On the Sunday before Christmas, 40 conservative House Republicans jumped on a conference call to talk about political strategy going into the holiday break.

The message from Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price: This is no time for a vacation.

While the Capitol is quiet for the winter recess, GOP lawmakers have been anything but silent. Building on noisy recesses past — the gas-price protest of the summer of 2008, the town halls from the summer of 2009 — Republicans are determined to win the winter break, flooding the airwaves with cable TV and radio appearances, beating up their Democratic colleagues on health care, attacking President Barack Obama over the Christmas Day terrorism plot and generally refusing to give in to a traditionally slow news cycle.

On Wednesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) released a statement linking the bombing plot to Obama’s decisions to close Guantanamo Bay and to try terrorism suspects in the United States. The press releases from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office this week, by comparison, have included lists of 2009 accomplishments and roundups of economic stimulus coverage.

A Democratic aide says hill Democrats have been stuck “waiting on the White House” to take the lead on the terrorism attempt.

But Republicans have felt no need to wait. They hit the airwaves hard in the days immediately following the attempt, faulting the Obama administration for its approach to terrorism. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) called for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday — the same day Reps. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the party’s top voices on national security, held a conference call with the Republican Conference to discuss political strategy on the Christmas terror plot. King and Hoekstra had already become the top critics of the TSA and Homeland Security response to the Northwest Airline bombing plot.

“The takeaway [from the conference call] is that we were startled that they [the White house] were taking a blasé attitude and the fact that they took three days to respond,” said Rep. Mike Burgess (R-Texas), who was on that call.

Obama’s public response to the Northwest plot was no slower in coming than President George W. Bush’s response to the “shoe bomber” attempt in 2001, but Republicans sensed an opening in today’s faster media cycle, and they didn’t hesitate to jump in. Republican leaders have told their conference members to suck up as much media oxygen as they can during the break, hoping to exploit what is typically a succession of slow news days.

“In the past, Christmas holidays would have been quiet,” said one GOP aide. “We knew this would be a different holiday.”

Democrats insist they too have gotten plenty of air time, but aides concede they haven’t done caucuswide strategizing during a holiday period when lawmakers and their staff are recovering from the brutal health care debate. Democratic aides say they have had regular conference calls with party leaders, and that the key chairmen will be back next week. And they scoff at the Republican holiday media strategy.

"It just goes to show how extreme and out of touch House Republicans have become that their members would try to score political points and even raise money off the terror plot to blow up a plane and kill innocent Americans on Christmas," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in an e-mail to supporters on Wednesday. "It's simply shameful that House Republicans continue to play politics on issues of national security and terrorism especially considering they repeatedly refuse to back up their tough talk with actual votes to keep Americans safe."

But Democrats acknowledge privately that they were blindsided during the last congressional recess in August, when town hall events nationwide were overrun by conservatives protesting health care reform. And the previous August, Republicans stole the show on Capitol Hill with their gas price protest, holding rump sessions on the House floor while the chamber was darkened for vacation. In that instance, Democrats tried to ignore the Republican floor show but were eventually forced to respond because it was getting daily media coverage.

“The No. 1 rule in political communications is to take advantage of slow news days,” said Phil Singer, a Democratic political consultant who previously worked for Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. “In this situation, Republicans think they have an opportunity and have mobilized quickly.”

One Democratic House aide says Republicans are employing a typical minority party strategy — firing partisan shots while not offering alternatives.

“It’s easy to say no,” said Kristie Greco, a spokesman for House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). “The responsible thing to do when it comes to issues like this [terrorism] is to withhold judgment until we have the facts. Republicans are taking a big risk by trying to drive a wedge on an issue where they used to push unity.

Yet Republicans have outnumbered Democrats in getting their message out on the cable networks. According to stats compiled by ThinkProgress, a liberal blog run by the Center for American Progress, 13 Republican members of Congress appeared on evening cable news shows on Monday and Tuesday of this week, compared with just eight Democratic lawmakers. Hoekstra himself accounted for five appearances.

ThinkProgress released a study back in February that showed that Republican lawmaker appearances outnumbered Democrats by a two to one margin – even on MSNBC -- during the economic stimulus debate.

“[Democrats] have been steadily losing ground, and the wheels have come off on their messaging,” said Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), a freshman Republican from Mississippi who has been asked by his party leaders to conduct several media interviews during the Christmas break.

The enhanced media strategy has been in the works for much of this year for Republicans. Burgess, the Texas Republican, says he’s done 100 radio appearances and 70 TV hits in 2009, far more than any other year since he was elected to Congress in 2002.

“We were concerned that we couldn’t stop over Christmas — Congress often looks out of touch during the break,” Burgess said.

Instead, as one liberal blogger argued, it’s only the Democrats who seem out of touch.

“It’s now been five days since the attempted bombing of Flight 253 in Detroit, and Congressional Democrats are still turning the other cheek to Republicans who are using the incident to attack Obama’s entire approach to national security,” wrote Avi Zenilman, on The Plum Line, a left-leaning political blog on washingtonpost.com.

But with two more weeks of congressional recess, Democrats are scrambling to get back on message and steal back some of the air time that Republicans have grabbed. A spokesman for Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says his boss has made at least 10 appearances since the Christmas bomb plot and will continue to book media gigs to discuss homeland security measures.

Yet Democrats will still be deferring on the White House to take the lead on this issue.

“No Democrat wanted to walk the plank on a national security screw-up,” said one Democratic aide. “But that has left Democrats in a defensive posture. They finally recognized they needed to respond — otherwise they wouldn’t have put Obama out there two days in a row. They had to stop the bleeding.”


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