WITHOUT GOOD ISSUES, GOP OFFERED LITTLE

After Republican leaders ran an election campaign largely devoid of issues in the fall of 1986, leading to the loss of their six-year majority in the U.S. Senate, The Wall Street Journal published a 15-word editorial. It read as follows:

"Issueless elections are not good for Republicans. Maybe they can remember that in 1988."

The words are as apropros following Tuesday's Republican electoral debacle as they were 12 years ago. For the first time since 1822, the party not holding the White House failed to win House and Senate seats in the sixth year of a presidential term. Republicans had expected to pad their majorities by between two and five Senate seats and between eight and 15 House seats. Instead, they actually suffered a net loss of five House seats and gained no Senate seats.

Give the Democrats credit: They fight hard, they fight relentlessly and they give no quarter. The Clinton strategy of this election was simple: Attack the president's critics and use utterly shameless tactics to stimulate turnout among the black voters who form the core of the Democratic base. It worked as well as could be expected.

The extent of the missed opportunity for Republicans is stunning. The results mean that GOP margins are unchanged in the Senate (55-45), while the small Republican House majority of 11 seats has been pared to a paper-thin six seats. All this in a year when the White House is occupied by a dramatically discredited man who was reduced to holding no public rallies or events of any sort, instead appearing at closed fund raisers among the party faithful.

It was the campaign strategy of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich to sort of play not to lose, instead of taking the game to the other side in a bold play to win. In football, this is called the "Prevent Defense." Teams that employ it are most often called losers. Of the Lott-Gingrich Republican leadership team, it can be said that they earned the repudiation voters handed them Tuesday night, and no amount of post election spinning will change that reality. Largely abandoned are the time-tested themes that won congressional Republicans their majorities in the historic landslides of 1994.

This editorial page has consistently called for aggressive action to cut federal taxes. It has been 12 years since America has had a real tax cut worthy of the name, and taxes are at record levels for peacetime. More than once we have warned that Republican congressional leaders forget this at their peril. Yet forget it they apparently did. House leaders made a stab at it, ultimately passing a pitifully small $80 billion tax cut spread over five years. This they did late enough that Senate Majority Leader Lott declared it dead, refusing even to bring it up before the full Senate. They should have passed not one but many tax cuts, forcing the president to make good on his veto threats, and then take their case to the people. Instead, congressional leaders flinched, and are reaping the whirlwind.

Americans looking for inspired political leadership today are looking increasingly to the statehouses, 31 of which remain occupied by Republican governors. Excepting only California among the 10 largest states, all the rest feature GOP chief executives. This includes, spectacularly, the Bush boys -- George W. (Texas) and Jeb (Florida) -- who now preside over two of the four most electoral vote-rich states. George W. may have won the Republican presidential nomination with a landslide that won every constitutional office for his party. Texan Bush won 45 percent of Hispanics and nearly 30 percent of the black vote. These GOP governors have been cutting taxes, pushing parental choice and real education reform and are being rewarded. They feature smiling faces in contrast with the querulous Gingrich. The lessons are clear.