Posted on 10/26/2005 3:36:43 PM PDT by aceintx
Warning Signs Frank Luntz says Republicans could be in danger in 2006. by Fred Barnes 10/26/2005 12:00:00 AM
IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN and already worried about your party's prospects in 2006, pollster Frank Luntz, a Republican himself, has a message for you: It's worse than you think.
Luntz, who worked with Republicans in 1994 to draft the Contract With America and win a realigning election, said political conditions are as bad or worse now--only this time for Republicans, not Democrats. Republicans won 52 House seats in 1994 and have held the House since then. In 2006, he said, Republican control of the House--currently 232 seats to 203 seats--is "in jeopardy." Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats to take over.
"Republicans have a whole year to get their act together," Luntz said, though they've shown no signs of doing so. "As angry and p-----off as we were about politics [in 1994], I think it's worse today," according to Luntz, who spoke yesterday at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "The saving grace for the Republican party is Nancy Pelosi." The House Democratic leader, he said, "is being handed the perfect political storm on a plate," but she's failing to take advantage.
Luntz said there were six components of the Republican triumph in 1994: change, economic anxiety, fear, anger, betrayal, and the prominence of national issues. All of these should be working today for Democrats, he said, and could fuel a Democratic landslide in 2006.
In focus groups, Luntz measures the desire for change by asking voters if they are "basically satisfied" or think the country is on the wrong track,
causing them to prefer "a different approach." Luntz said more voters today say wrong track than he's seen "in a long time." Other Republican strategists, such as White House adviser Karl Rove, regard the right track, wrong track result in polls as politically meaningless.
Because of high economic anxiety, Luntz said, Democrat John Kerry should have won Ohio last year and captured the presidency from George W. Bush. This component has a better chance of helping Democrats in House races, he said, if only because voters may be willing to cast a protest vote against Republicans. Protest votes are uncommon in presidential races, he said. As for fear about personal and national security, it has been spurred by terrorism and the war in Iraq, Luntz said, and it, too, is now a negative factor for Republicans.
Luntz said the anger of voters is "palpable, emotional, intense." And Republican voters, the conservative ones anyway, feel betrayed by wasteful spending in Washington and Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.
In 1994, the election was nationalized over crime, guns, healthcare, taxes, and a few other issues. Now, Luntz suggested, national issues are paramount, but that doesn't automatically mean they still will be in November 2006. Republican House members, he said, want local issues to prevail next year.
Luntz said an examination today of each of the 435 House districts doesn't indicate a Democratic breakthrough in 2006, but the same was true for Republicans in 1994. If House races are nationalized, however, that may produce "a wave" that jeopardizes all Republican incumbents less than five percentage points ahead in polls. For Democrats to gain control of the House, "you need a wave."
Voters have not been galvanized by scandals in Washington, but they are alarmed about illegal immigration, Luntz said. The president's insistence on creating a "guest worker" program to employ illegals puts him "on the wrong side of the solution." When he raises illegal immigration in focus groups of 30 people, Luntz said, "you can't shut people up."
Bush suffered from Hurricane Katrina, Luntz said, in a fundamental way. Before Katrina, the president was seen as "a great leader in terms of [handling] a great crisis. In 2004, when push came to shove, we trusted him. Katrina threw that into doubt."
The good news for Republicans goes beyond Pelosi, the mention of whose name prompts groans from focus groups. Democrats are too negative, don't have an agenda, and lack a national leader. "As pathetic as Republicans are, Democrats are worse," Luntz said.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
A lot of the dissatisfaction has nothing to do with Roe vs, Wade. Gun owners come in all stripes, and many just don't care about the abortion issue. At least it is not the driving force guiding them to the polls.
Roberts and Miers may be okay when it comes to the 2nd Amendment, but after being Soutered in the past, they are not about to be happy about pigs in a poke. We have worked too hard and too long to simply TRUST that a pick will gun owner friendly.
The Circuit Courts are split. The Circus Court in California says the 2nd is a collective right, while the New Orleans based court has come down on the individual right side of the argument. Eventually, the Supreme Court will have to take a stand.
Many gun owners are one issue voters, just like many pro-lifers, and feel like they may have been sold out. Granted, with the exception of Bush saying he was for the renewal of the AWB, he has been a friend of gun owners.
The GOP had Newt in '04, one the most brilliant political strategists ever, who do the democrats have that is like that?
2). The piece itself doesn't mention her, doesn't mention her nomination, and, doesn't mention the uproar which the nomination has caused."
You know I read the entire article and that didn't occur to me although you are obviously correct.
And Miers per se is not the greatest transgression. She might even be a better roll of the dice than John Roberts.
But the reason she leaps to the front of the discussion and the title is because this nomination is the last straw for a number of people. She and Roberts are so clearly not "justices like Thomas and Scalia", that she becomes the catalyst for the revolution.
And the reason the Republicans are not going to recover is that at this point, it will take an obvious effective change of direction with a strong Conservative leader in order to recover. If the Senate had the sense to embrace Coburn's effort to trim down the Pork Bill; that might have been such an event. But the Republican Senate is a joke, like the Republican president.
So you better start to love Nancy because she is about to become Speaker, however lousy a political leader she may be.
If you go back to the 2000 election, Bush ran as a uniter not a divider and I believe his heart was in the right place and was exactly what this country needed. But alas, decent people rarely understand the depravity of some and the last thing the Dems were going to allow was for this President to unite this country and allow healing. He reached across that aisle consistently, to the likes of Teddy Kennedy who spit on him, remember?
That just about sums it for a lot of us. I don't care whose idiots they are, they're idiots.
I voted Bush 2000/2004. Contributed $200-$400 every election cycle since 1996.
Next year, I'm contributing $0. I might send back a fund raising letter with post paid by RNC with a brick tied to it.
I'm sitting home and watching it all hit the fan.
I've had enough.
and you can be assured they will NEVER take our guns away either. It is a right wing vote getter, just as Roe V Wade is a left wing vote getter. People don't understand intricate political issues but they do understand guns and babies, so the intellectuals on both sides keep throwing them their bones.
"Bush won in 2000 because of BUBBA/GORE not because of any genius on his part"
True, and that is because Gore showed HIS vicious heart in the campaign which allowed Bush to win on the uniter premise. Same with Kerry. I believe that Bush has been a good leader in bad times, very bad times and has had more on his plate than any President ever.
I expect this to happen, and it will be a combination of lies from the left and carping from the right.
We may be agreeing. I don't know.
If gun owners get Soutered, what was the point of working their butts off for decades (many of them) to elect Republicans? Fact is, they won't keep doing it in the future.
The Libs are just biding their time. They WILL be back on the gun grabbing bandwagon when the time is right. It's just their nature. Just like a scorpion's is to sting.
If we get Soutered, many gun owners, including myself, will vote third party or stay at home. As bad as it sounds, it wouldn't matter if it causes Hillary to be elected. The American people could use a wake up call. Better to be boiled in oil and jump out of the pot, than to die a death from a thousand cuts. At least that seems to be the thinking among many.
Then this country is doomed.
America has "Jumped the Shark"...we got nutjobs in the DNC saying anything hateful they want and getting away with it...Hillary is running for Pres and at this rate will get it...her filthy 'husband' is gonna think HE'S in charge again and the lamestream media is in the back pocket of the dang blasted left wing nuts. Cindy Sheehan, Rangle, Jackson, Boxer, Schumer, every stinking one of them keep lying and lying and nobody can stop them.
It's time to clean out the rotten vegetable drawer and fumigate!! I just hope we can do it.
Outstanding, best reply I've read in a long time.
LL
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