that can stop Bill Clinton.”

Under former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Senate Republicans had to seek compromises with Democrats, because it was the only way they, with a minority of votes, had any hope of enacting the White House’s program. “Our role is no longer trying to pass an agenda of a Republican President. Now, we must stop things if we’re to have an impact,” McConnell said. “The more confrontational style works now.”

Moreover, the Republicans themselves are a more combative group than they used to be. To some degree, that reflects the addition to their ranks of a number of former House members such as Gramm of Texas, Trent Lott of Mississippi, Dan Coats of Indiana and Connie Mack of Florida.

These conservatives were schooled in the partisan guerrilla tactics refined by some House Republicans and have little patience for the tradition of collegiality that used to govern how business is conducted in the Senate.

As Democratic leader Mitchell often points out, the more confrontational atmosphere can be seen in the fact that filibusters, once a relatively rare tactic, have become a way of life, largely at the instigation of Republicans.

With no Republican in the White House, GOP senators have become bolder in pursuing their personal agendas, too, with Clinton as their foil. Although Gramm has always loved media attention--it has been said that the most dangerous place to stand is between him and a television camera--many believe he is raising his public profile even higher in preparation for a 1996 presidential bid.

Similarly, the articulate and mediagenic Lott is widely viewed as the chief contender for Dole’s job, should he ever relinquish it. And Dole himself spent some of the Senate’s Easter recess in New Hampshire, where his 1988 presidential campaign went down in flames.

“I can’t believe it’s because he loves mud season in New England,” Rutgers’ Baker said.

Dole is cagey about his plans. Many believe his age will rule out a race; he will be 73 in 1996.

But the minority leader has a stamina and vigor that few men 10 years younger can match, and McConnell speculated that if the youthful Clinton proves vulnerable three years from now, “the country might be interested in a contrast. The country might be interested in a tested, senior leader.”