Op-Ed Columns

We sat down with our congressman, Mike Rogers, the day after he voted for the unpopular but apparently necessary financial bailout bill. He seemed different, not particularly energized by the prospect of two more years in the House.

He was fatalistic, as if he were a helpless observer-victim of political earthquakes over which he had no control, whose direction and personal consequences were unknowable. “I might be defeated,” he said flatly.

Mike is 50, he has an attorney-wife, two sons and a daughter in the Saks community, and Anniston’s largest law firm, which he built and can return to. He will be all right, but this wasn’t the trajectory he’d planned for his life and career.

It is conceivable that Mike’s third term may be his last. His party is at war in the Middle East and with itself, burdened by an unpopular president and economic storms that blew up on its watch. It is a party in a state of depression.

What a difference a decade makes. I remember how excited young Bob Riley was in 1996 when he was swept into the U.S. House of Representatives; his was a party propelled by a sense of mission, “A Contract With America.”

Riley was animated by Newt Gingrich’s brilliant national theme. “I just wanted to join the revolution,” said the freshman from Clay County. He was proud back then to call Texas Rep. Tom Delay his “best friend in Congress.”

That was before it became known that Gingrich was a serial adulterer, that his “contract” had been replaced by a political trinity of tax cuts, anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality that was supposed to create a 1,000-year reign of the GOP.

Friendly Tom Delay and his leadership drove the majority Republicans like latter-day Gestapo to achieve a record of two wars, historic debt, an undermined financial system, meddling in the Terri Schiavo family tragedy and the impeachment of a popular president.

Even the congregations of the GOP base began to stir in their pews when the “social issues” were preached Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. They began to ask, “Isn’t Jesus FOR something?” and mega churches began to lose members.

Mike Rogers hasn’t been one of those saucer-eyed GOP evangelists fixated on the social issues. He is bright, with a sense of humor and proportion. He knows the crucial economic issues of the area, has tried to be helpful and would continue to do so if re-elected.

But what does a decent, intelligent moderate have to look forward to as a member of a shrinking Republican minority that is wandering in a political wilderness without a philosophy to guide it?

Gone is the animation and promise of the freshman Mike Rogers. The newspaper was for him in that race. We had seen how quickly he became a leader in the state Legislature and thought he’d be an independent-minded leader in Congress who could win the respect of both sides of the aisle.

We thought Mike would be like Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, a rising star in the 1995 Republican Party who became chairman of the successful Congressional Campaign Committee for four years.

When Republicans lost the House two years ago, under different leadership, he became alarmed by the directionless state of his party. He was witnessing the legacy of the Reagan Revolution, which wasn’t a revolution in the sense that it left bedrock philosophical principles to uphold.

Ronald Reagan was an aura, a personal mixture of amiability and strength that was reassuring and charmed even political foes. But “government is the enemy” was not a philosophy that could create a permanent GOP majority. It was merely a slogan.

A slogan mixed with social issues nobody likes to talk about, a bellicose foreign policy and a free-spending, anything-goes economic anarchy left a party without a core philosophy that drew adherents and guided members.

Davis blew reveille for his party in a 20-page memo that said party morale was “the worst since Watergate.” He warned, “Failure to fundamentally change the GOP brand can lock us into a long period of minority status.”

Davis is one of 26 House Republicans who have chosen to retire, most moderates like him. He says glumly that the Republican brand is so damaged that “if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”

In Rogers’ district, his Democratic opponent, Josh Segall, is a Montgomery attorney a generation younger than Mike, very bright and a fireball of energy. He is single, a 24/7 campaigner who shows up everywhere, several times.

He has the endorsement of unions such as the Fraternal Order of Police and took advantage of Rogers’ support of the financial bailout bill. “Had the bill included actual help for homeowners, it would have passed,” said Segall, who went on to accuse Rogers of favoring deregulation that “helped get us into this crisis …” Segall is a long shot but he could win, and what I gathered from our sit-down with Mike is that he doesn’t care all that much.

What I took away from a candid conversation with a disillusioned Republican congressman is that a call to join in the birthing of a New Republican Party would put the fire back in his eyes.

But who will make that call … John McCain, George Bush; who?