GOP's bolder reign on Hill

Fresh from a victory that stunned even their optimistic partisans, Republicans brushed critics aside with a vote that would have been hard to imagine before the Nov. 2 elections: changing their House rules to allow leaders to stay in their post even if criminally indicted.

Democrats, for their part, showed that they are also in a new postelection place. This week, they quietly elected new leadership while bracing for fights with the GOP on everything from big staff reductions to a rule change that would limit their power to block judicial nominations.

After four years of near parity on Capitol Hill, both parties show signs of settling into the mind-set of majority or minority roles - and the dangers each includes.

The risks are most obvious for Democrats. Their challenge is to avoid getting used to being the party out of power - and keeping talented people interested enough to stay in the game. Some now talk openly of a long-term decline.

"This campaign was another chapter in a 40-year slide for the Democratic Party since the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964," when Democrats had 2-to-1 majorities in both houses of Congress, says Al From, CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council. "If we are to be a majority party again, we have to change."

But in the cyclical world of US politics, dangers loom for majority party too. The classic error is overreaching.

In 1994, Republicans won their way back to power in the House on a crusade to topple a party grown arrogant and corrupt after four decades in power. Yet, once in power, they gradually rolled back many of the reforms proposed at that time: a ban on gifts from lobbyists, term limits for the House speaker, rules protecting minority rights, and, most recently, a party rule requiring leaders to step down after a criminal indictment - as now seems possible for House leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

"When you have a victory, there is a temptation to a sense of arrogance. It makes you less surefooted, wary and prudent. There's a real danger of overreach," says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Despite a now-wider Republican margin of control in both the House and Senate, Democrats aren't slinging stones at fellow Democrats, not yet. Election of new leadership was quick and all but uncontested. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada easily assumed the mantle of Sen. Tom Daschle, after serving as his deputy for eight years. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was reelected without competition.

But the real struggle for Democrats on Capitol Hill is playing out on more private turf: Whether to stay on in a GOP-controlled Congress and fight it out - or exit to greener pastures.

In some ways, the mood shift for both parties seems sharper than raw numbers dictate. Domestic or foreign setbacks for Republicans could put both chambers of Congress back in play for Democrats in 2006. But that's not how it feels now.

"It's just demoralizing to be a Democrat in the House or Senate now. All the incentives are against staying in, if you are really ambitious," says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.

The prospects seem bleakest in the Senate, after losing all five open seats in the South in 2004 and with more races in GOP-leaning states in in 2006. "It's hard to see things getting better anytime soon," says a senior Democratic staffer.

More desirable to be governor?

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