‘The Patience of Politics’

[Valin]

NRO:

Robert Costa
2/1/11

House Republicans invited a slew of speakers — talk-show hosts, messaging maestros, and aging ex-pols — to their annual retreat last month. They tapped George F. Will, the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the Washington Post, for the keynote address.

Will, a former Washington editor of National Review, did not pontificate as a prophet or futurist. Instead, he came as a historian and journalist, armed with a few small points and a couple of “scintillating jokes.” In a closed-door session, he urged the assembled lawmakers to be acutely aware of the undercurrents that thrust them back into power. But he did not wag his finger.

As we sit alongside Baltimore’s bustling Inner Harbor, Will tells me that this new majority is quite different from the bumptious, Gingrich-led majority of 1994. After three decades in the wilderness, Gingrich’s House Republicans fell victim to triumphalism — but having regained the majority after a mere four years out of power, the Boehner-Cantor Republicans realize how fragile their victory is.

(Snip)