The Republicans' Rosetta Stone

Behold, Republicans. The Rosetta Stone for your demise has been unearthed right here in Michigan.

After last week's bloodbath, conservatives are desperately trying to decipher exit poll data and county-by-county vote tallies for answers as to what went wrong. But the key to Republican renewal is right in front of us.

Let's journey to the 7th Congressional District, that swath of rural rugged individualism from the Lansing suburbs to the Indiana-Ohio border. The district was designed to be the most Republican in the state, but come January, a liberal Democrat will represent it in Congress.

State Sen. Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek, toppled Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg 49 to 47 percent on Nov. 4. True to his petulant nature, the soon-to-be-ex-congressman waited well into the next day to concede, I'm told, although the results were clear.

How did this happen? Ask Joe Schwarz.

Back in 2004, the centrist eked out a GOP primary win for an open seat against Walberg and four other cookie-cutter conservatives. Schwarz's bipartisan appeal earned him 58 percent of the vote in the general.

The Battle Creek physician and 16-year veteran of the state Senate was ranked one of the top 10 most effective freshman members of Congress. He trekked home every weekend, hitting the pig roast circuit in the southern counties like Lenawee and Hillsdale that regarded him with suspicion, despite his conservative bona fides as a decorated Vietnam War veteran and CIA operative, who among other things, helped save Indonesia from a violent Communist coup.

Walberg, a faceless former state rep and Bible salesman, spied an opening. No one could beat Schwarz in a general election - that was clear - but GOP primaries are odd, cloistered contests that disproportionately draw the far right.

Bingo.

With a little help (say, about $1 million) from the anti-tax smear machine Club for Growth, Wally was in business for '06. The Club reduced Schwarz to a caricature, an "embarrassingly liberal" dude who liked nothing better than dispensing Viagra to bums on welfare. As an evangelical preacher, Walberg took care of the church crowd, warning that the good doctor was a baby-killing gay lover out to steal our guns.

Schwarz wasn't helped any when he had to take controversial votes on issues like gay marriage, which he said was redundant. So why did former Majority Leader John Boehner allow that to come to the floor? Why didn't the Michigan Republican Party and the National Republican Congressional Committee sit Timmy down and tell him to butt out?

Because the truth is, the Republican machinery is controlled from top to bottom by right-wing activists. And they like Walberg's politics a lot more than Schwarz's. The seat will always stay Republican, they reasoned, so why not trade a maverick for a foot soldier?

In the end, it wasn't even close. Walberg won by 6 points. But the darling of the far right couldn't even break 50 percent that fall against Sharon Renier, an organic chicken farmer with $1.03 in the bank.

"You're just setting this seat up for Mark Schauer to win it in 2008," warned Schwarz aide Matt Marsden, who was promptly mocked for having sour grapes.

One of the cynics, columnist Brad Flory, conceded this week in the Jackson Citizen Patriot, "Those Schwarz people look like geniuses now."

You betcha.

This year, Republicans lost another crop of moderates thanks to Club for Growth's scorched earth tactics, including U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest in Maryland and U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson in New Mexico.

Enough is enough. The GOP needs a moratorium on primarying incumbents, stat.

The holy grail of ideological purity has proven to be the priciest of illusions. The number of seats lost because the GOP no longer appeals to moderate, suburban voters is staggering. Many centrists have fled the party (Schwarz is a Republican-leaning independent who endorsed Schauer), thus robbing the GOP of institutional knowledge critical to rebuild.

Indeed, much of the brain trust - Colin Powell, former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, former Rep. Jim Leach - are odds-on favorites to join the Barack Obama administration.

Sadly, there are few grown-ups to tell the right-wing rapscallions to put down the Pop Rocks and come down from the sugar high of deliciously divisive politics. They don't work anymore.

Karl Rove ain't the messiah -he's just another washed-up pundit on teevee who's fallen into the trap of insisting elections can be won with the same nasty tactics from his glory days. Electorates change. Politics change. The Republican Party needs to be nimbler and more inclusive to survive and flourish.

So where's the party heading in Michigan? State Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-DeWitt, a close ally of Walberg and a Bob Jones University grad, reportedly has the answer to the GOP's woes in '10.

