The hum of the Republican machine

By Lisa Mascaro

Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Just steps from the Capitol complex’s House office buildings stands the grand Republican Party headquarters, a stately structure bathed in clean white that anchors a prominent corner in the circa-1880 neighborhood.

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, somehow missed the memo every property seeker gets when looking at real estate: location, location, location.

Its headquarters is a more modern, salmon-colored complex that could house your dentist’s office, a replacement building for one that stood in an earlier era. It sits a few impossibly long minutes away from the Capitol, quite literally on the other side of the tracks.

From the outside, the buildings seem to capture the internal architecture of the two parties: The renown discipline of the Republicans and the messy jumble of loyalties among Democrats.

It’s sometimes hard to imagine how the Republicans lost power these past few years as they meet weekly in such a smart-looking place to hash out politics and policy.

But that well-oiled Republican machinery was back in action last week as 176 House Republicans stood united against President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic recovery plan.

Not a single House Republican has crossed party lines to support the package. Twice.

In the Senate, the discipline was almost as tight. Three Republican senators joined Democrats to pass the bill.

The Republican message machinery was working at top form. They dug into the fine print, finding and amplifying what they saw as wasteful spending in the bill.

Las Vegas took lots of hits here as the city’s name was bandied on the floor of the chamber as a symbol of excess for potentially getting government money for its mob museum or maglev train.

It all worked so well until you stopped to wonder: Is this right?

Republicans have lost two straight election cycles going against popular opinion on key issues Democrats seem to have understood better.

Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006 in large part because they continued to support the war in Iraq when the country was ready for troops to come home.

By the fall 2008 election, the party was unable to present a clear, coherent platform, and it deepened its losses in both the House and Senate. Obama won White House.

Republicans have been searching for their way back from this political wilderness, and they think they have found a route in strict opposition to Obama’s proposal.

Sen. John Ensign and other Republicans say tax cuts for people and business would be a better way to stop the recessionary slide than vast government spending.

Republicans want a return to the fiscal conservatism that was once the hallmark of their party, until their own excesses in government spending and political excesses made their message unbelievable to many.

The Republicans message is coming through loud and clear, but it’s hard to see whether it will be a winning one.

Heading into last week’s votes, polls showed the public wanted a recovery plan for the economy but wasn’t thrilled about Obama’s. But the president is hugely popular.

Republican Rep. Dean Heller voted against the plan, but maybe his mostly Northern Nevada district, where the gold mining industry tends to have an inverse relationship to economic downturns, doesn’t need the estimated 9,000 new jobs the bill would create there.

Plus when the Nevada Republican Party is circulating a no-new taxes pledge, a potential primary challenge from a more conservative candidate is always just an election away for any lawmaker.

Democratic Rep. Dina Titus voted for the bill, but the Republican she defeated last fall had supported the unpopular Wall Street bailout, questioning aloud whether the vote would do him in. Maybe she, too, will suffer for her vote.

Maybe the Republicans are on to something. Or maybe the party has just committed what a top Democratic strategist at Americans United for Change, the liberal group that has been running ads against their votes, calls in his own message: political suicide.

This is the new voice of the Republican Party. Will it be a winner?