This diary may be trite/old news but I have seen the future of where the GOP is going and how they may be successful in their approach. I very much believe that the GOP has so burned it's bridge that they have nowhere else to go but the "yeah, but the Democrats don't stand for anything" approach and I'm afraid that it is something that the Democratic Party -one way or the other- must address.
Over the last few months on the Zogby board, a little petri dish of political culture, the GOopers are spending much less time touting the GOP accomplishments and the Imperial Chimp and much more time either blaming Clinton (ha-ha) or claiming that the Dems don't stand for anything either.
Similarly, as evidenced by the John Cornyn letter that is diaried elsewhere (
What Does Democratic Party Stand For, they are beginning to go public with this talking point. The polls show that the Dems are not faring much better than the GOP. It's my fear that, by hammering on this message, the GOP will appeal to the populace by saying - explicitly- "OK...at least you know where this party stands" - and a citizenry that is hungry for solutions may very well decide to go with the devil they know, scamps that they are, than to go back to the Dems.
Of course, that's BS. It's hard at this point to know what the GOP stands for -other than money and power aggrandizement. And of course the Dems stand for wonderful policies (whatever they are) but they have been thwarted by the solid GOP ownership of the three branches. BUT what the GOP has traditionally been much better at is the FRAME and packaging their message and the public is just bizarre enough to buy it.
I know nothing about shaping national strategy but I do believe that although this is about the only message the GOP has left, the Dems, due to their FRAME/MESSAGE deficits, must figure out how to counter it...either through affirmatively getting their platform together and packaging it nicely (a contract with America thing - although that seems SO borrowed from the bombthrowers of 1994) or some other method. Whatever...this will be the GOP strategy and the Dems must rise to the occasion and address it.