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April 21, 2006

Too Little Too Late?

When I'm reading this sort of stuff From Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, you know there are problems in the GOP

Remember that cheesy ad for some TV product back in the day that featured an elderly woman saying, “Help--I've fallen and I can't get up”? Well, that's the Bush White House and the national GOP at the moment. The latest Gallup poll has Bush's approval rating at 36%, and congressional approval at 23%. The satisfied-with-the-way-things-are-going-in-the-U.S. number is at 27%. I hate to say it but the comparison that Dick Morris makes today between Bush and Carter--just in terms of sheer listlessness and a foreign event draining all of a president's strength--has occurred to me more than once recently. What is most disturbing is that as their boat heads steadily toward a disastrous trip over the falls, neither Bush nor the GOP seems to feel any urgency about changing direction, nor seem to have any good ideas about how to do it if they wanted to. (Not that my ideas, or Morris'--drug testing in schools???--are that great either.)

"No urgency" Yup, that about sums it up.

A few recent changes at the White House won't change anything. A new press secretary and job for Carl Rove is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

This critique of the Bush Administration, however, should not please liberals too much, for I wish they would be more, not less, conservative. I sounded off about this entire issuelast week. It's not foreign policy that we conservatives are so concerned about, but it's the domestic stuff that gets us going.

Can anything be done, or is it too late?

The staff of NRO thought the situation serious enough that they editorialized on it yesterday. Money quotes

Congress is not going to be in session for many more days this year. There is not much time for congressional Republicans to promote popular legislation as a way of improving their standing — even if one assumed, contrary to fact, that they could agree on what legislation that would be. Their fate is therefore tied to the president’s. If the election is held with Bush holding a 35 percent approval rating, they will lose the House. If Bush rises to 45 percent by the fall, they will do fine. ...

Even if they recover some spirit and energy, Republicans are likely to lose seats this fall. But they have some influence over whether this election is a setback or a rout. It is up to them how they wish to use it.

The GOP blew it's chance on illegal immigration, dealing yet another blow to it's base. They also largely blew it on lobbying reform. They've spent like drunken sailors for the past 6 years. They passed, and President Bush signed, that stupid McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill, won't do anything about reducing abortions or ending race and sex quotas (er, "diversity"). On and on.

The only thing saving them is that the Democrats are worse on all of the above issues. They've got no plan, and their leadership is beholden to the Cindy Sheehan left, epitomized by Moveon.org and the Daily Kos.

Can the GOP pull themselves up? The recent changes at the White House are encouraging, as was the victory of John Boehner as majority leader in the House. On the other hand, it all may be too little too late.

The other thing that might save the GOP is what Michael Barone calls "hypothis two". His take is that a reduced turnout by the GOP base might not make that much difference.

Hypothesis Two is one I developed myself, and it's based only on the elections of the last 10 years. In the five House elections from 1996 to 2004, there has been very little variation in the popular vote percentages for both parties. The Republican percentage of the popular vote for the House has fluctuated between 49 and 51 percent, the Democratic percentage between 46 and 48.5 percent.

Barone is a pretty astute observer of politics, and is a veritable walking encyclopaedia of information. We on the right had better hope he's right this time.

Gloom and Doom

Over at National Review's The Corner blog, Jonah Goldberg was all Gloom

I had lunch with another prominent Republican. I asked him if he could remember a time when Republicans were more dispirited. He shrugged and said, "It really is pretty bleak, isn't it." Or words to that effect.


While Ramesh Ponnuru is all Doom

I spoke to a very influential Republican strategist earlier this week, and asked him what he thought the party should do to fix the mess it's in. His answer: "I don't think it's fixable." Republicans are only now as alarmed as they should have been six months ago, when they might have been able to put together an agenda to improve their standing. Now there are too few legislative days left before the election to do that--and it makes more sense for congressmen to spend time campaigning in their districts than for them to increase the number of days in session.

He blames both the White House ("They’ve known since last September that they needed to put together an agenda and they have failed to do so. Their State of the Union gave us nothing to work on in an election year.") and the Congress ("People believe that all politics is local and you can look at it race by race [and see a good outcome]. That’s all horse----."). "So I'm not Mr. Happy, you can say."

No, I'm not giving up. But the first step to recovery is realizing we have a problem.

"Houston...."

Posted by Tom at April 21, 2006 8:06 AM