ARMEY, WATTS WIN
House Republicans on Wednesday voted to keep Rep. Dick Armey (Tex.) as Majority Leader and delivered an upset victory to Rep. J.C. Watts (Okla.) in his bid to become GOP Conference Chair.

It took three ballots for Armey to beat his three opponents, Rep. Jennifer Dunn (Wash.), Rep. Denny Hastert (Ill.),and Rep. Steve Largent (Okla.), in the race for the House GOP's second-ranking leadership slot. Hastert dropped out after a weak showing on the first ballot, and most of his support went to second-place finisher Largent. Dunn was eliminated following the second ballot, and on the third tally Armey prevailed with a vote of 127-95.

Watts defeated incumbent Rep. John Boehner (Ohio) for the fourth-ranking leadership position by a vote of 121-93. Republicans also approved Bob Livingston (La.) as their candidate for Speaker and re-elected Tom DeLay (Tex.) as Majority Whip.

WITHOUT ISSUE (An editorial from NR's latest issue, on newsstands next week)
Republicans have concluded from the disappointing election returns that they must run on issues. This conclusion is surely correct, though it comes at a time when it will be difficult for congressional Republicans to act on it. With such a tiny House majority - not the smallest in history, as we feared last issue, but the smallest since 1955 - the GOP can't send many conservative bills to President Clinton's desk and thus get vetoes that clarify the parties' positions. And even if that immediate problem were solved, a deeper one would remain: the public does not like the Republicans' positions on a host of key issues, from education to health care to entitlements.

Part of the reason these positions are unpopular is that they are Republican positions. Polls have shown for years that conservative policy prescriptions that command majority support cease to do so when they are described as Republican proposals. Democrats are thought to have a more genuine concern for environmental protection than Republicans - perhaps because they generally do - and also to have a greater concern for ordinary people. The public thinks Democrats understand the needs of families, which trumps the Republicans' advantage on family values.

These perceptions are rooted in reality: the Republican Party in the 1990s has seemed oddly detached from American life, at least at the national level. Led by professors, Republicans have launched crusade after crusade - for balanced budgets, CBO scoring, tax reform - whose importance to most people is not immediately apparent. When discussing education policy, Republicans have stressed the evils of bureaucracy and the virtues of federalism and competition. Democrats, on the other hand, have talked about what a classroom should look like (fewer students and sturdy walls). The right answer to the wrong question will always lose out to the wrong answer to a better one. A pre-election New York Times poll gave the Democrats a twenty-point lead on education.

The relevance of crime control to individual voters does not require explication, and this issue has been an advantage for Republicans since the late Sixties. But that advantage has shrunk to almost nothing, and there is not much they can do about it. The Democratic Party, the party of government, has a natural advantage on the entitlements it created. Republicans should have a corresponding natural advantage on taxes, but their missteps have allowed Democrats to pull even. Without tax cuts to offer voters, it is a wonder Republicans have done as well as they have.

Republicans have offered the right policies on health care: medical savings accounts and other devices to correct the tax code's bias against individual control of health policies. But they have not understood the urgency of the issue, assuming that the status quo of managed care is tolerable and can survive indefinitely. In fact, such corporate rationing is bound to generate increasing discontent, to which our politics is bound to respond with increasing regulations. Republicans are then left advocating positions in which they do not really believe, defending either regulation or HMOs. And national health care gets ever closer. Republicans need to stop treating health policy as an irritant to which they must react and start taking the lead with conservative proposals.

To build a governing majority, Republicans must explain how they would govern and what difference it would make - which in turn requires that they tailor their politics to meet the challenges now facing Americans. Such tailoring should not mean slavish obedience to polls. Rebuilding our defenses, and erecting defenses against missiles, is an issue whose importance Republicans should be prepared to explain to a complacent electorate. Nor should Republicans base their appeals purely on narrow self-interest: abolishing racial preferences and restricting immigration are steps designed to restore a sense of national identity, which is in our national interest. Appeals to self-interest, however, have their place. Republicans should reclaim the tax issue by offering voters, not tax reform, not tax fairness, but tax cuts.

In other words, Republicans can either start paying more attention to Americans, or get used to Americans' not paying attention to them.