GOP Leadership Race Seen as Harbinger

The Washington Post reports:

The leadership contest playing out this month in the House of Representatives represents more than a battle of personalities. At stake is the direction of a Republican Party that, by some lights, is facing the most serious confluence of problems in the decade since it roared to power on Capitol Hill.

In both good ways and bad, House Republicans have helped define present-day conservatism. The House in the late 1980s and 1990s was the incubator for many of the policy ideas and political strategies that produced the current era of GOP dominance.

The House is also home to a brand of confrontational politics that has played a large role in souring the Washington environment. And the transactional style favored by many House GOP leaders -- in which the trade of special-interest support in exchange for access to power became more open than ever -- contributed to the downfall of former House majority leader Tom DeLay, setting off the current race to replace him.

What a number of Republicans fear is that the new leaders may define their roles in the most narrow and limited way -- passing minimal lobbying reforms, lubricating the gears inside the House, keeping their colleagues happy and enacting as much of Bush's agenda as possible but not much more. Gingrich has been outspoken in his warnings that, unless the House Republicans embrace a much broader reform agenda that goes well beyond the interaction between lobbyists and lawmakers, the party could suffer in the 2006 elections and beyond.