Fearing Election Day losses, some in GOP look to rebuild

Former Massachusetts governor William Weld (center background), a Republican, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president yesterday at Obama's campaign office in Salem, N.H. (cheryl senter/Associated Press)

WASHINGTON - Even as Republican nominee John McCain seeks to separate himself from an unpopular President Bush, some Republicans are rejecting McCain as well as Bush. And many party leaders are preparing to remake the damaged party after what they unhappily anticipate will be a bad day for the GOP on Nov. 4.

Several high-profile Republicans have endorsed Barack Obama in recent days, saying the Illinois senator represents the best chance for change in Washington and implicitly damning Bush and McCain for the recent and looming electoral failures of the party.

Former Massachusetts governor William Weld became the latest Republican figure to endorse Obama yesterday, saying the Democratic nominee had a "deep sense of calm" and "equally deep intelligence.'

"John McCain is a very good guy," Weld told reporters in Salem, N.H., a state McCain still hopes to win. But "I do think the Republican Party has been playing on an increasingly small field in the last couple of elections."

Some Republican voters have defected from McCain: Recent polling shows that Obama is gaining ground among voter constituencies that favored Bush in 2004.

Conservative Republicans, for their part, say the party has lost sight of its mission under Bush and needs to get back to its ideological roots of small government and fiscal discipline.

While congressional Republicans will not publicly concede that the presidential race is lost for the GOP, they speak frankly about the real possibility of an Obama presidency. They are discussing ways to reenergize the Republican party at a time when Democrats will probably be in charge of the White House and hold larger majorities in the House and Senate.

"It's time for a fresh start. We need new faces and new people to communicate what our party stands for," said Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee. After the elections, Republicans need to develop a simple, five-point plan that gets back to the principles espoused by GOP icon Ronald Reagan, he said - smaller government, no deficit spending, and a strong national defense that does not entail making the United States the "world's policeman."

Capitol Hill Republicans say they lost their way and are now being punished for it.

"I don't think it's any surprise that we're being turned out. I don't think it was a surprise in 2006. We haven't done anything in the last year to show that we've learned anything," said Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican.

Bush "destroyed us," said Ed Rollins, who served as an aide to Reagan. "He was supposed to be a conservative, and he wasn't. We're spending money we don't have."

Wamp and other House Republicans said they expected a change in GOP congressional leadership after the elections, especially if Republicans lose many seats.

McCain, meanwhile, has not won much favor in his party, either with his policy agenda or his political tactics. Congressional conservatives are unhappy with McCain's support for immigration reform - although McCain backed off the issue after he began his run for president - and are still angry with McCain for his authorship of a campaign finance reform package that limited big-money donations.

McCain has never been popular among his Capitol Hill colleagues - a fact he repeats as a testament to his "maverick" nature - and many Washington Republicans, while still working to help McCain score an upset, are already operating under the assumption that Obama will be the next president. Several have begun publicly chastising McCain for the tenor and tactics of his flailing campaign.

A number of Republican lawmakers - including both of Maine's GOP senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe - have denounced the McCain-Palin campaign's robocalls to voters accusing Obama of having close ties with a "domestic terrorist," William Ayers, a former member of the Weathermen militant group who is now a University of Illinois at Chicago professor. Ayres served on an education reform board with Obama and other prominent Chicagoans.

Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge - who was rejected as McCain's running mate amid worries that his pro-abortion rights stance would offend the religious conservatives in the party - said yesterday McCain would be in stronger contention had he been McCain's running-mate.

His remarks follow complaints by prominent Republicans who have criticized the choice of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, calling her unprepared for the job. And Representative Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, openly criticized McCain's operation yesterday, saying he would "have done things differently" than the McCain campaign has done.

McCain was hit with several Republican defections this week, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan; former Reagan administration solicitor general Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School and prominent conservative thinker; and former Minnesota governor Arne Carlson.

Many Republican legislators blame the Bush administration and previous congressional leaders for leaning on them to cast votes that run counter to GOP principles. Under Bush, the GOP-led Congress created an entirely new federal agency - the Department of Homeland Security - and approved a historic expansion of Medicare, adding prescription drug coverage to the signature program of the 1960s Great Society.

They complain that under Bush's lead, the then-Republican-majority Congress also ushered in unprecedented federal involvement in elementary and secondary education with the No Child Left Behind law, and OK'd budgets and appropriations bills that left the country with expanding deficits and a record national debt.

Even under Democratic control of Congress, Republicans provided critical votes last month to approve a $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street, a plan strongly urged by Bush.

The president's plea prompted conservative GOP Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas to grouse that there should have been a Republican response to Bush's call for a bailout of an ailing private-sector industry.

Why should voters send more Republicans to Washington, the conservatives in the party say, if they are only going to behave like wannabe Democrats?

Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Republican Study Group, said "there is definitely a restlessness" among Republicans. "There are a number of Republicans who have been concerned that over the years, often in appearance and occasionally in reality, the people saw the Republican Party didn't live up to what it has said it's all about," Hensarling said.

After the elections, "we'll go into the wilderness awhile," said Rollins. "We have to think about who we are. When you become a minority party, you have to have a total rethink."