Needed: The Resurgence of GOP Warriors

When things political seem that they no longer can shock, they do.

This happened recently at the gubernatorial post-mortem sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. This quadrennial event brings together the consultants and managers for each candidate to bare all in an inside look at each campaign.

It was there that the manager for defeated GOP candidate Dan Lungren observed offhandedly that a reporter came into possession of the scripts for Lungren’s final set of television commercials. The reporter--who was by coincidence moderating this panel--confirmed the story.

Maybe I heard wrong. No. A few minutes later, Gray Davis’ campaign manager underscored his contempt for the Lungren team by announcing that those scripts had been provided him “over the transom,” and they were the real McCoy.

Thus, a spy in the Lungren campaign stole critically confidential documents and turned them over to Davis’ folks, who then knew precisely all of Lungren’s final strategy. And the conference audience yawned.

If there was outrage, the Lungren team certainly didn’t show it. And why, during the campaign itself, didn’t the Lungren side publicly rebuke this act of political espionage?

Sadly, this alacrity at being sucker-punched is additional proof of the continued and alarming demise of the Republican warrior class. With rare exceptions, we see fewer and fewer Republicans willing to stride into the political arena spoiling for a scrappy go-around over a noble cause.

This timidity was played out last fall as Republicans embraced compromise in fear of President Clinton’s veto threats over their initiatives and of a government shutdown. Thus, Republican voters stayed home in shame.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen this weakness in spades as Henry Hyde and a handful of his bravehearts have been among the very few with the stomach to fight back against the pounding by cutthroat Democratic partisans.

Exhibit A is Pat Robertson, who folded like a cheap chair when cowed by the Clintonmania of whooping Democrats at the State of the Union speech. “Clinton won,” he said. “They might as well dismiss the impeachment hearings. . . .”

This is the precise moment in history when Republican ranks ought to overflow with zestful combatants ready to stand down the grinning and gloating hardballers who genuflect before Clinton’s flouting of the rule of law. The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes tagged it perfectly with his rueful observation of the GOP: “No issues, no leaders, no guts.”

Sensing the lack of opposition to its political stoogery, the left wing ratchets up even bolder attacks. Witness last week’s Time magazine, where one of the writers, Jack E. White, unleashed a barrage of hideous distortions against Republicans as “all too willing to embrace bigotry if it’s dressed in a suit and tie.”

He branded the impeachment proceedings as “a spectacle filled with galling reminders of the GOP’s alliances with anti-black forces.” White’s wretched excess continued by sliming Chief Justice Rehnquist as a “segregationist” in his “early life,” and scolding that the man who swore in Rehnquist, Strom Thurmond, ran for president 51 years ago on the “segregationist Dixiecrat ticket.”

If that’s the game to be played, then Republicans should be responding to White’s stupefying hypocrisy by reminding America that the favored pro-Clinton senator these days, Robert Byrd, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his “early life.” And that the left’s Watergate icon, Sam Ervin, was as consistent a foe of civil rights as ever defiled the Senate in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Better yet, Time might have explored Bill Clinton’s own inappropriate relationship with bigotry when Gennifer Flowers’ tape recording captured him equating former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo with the Mafia.

Republicans suffer in comparison to the gluttons savoring victory for Clinton--not even for his repulsive cause, but for the mere sake of victory itself.

Imagine the weariness House managers feel emerging each day to the din that derides their effort to remove Clinton--a man unfit for any season. More than ever, Republicans need to suck it up and take to the battles of policy and politics with the fervor that great causes deserve.

Those Republican political obituaries being written should be defied by a resurgence of strength and self-confidence. Churchill scoffed at defeat after the tragedy of Dunkirk. One yearns for that spirit to emerge again in a gallant Republican warrior class.