Why, a ballot question banning gay adoption, of course.

Now, I could show him the data that initiatives don't drive up the vote unless it's on affirmative action (and that's already been done, folks).

But Cropsey undoubtedly has God on his side. And Democrats from Grosse Pointe to Grayling are hoping he keeps the faith.

A statesman for Obama

When I met Jim Leach for the first time, protesters were shouting down a speech he gave at the Iowa City Public Library under a hand-painted banner that read, "Killer Leach."

It was during the heady days of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution in 1995 and the mild-mannered, moderate congressman was an unlikely foot soldier. But it was the first time in his 19-year career that the GOP was running the show and he dutifully towed the party line. He truly believed Republicans could clean up Washington.

So when I caught Leach's speech at the Democratic National Convention Monday endorsing Barack Obama, I let out a little gasp.

My former congressman chuckled that as a veteran of five Republican National Conventions, he'd never expected to be at a DNC, either.

"When I was asked to speak, it startled me at first and I had to think about it for a moment," Leach said during a phone interview Wednesday. "But I made a commitment and I decided to go all out."

That commitment is to Republicans for Obama, also led by Sen. Lincoln Chafee. Both were swept out of office during the 2006 Democratic tsunami, but they interestingly haven't bought the idea that maverick John McCain will restore their party. Leach believes a record number of Goldwater Republicans and independents will cross over.

Most Obama backers on tee-vee look to be 18 if they're a day and gush about their personal connection to him. But there was no come-to-Jesus moment with Leach, who admits he doesn't know Obama well.

Dispassionate Princeton professor he is, he neatly laid out a historical and geopolitical case for the Democrat better than anyone I've seen, masterfully weaving in the ideals of Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan with Obama's.

"The change Barack Obama is advocating is far more than a break with today's politics," Leach said in his speech. "It is a clarion call for renewal rooted in time-tested American values that tap Republican, as well as Democratic traditions."

Leach swats away the idea that the freshman Illinois senator is less ready to be commander-in-chief than McCain, whom he deeply respects.

"There's no doubt that John McCain has served in Congress longer than Barack Obama," says the man who was in Washington longer than both combined. "But it's important to look at judgment over experience and I am impressed by Barack's judgment."

Though he voted for the Gulf War, Leach was one of the few Republicans who didn't back the Iraq war, which he calls "a disaster." He's also troubled by the growing gulf between rich and poor and the middle class that's been left behind. What won him over to Obama was his non-ideological approach to issues and strong cast of bipartisan advisers, which he pointedly says is a break with the Bush administration.

But the most powerful part of his eight-minute monologue Monday was a devastating, and obviously tortured, indictment of the Republican Party he still calls home:

"The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values. The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that did not attack us. The party that formerly led the world in arms control has moved to undercut treaties crucial to the defense of the earth. The party that prides itself on conservation has abdicated its responsibilities in the face of global warming.

"And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts."

Unfortunately, the Iowan's measured and thoughtful soliloquy was drowned out by cable's talking heads and skipped by the networks, although once-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman's GOP coming-out party next week will likely net great fanfare. Pundits are praying he puts on the same kind of loopy show that Dixiecrat Zell Miller did at the 2004 RNC that spooked small children and family pets.

But the reality is that Lieberman, though an eloquent and impassioned McCainiac, is swimming against a tide where Republicans are fleeing the party in droves. And the country is moving past the middle and gently leftward. Leach thinks it didn't have to be that way.

"If we had stayed true to our core principles, we could still be in control of Congress," he told me.

Leach, who considers Dwight D. Eisenhower to be the greatest GOP president of the 20th century, could have pushed back against the tide in '06 and probably hung on to his seat. But he nixed an anti-gay mailing and inflamed the religious right, who then worked against him. They're the same folks who call him a turncoat today.

Leach can still rattle off details about that Iowa City event 13 years ago, down to the obnoxious sign. Though the liberal college town is known for its sometimes raucous protests, he clearly didn't relish being the target. He wanted to dialogue with the demonstrators; they wanted to shriek slogans stolen from the '60s.

He deserved better then and he deserves more respect now. But being a statesman is often a thankless job.