WASHINGTON -- After four years of harassment by an aggressive Republican minority, House Democrats evidently absorbed a lesson along with all those political blows: The route back to congressional power is paved with frontal assaults on the practices and policies of the majority.
In the opening days of the 112th Congress, members of the new Democratic minority have been unrelenting in their attacks on the way Republicans have begun their reign.
Via news conferences, Web videos, floor speeches, media events and a steady stream of critical statements and e-mails, Democrats have accused the new regime of ignoring the deficit implications of repealing the new health care law, breaking promises to run a more open House and, for good measure, letting lawmakers who were not sworn in cast votes.
House Democrats would obviously prefer to still be in charge. But falling from power -- and relinquishing the responsibility of running the House -- has freed them to unleash the same kind of attacks that Republicans and their allies so effectively employed against Democrats, particularly over the past two years.
"The experience has been liberating," said Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J. "When you are in the majority, you have to govern, and that requires compromise, subtlety and precision."
Being in the minority instead seems to summon up a blunt instrument.
From Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the party leader, on down, Democrats have heaped criticism on the new majority with some success. Republicans have been forced to answer questions about why they are not allowing amendments to the health care repeal legislation, how much it will cause the deficit to rise and what happened to their promise to pare $100 billion.
Democrats are also accusing GOP proponents of repeal who accept federal health care insurance of benefiting from the same type of coverage they are denying their constituents.
Republicans are not surprised at the onslaught. They say it is less Democrats taking a page from the GOP playbook than returning to the tactics that helped them wrest the majority from Republicans in 2006.
"They perfected the model of 'gotcha' on the House floor," said Rep. Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican and the new majority leader. "I think it is a return to that. I don't think it will necessarily work this time."
Cantor said he thought the political environment was much different today, with people more closely focused on the economy, their own financial situation and the nation's deteriorating fiscal condition.
"When you have the unemployment scene like it is now, I just don't think these antics are going to penetrate," he said.
It is not just House Democrats who are taking a more assertive posture. Though Democrats retained Senate control, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, a veteran practitioner of confrontational politics, is assuming more responsibility over his party's message to counter Senate Republicans. His influence is already being seen in the party's emphasis on issues that affect the middle class and consumers.
Democrats do not view their protests as antics but as a way to convey to the public what they see as Republican hypocrisy and a catering to special interests.
"My message to Republicans," said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, "is welcome to defense."
The political back-and-forth is markedly different from the Democratic response in 1995, the last time the party handed over the House gavel to Republicans.
Shocked by their defeat in November 1994 -- when even Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington was unseated -- Democrats were slow to regain their footing, giving the new majority and Speaker Newt Gingrich plenty of early running room. News coverage at the time described Democrats as almost paralyzed and uncertain of how to respond.
But since those days, both parties have learned plenty about rapid response, working the cable news shows, sending e-mail blasts to the media and turning arcane aspects of congressional operations into talking points.
Democrats say they have been preparing for the Republican ascendancy since immediately after the midterm elections. What they said they did not expect was how much help Republicans would provide in the first few days.
"We were prepared with a unified message, but their mistakes certainly helped," said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Pelosi, D-Calif.
Republicans would dispute the notion of mistakes, but they did provide some openings.
After repeated promises by the incoming speaker, Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, to run a more open House, the first big showdown over a repeal of the health care law is coming without committee hearings or the chance for Democratic amendments. Boehner and other Republicans also casually dismissed findings from the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan fiscal scorekeeper, that the repeal would add $230 billion to the deficit over 10 years, the same deficit that incoming Republicans promised to cut.
"Just like transparency is at the discretion of Speaker Boehner, now we learn that math is as well," the office of Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, noted Friday in a widely distributed statement.
Democrats also had considerable fun with the fact that two House Republicans, Pete Sessions of Texas and Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, missed the swearing-in ceremony Wednesday, forcing the House to expunge some votes they cast before they were officially inducted into the House on Thursday.
Republicans say that such attacks and others initiated by Democrats are distortions and that any heavy focus on legislative process typically reflects a weak case. But Republicans themselves showed during the health care debate that in the days of an engaged electorate, process fights can bring political gain. Remember demands to "read the bill" and outrage over the self-executing rule? Democrats say the early fights underlie much broader policy disagreements, and they promise to keep it up if Republicans continue on the path they have started down.
"I don't care whose playbook it is, we are updating it with a very aggressive tone," Israel said. "Their first-week experience is what the next 660 days will be like."
AP-WS-AP-WF-01-08-11 2158GMT
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