Not the Republicans
by kos
Wed May 07, 2008 at 06:50:19 AM PDT
The Anti-Obama, Anti-Wright, and Anti-Clinton GOP Model Has Been Tested -- And It Failed
The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.
This model has already been tested with disastrous results.
In 2006, there were six incumbent Republican Senators who had plenty of money, the advantage of incumbency, and traditionally successful consultants.
But the voters in all six states had adopted a simple position: "Not you." No matter what the GOP Senators attacked their opponents with, the voters shrugged off the attacks and returned to, "Not you."
The danger for House and Senate Republicans in 2008 is that the voters will say, "Not the Republicans."
This is quite a radical idea in the current Republican world, which is under the impression that the increased voter registration and organizing around our long-drawn primary is a good thing for them. They labor under the fiction (shared by too many Clinton supporters) that voters will find Wright more detestable and relevant than George W. Bush, the shitty economy, and the never-ending war in Iraq.
A February Washington Post poll shows that Republicans have lost the advantage to the Democrats on which party can handle an issue better -- on every single topic.
Americans now believe that Democrats can handle the deficit better (52 to 31), taxes better (48 to 40) and even terrorism better (44 to 37).
This is a catastrophic collapse of trust in Republicans built up over three generations on the deficit, two generations on taxes, and two generations on national security.
Yup. And Jeremiah Wright can't begin to compete in the voters' minds with this or Bush or Iraq, no matter how much Republicans will it so.
Gingrich then goes on to make a series of policy proposals he thinks would restore the Republican brand. Things like a gas tax holiday, make English the official language, "remind Americans that judges mattered" (because apparently they forgot), and take digs at unions.
Isn't this already the GOP platform? So okay, his "bold course of real change" isn't so bold or actually change course from anything that Bush hasn't already wrought on the nation. But his clear-eyed understanding of his party's dire straits? That part is dead on.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are feeling a bit, well, panicky.
Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.
The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode.“There is an attitude that, ‘I better watch out for myself, because nobody else is going to do it,’” the member said. “There are all these different factions out there, everyone is sniping at each other, and we have no real plan. We have a lot of people fighting to be the captain of the lifeboat instead of everybody pulling together.”
In a piece published in Human Events, the Republicans’ onetime captain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, warned his old colleagues that they face “real disaster” on Election Day unless they move immediately to “chart a bold course of real reform” for the country.
I'm sure that after seeing Gingrich's lame prescription for what ails them, their mood can only worsen.
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