Always On The Sunny Side

There may be a ray of light in the gathering Democratic storm that appears likely to settle over the House of Representatives. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that many of the new candidates aren't cut from the same mold as current Democrat leaders:

If the polls turn out to be correct and the Democrats rack up big congressional gains Tuesday, they will have to thank a crop of candidates who don't look like a lot of the Democrats already in Washington.

In a party with a racially diverse old guard -- perhaps four African-Americans and one Hispanic could chair House committees -- nearly all of the party's promising new faces are white. Several are former Republicans, including two business executives: Gabrielle Giffords, who has run her family's Arizona tire company and Jack Davis, who runs an upstate New York factory making furnace parts.

The Democrats have fielded a squadron of military men and women including Joe Sestak in suburban Philadelphia, a former Navy admiral, and Iraq war veteran and double-amputee Tammy Duckworth in suburban Chicago. Brad Ellsworth, a 48-year-old county sheriff favored to capture a House seat in Indiana, is one of the few Democrats ever to sign the antitax increase pledge of Republican activist Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.

If the Democrats barely control the House after Tuesday's election, an outcome which seems increasingly likely, the votes of these new face Dems could prove critical. Will they fall in lock-step with their leadership or will they on occasion vote their conscience and go against the liberal party grain? There at least appears to some cause to hope for the latter.

Already, Mrs. Pelosi -- who would likely be Speaker if her party wins a House majority -- is privately trying to insist that liberals tamp down expectations of getting out of Iraq now. Democratic allies in the House say she wouldn't do anything to jeopardize the new recruits' electoral future, and by extension Democrats' newfound power.

Former Kentucky state Rep. Mike Weaver, a Vietnam veteran who Democrats hope can win a congressional seat Tuesday, is running on a platform of "family, faith, freedom" opposing abortion, gay marriage and gun control. He reckons the new Congress could have as many as 40 moderate-to-conservative Democrats and another 29 anti-abortion conservatives. "If you have 69 people that have a more conservative view of things, you can't ignore them," he says.