Casey and DeWine: A shift in politics

Amid the hubbub about whether the Republican majority in Congress would collapse, the ideological significance of one of the key Democratic Senate victories has been overlooked, simply because Pennsylvania's Bob Casey will bear a D next to his name when he takes office next January. Casey, the son of an immensely popular former Pennsylvania governor of that name, is a strange fish in today's political waters, but he is a harbinger of things to come. At the same time, Republican Mike DeWine, was booted in favor of a newcomer famous outside of Cleveland for being someone other than Mike DeWine.

DeWine and Casey are in many ways the same kind of politician. They are viewed as moderates because they are not ideological firebrands, and they cooperate with members of the opposite party (DeWine was a member of the Gang of 14 that brokered a compromise ending the filibuster controversy over Alito's confirmation, for instance), but neither is really a moderate in the sense of feeling equivocal about their party's positions. They are ideologically closer to each other than to many in their own parties, in fact. Casey is a religious Catholic and soft-pedals his party's stances on abortion, stem-cell research and other issues leveraged by the religious wing of the Republican party in recent years. DeWine is excoriated by hardcore right-wingers in Ohio, and though he wouldn't pass muster in most states as a committed economic liberal, his record is full of one-vote defections from his party, in favor of those populists in rural Ohio who supposedly swung the election for Bush in 2004.

DeWine was a senator well suited for Ohio. He understood that his state is committed to what the Republicans advertised as their moral steadfastness and folksiness and not to their rich-friendly tax breaks or their martial obstinacy. In fact, the only tarnish on his tenure that I can remember is the antics of his son hopping from post to post in Southwestern Ohio, trying to make his political fortune on his father's good name.

But DeWine lost the election, not through any crucial misstep of his own, but because those rural populists are starting to hate Republicans. Ohio's ousted Republican governor Bob Taft, despite his genteel political ancestry, has been one of the worst governors the state has ever had the misfortune to elect. His vices, however, fall mostly in the realm of the pitiable. He has made stupid decisions and let himself be duped (though I am mystified that anyone who first voted for him eight years ago could possibly think he would do anything otherwise — I was present at his inauguration, and the fact was clearly present to my not-terribly-perceptive 13-year-old self.) Ohio's other malfaisant Republicans are much more sinister, however. Some have embezzled from the state while others have embezzled from federal coffers. All have behaved as responsibly as monkeys do at a produce store and shown about as much concern for the public good as a fading Central Asian dictator.

Animosity toward Republicans is national, of course, though perhaps not quite so well-motivated anywhere in the nation as in Ohio. No one is surprised that the cohorts of Tom DeLay and the like are on the defensive across the United States. What Casey's victory and DeWine's loss symbolize, however, is that the sea change in this election was not merely a reaction against the hypocrisy of the Republicans.

The "values-voters" might be defecting from the Republican party en masse. The political middle ground and moral high ground, so important to the elusive moral majority and both claimed by DeWine and Casey, is changing its allegiance. Six years of losing has forced the Democratic party to reevaluate itself, and six years of deceiving evangelicals into thinking their interests will be represented in Congress has cost the Republicans dearly.

All the pundits said that the midterm election of 2006 would be a referendum on what is now seen clearly as Bush's folly in Iraq. Newspapers buzzed with the possibility of a change in Congressional majorities. It is possible however, if the Democrats do not squander the opportunity, as they have so often done, that Tuesday's election will go down in history as a realignment of the core constituencies of both parties and a permanent change in American politics. David Schaengold '07 is a philosophy major from Cincinnati, Ohio. He can be reached at dschaeng@princeton.edu.