I didn't actually think I'd ever utter these words, but here it goes:
Folks, Welcome to the Wave. Now, you're going to ask what prompted me to say this. Well, for me, it was this pair of articles:
The GOP has lost the Northeast, and
is rapidly in the process of losing the Midwest. Both appeared within days of eachother. You can almost smell the fear and panic emanating from the Potomic.
Now, we've been talking about the Northeast strategy for awhile now. The actual title of the WaPo's article is "For GOP, Bad Gets Worse", which roughly translates to: "Northeast GOP: We're screwed".
The Iraq war and Bush's low approval ratings have created trouble for Republicans in all regions. But nowhere is the GOP brand more scuffed than in the Northeast, where this year's circumstances are combining with long-term trends to endanger numerous incumbents.
A Washington-Post ABC News poll this month found Bush's approval rating at 28 percent in the Northeast -- 12 points below his national average. The Republican Congress fared no better.
What's more is that Republicans realize that they're in trouble. Take this quote from Republican State Senator Ray Meier, who is running for Congress in Upstate New York's 24th CD against Dem Michael Arcuri.
"People around here are anxious and concerned not just about the national state of affairs, but also their personal state of affairs. As a Republican candidate, the challenge is to show you have even a clue about what their lives are like."
Jim Gerlach in suburban Philadelphia knows it too.
When it comes to President Bush and the Republican Congress, Rep. Jim Gerlach says voters in his suburban Philadelphia district are in a "sour mood."
In 1994, the most common ad Republicans ran was morphing a Democratic member of Congress into Bill Clinton. Now, while I'm not so sure that simply reversing that tactic will work as well across the country, I'm fairly certain that the modern equivilent will work in New England and in the Mid-Atlantic.
Here in Pennsylvania's 6th District, Democratic candidate Lois Murphy is a case study in how her party is trying to make campaigns about an unpopular Bush and Congress. On Tuesday, she traveled to the banks of Schuylkill River to rail against the "Bush energy bill," which she blamed for high gas costs and a dirtier environment.Standing on a boat landing at a recent campaign event, she planted her shoe in a gob of melted gum. But she quickly went on to stick Gerlach with something the candidate's internal polls suggest is worse -- alleging the incumbent "has been a reliable vote for the Bush administration . . . and not stood up for the 6th District."
Gerlach knows how well liked Bush is in his district and is running away as fast as he humanly can from Mr. 28%.
That's why when it comes to his reelection, the two-term incumbent says "the name of the game" is to convince those same voters that he can be independent of his own party. He has turned his standard line about Bush -- "When I think he's wrong, I let him know" -- into a virtual campaign slogan, repeated in interviews and TV ads.
The sense is setting in that the Northeast, particularly Upstate NY, Eastern PA, and Connecticut, will probably be the GOP's Waterloo. They're all mentioned at least once in the article. In particular, the Hotline's Chuck Todd has labeled Eastern Pennsylvania as "the killing fields of this election". But it gets worse for our elephant friends.
The Northeast article was published last Monday. On Wednesday, David Broder told a very similar similar story, only this time it was about the collapse of the Republican Party in the Midwest, something I had caught onto a few weeks earlier.
Half of Broder's piece is a living obituary for the corrupt beyond belief, scandal plagued Ohio GOP.
When the Columbus Dispatch's respected poll recently reported that Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was trailing Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland by 20 points in the race for governor of Ohio, there was dismay but no shock among his fellow Republicans. Those I interviewed during a recent visit here said they had seen it coming for a long time.
The fact that Ken Blackwell is losing is not too terribly surprising, he is after all, nucking futs. From what I've heard, Ohioans see Strickland less as a Democrat and more as their deliverance to salvation from a Ken Blackwell governorship. However, even someone of Blackwell's level of crazy shouldn't be that far behind-and its not just Ken Blackwell either, its their whole slate.
I had dinner one night with a group of Ohio Republicans, all with many years of experience in state politics and none directly engaged in this year's gubernatorial race. One of them said, "I'm afraid this could be another 1982," a year when recession pushed unemployment to 15 percent and cost the Republicans the governorship. Another said, "I'd settle right now for another 1982. I'm afraid it will be another 1974," the year of the Watergate election, when Democrats swept everything in sight.
Even Broder cannot dismiss this phenomenon as merely localized in Ohio. Its bad in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and unbelievably even Oklahoma.
A leading Minnesota Republican told me that polls there show "the bottom has dropped out" of Rep. Mark Kennedy's challenge to Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic candidate for an open Democratic Senate seat. Kennedy has company among the corps of Republican congressmen who thought this would be a good year to move up. In Wisconsin, Rep. Mark Green is lagging slightly behind Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. In Oklahoma, Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr. is far worse off in his challenge to Democratic Gov. Brad Henry. And in Iowa, Rep. Jim Nussle, the strong early favorite to capture the open governorship from the Democrats, now finds himself in a real battle with Democrat Chet Culver.
The best quote in either story comes from a supposedly anonymous GOP governor-in reality Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty who is trying desperately to distance himself from the disaster known as the GOP Congress.
"What has this Congress done that anyone should applaud?" he asked scornfully. "Nothing on immigration, nothing on health care, nothing on energy -- and nothing on the war. They deserve a good kick in the pants, and that's what they're going to get."
Couldn't have said it better myself, Timmy.
Its not just these two regions either. There are a raft of hot top tier congressional races in the Mountain West, which are looking bad for the GOP. Even more telling is how Webb is surging in Virginia and Ford has taken the lead in Tennessee. That's got to be terrifying for the GOP, because it means that we're at the gates of their last true electoral redoubt-the South. Its 1994 all over again. Things have come full circle.