Barbour: GOP chances better than in ’94, but don’t get complacent

Republicans shouldn’t take their upset victory in Massachusetts for
granted, a senior party strategist told the Senate GOP conference
Wednesday.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the national
party, warned the group it can’t afford complacency or overconfidence,
even with the wind seemingly at its back.

{mosads}“Nothing is automatic in politics. Things change. Everybody
needs to just run hard, hard, and take nothing for granted,” Barbour
told The Hill shortly after he spoke to the conference during its
half-day-long meeting at the Library of Congress.

“But the environment today is better for Republicans in January of
2010 than it was in January of 1994,” he added. “The important thing I
told them was that while today the environment is better than it was in
’94, the elections aren’t for 10 months. Lots can change, and they need
to be thinking that nothing is carved in stone.”

Barbour avoided any predictions about whether the GOP could
recapture either chamber of Congress, but said recapturing the Senate
would be harder than winning back the House “because the numbers are a
little worse — but a month is a light-year in politics.”

Republicans opened the two-year political cycle with seemingly
little chance to win back either chamber, but particularly the Senate,
where the GOP is defending six open seats.

However, Democrats have seen their fortunes fall, with members in
the House and Senate, including Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), announcing
retirements that give the GOP pickup opportunities. Vice President Joe
Biden’s son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, this week decided
against a run for his father’s seat, handing Republicans an opportunity
to win another seat in a state carried by President Barack Obama in
2008.

Wednesday’s meeting, closed to the public and press, also featured a
short address by House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio).

After the meeting, GOP leaders challenged Democrats to increase cooperation with the minority.

The GOP controls 41 seats with Republican Scott Brown’s victory last
week in Massachusetts, which means Democrats will have to win
Republican votes to overcome procedural hurdles. GOP leaders at a press
conference said they would meet Democrats halfway if the majority party
abandons its big-ticket priorities.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledged Wednesday he would
deliver his senators if Democratic leaders pursue a more bipartisan
path and give leeway to GOP ideas such as tax cuts. Specifically,
McConnell urged Democrats not to let the tax cuts that were passed
under President George W. Bush expire next year.

“The quickest way to get bipartisanship is for our friends in the
majority to take the message from Virginia, New Jersey and
Massachusetts, which is to move to the political middle, where many of
us have been prepared to meet them for a year now,” he said. “They need
to come off of this far-left agenda, which has been rejected by the
American people, and meet us in the middle.”

{mosads}The two parties have traded accusations this year over who is to
blame for a lack of cooperation in the Senate. Democrats say
Republicans set upon a strategy of hurting President Barack Obama by
voting en masse against his agenda, while the GOP repeatedly has said
Democrats have failed to reach out to Republicans.

Barbour is also head of the Republican Governors Association (RGA),
a post he took from South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) after Sanford
admitted to an extramarital affair last year. Barbour said the job will
require him to focus on 37 gubernatorial races this fall.

A profile in a recent edition of Newsweek raised the specter of a
Barbour presidential campaign, but he told The Hill he is preoccupied
with his RGA duties.

“I’ve been around long enough to know that you never rule things
like that out, and I’m certainly not going to give it any thought until
the end of this year,” he said. “To the degree that I have some
political capital and time, I’m going to focus it on governors’ races
this year. And then we’ll see if that’s even worth thinking about.”

This story was updated at 7:23 p.m.