WASHINGTON – No one envies John Cornyn’s job as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in a challenging election cycle when the GOP is likely to lose more Senate seats in 2010.
Shortly after the two-term Texas senator assumed his fourth position as GOP leader, five GOP-held Senate seats became open contests with the retirements of four in New Hampshire, Missouri, Ohio and Florida and a devastating party shift in Pennsylvania – – states where the Democratic trend prevails and where his party’s prospects for survival are bleak.
“History has done Cornyn wrong,” election veteran Stuart Rothenberg told me last week. “The Republican brand is damaged, they have many vulnerable positions. If Cornyn manages to break even this cycle, I’m sure privately he’d be delighted.”
But Cornyn is a guy who never says he’s going to die, and he knows it’s still very early in the two-year mid-term cycle and the political landscape could change significantly before next year. Rothenberg predicts that Democrats “are capable of winning two to three seats in the Senate,” but the senator disagrees.
“I wouldn’t agree with that. It’s a mixed situation. Will there be losses? It’s too early to tell. If we are lucky and the recruitment of candidates is successful, these numbers will change dramatically,” he told me in an interview.
Sure, it’s a tough cycle with some overwhelming challenges for a team that’s now in crisis. But Cornyn expects, with good reason, that the national political climate in the fall of 2010 may look very different than it does today.
“Given the administration’s excessive spending, borrowing, and nationalizing large sectors of our economy, I think the election will be a referendum on the administration’s policies,” he said.
“Unemployment will remain very high next year. There is a very real danger that inflation will start to rise. There will still be a huge public debt and the risk of unfinanced liabilities. “I think the economy will remain weak at best,” he said.
Cornyn doesn’t talk through his hat. With unemployment rising to 9.4 percent last month and projections of further job losses, the U.S. economy could face a long and anemic recovery characterized by snail-paced economic growth, feeble job creation and stock market volatility.
Worse still, an unprecedented $2 trillion deficit this fiscal year alone and the prospect of trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see as feeble economic growth results in feeble tax revenues and greater debt.
As reported in my last column, polls show that Obama’s weakest performance is indicative of his approach to the economy and government spending, and Cornyn already sees evidence that “Obama’s personal popularity no longer translates into the popularity of his policies.”
Republican strategists also believe that the upcoming health care battle will present Republicans with a major political problem, much as Hillarycare did in the mid-1990s, which led to their political comeback in the 1994 election.
The administration’s plan could become a minefield for Obama and his party. Taxing employee health care premiums for the first time, limiting Medicare coverage, reducing hospital subsidies, and imposing mandates and price controls on the private health care industry are just some of the toxic issues that could play into the GOP’s favor next year.
Cornyn, a former state Supreme Court justice, is one of his party’s shrewdest strategists and has quickly risen through the leadership ranks. He admits that he has been given a “difficult task” but makes it clear that he enjoys the challenge.
“I didn’t come to Washington to be a supporter of the wall, but to show what one person can do to change the situation. “I felt like it was the place where I could be most productive,” he told me.
Cornyn has history on his side. The incumbent party typically loses seats in midterm elections, and Obama’s presidency may be no exception. Only two presidents reversed this trend: Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 and George W. Bush in 2002.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gives Cornyn an “A-plus” for his handling of the campaign so far, especially his fundraising success. “He raised almost 40 percent more than his committee raised two years ago and eliminated the committee’s debt,” McConnell told me.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether recruiting candidates will be as successful, although Cornyn’s track record is impressive: former Bush budget director Rob Portman in Ohio, Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida and former Republican Rob Simmons, who is mounting a robust challenge against Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut.
People close to Cornyn say he is politically ambitious and has his eye on the minority leader position if he succeeds in becoming campaign chairman next year.
Will success in his modern job lend a hand Cornyn climb the leadership ladder one day? I asked McConnell. “For some members it matters and for others it doesn’t. “I don’t think it will be a deterrent for him in the future,” he said.
