GOP Plans Major Push in Congress

Seeking to capitalize on their decisive victories in the House and the Senate, jubilant Republicans on Wednesday began plotting how to use their commanding position in Congress to advance their conservative agenda.

Soul-searching Democrats, meanwhile, agonized over how election day turned into such a rout.

Democrats’ loss of seats in the House and the Senate -- especially the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota -- set off an anguished debate over whether they should intensify or ease his strategy of adamant opposition to President Bush.

“Democrats better think long and hard about what happened yesterday,” said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.).

Republicans saw in their larger majority an opportunity to move long-stalled initiatives to expand oil drilling in Alaska, crack down on lawsuits and install more conservative judges.

“If I could be any happier, my head would blow through this building,” said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.). “The addition of this many senators makes a lot of things that were not possible now possible.”

Republicans gained four seats in the Senate, giving them 55 members when the new chamber convenes in January. There will be 44 Democrats and an independent who usually sides with them.

The Senate’s makeup was settled early Wednesday when it became clear that Daschle had lost and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) had survived a tough challenge to her reelection.

The Republicans are still short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster, so Democrats have leverage if they are willing to continue using the stalling tactic that Daschle often employed.

But Republicans think Bush’s victory in the presidential race and the party’s gains in the House and the Senate will create a political climate that puts pressure on the handful of remaining centrist Democrats to work with the GOP.

“You’re going to see a unified Republican majority,” said Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, “and I think some Democrats also will fall in.”

In the House, two races remain unresolved, but Republicans will have at least 231 seats. Heading into the election, the House had 227 Republicans, 205 Democrats and an one independent who votes mostly with Democrats. There were two vacant seats that had been held by Republicans.

Those results mean Republicans will have more seats in the House and the Senate than they did after the watershed 1994 election, when they won simultaneous control of the two chambers for the first time in 40 years. And the increased GOP majority should give Bush a powerful tool for propelling his second-term agenda.

The Senate results did not just elect more Republicans. With the addition of conservatives Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the election tilted the ideological balance of Senate Republicans.

“The focus of the power in the Senate moves dramatically to the right,” said Marshall Wittmann, a former Senate Republican staffer who is now a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

That shift could have broad consequences because in recent years the Senate has played an important role in tempering the House’s conservative leanings.

Another dynamic that could push the Senate further to the right is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s plan to give up his seat after 2006.

The Tennessee Republican is a likely presidential prospect in 2008 -- an ambition that may require him to keep in the good graces of the party’s conservative base.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said the Senate’s rightward shift vindicated the effort by him and other conservatives to emphasize social issues, such as gay marriage and abortion. Many postelection analyses concluded that the Republicans’ emphasis on moral values helped them make electoral inroads.

Emboldened by that, Santorum wants to push aggressively to prevent Democrats from continuing to block Senate votes on Bush’s most controversial judicial nominees. He plans to seek a change in a Senate rule that would prohibit the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees.

But other GOP sources warn that Democrats would view such an effort as highly provocative -- especially at a time when a vacancy at the Supreme Court may be in the offing.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), an occasional supporter of Bush policies, cautioned Republicans against hubris in pursuing their advantages.

For their part, Democrats struggled to understand their losses and began quiet discussions of what sort of political strategy they should pursue.

“This is a party in shock,” said one Senate Democratic aide who, like many party members, asked not to be identified when discussing Tuesday’s results. “People are kind of stunned that we don’t have the White House today.”

Daschle’s defeat forces a leadership shake-up on Senate Democrats.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who is now the popular No. 2 leader as minority whip, has said he would like to succeed Daschle. Many Democrats think Reid, a low-key insider, has been effective at managing the party’s legislative strategy.

Some Democrats, longing for a senator more telegenic than Reid to be their spokesman, urged Dodd to run. But he announced Wednesday that he would not oppose Reid.

Two Democrats -- Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota -- have expressed interest in succeeding Reid as whip.

The leadership power struggle is part of the larger question of what direction the party should move in the wake of the election.

Some -- mostly liberals -- argue that Senate Democrat needs to be more aggressive, unified and confrontational because the chamber is the branch of government where they have the most influence.

“We’re not going to just roll over and play dead,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on NBC’s “Today” show. “If the Republicans and President Bush regard [Tuesday’s results] as a ringing referendum, endorsement of all their policies, I think they are going to have a really difficult four years.”

But other Democrats argue that the election showed that Democrats need to moderate their approach and do more to broaden the party’s appeal.

“If we just cling to a limited base of support ... I don’t know how we win a presidential election,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

She said Bush’s roughly 3.5-million margin over Sen. John F. Kerry in the popular vote showed that the electorate was fundamentally conservative.

“I don’t think we should deny that.”

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Times staff writer Mary Curtius contributed to this report.