Posted on 09/29/2007 4:27:18 PM PDT by CheyennePress
WASHINGTON - It is gallows humor time for Republicans in Congress, where one lawmaker jokes that "there's talk about us going the way of the Whigs," the 19th century political party long extinct.
"That's not going to happen," Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., hastens to add, although a little more than a year before the 2008 election, the major leading political indicators still point downward for a party abruptly turned out of power in 2006.
Fundraising for Republican campaign organizations lags. That is strikingly so in the House, where the party committee spent more than it raised in each of the past two months, reported only $1.6 million in the bank at the end of August and a debt of nearly $4 million.
Democrats reported $22.1 million in the bank and a debt of slightly more than $3 million.
Candidate recruitment has been uneven, particularly in the Senate, where Republicans must defend 22 of the 34 seats on the ballot next year. Democrats boast top-tier challengers for GOP-held seats in Colorado, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon.
Republicans have yet to put forward a prominent challenger for any Democratic-held seat, although an announcement is expected soon in Louisiana.
Additionally, nine Republicans in the House and three in the Senate have announced plans to retire. Some of those leaving are in midcareer, when a departure often signals pessimism about the prospects for regaining the majority. Democratic retirements total two to date — both are House members who are running for the Senate.
"The Democrats will continue to be the majority party in the House and Senate and Hillary Clinton will make history by being the first woman president" in 2008, predicts Rep. Ray LaHood, one of three Illinois Republicans to announce his retirement so far.
What makes LaHood's prediction stand out is his willingness to say it publicly.
Numerous other Republican lawmakers, aides and strategists said Democrats appear headed for two more years in power in Congress, but they declined to say so on the record.
Despite their difficulties, Republicans are not deep in the minority. A switch of 16 seats would give them control of the House next year; a change of one or two seats could deliver the Senate.
Despite the GOP's worst defeat since the Watergate era of the 1970s, Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma said recently, "We have more seats than Ronald Reagan had on his best day."
He added that Republicans have a better chance of winning a House majority in 2008 than they do of capturing the Senate or the White House. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, chairman of the GOP senatorial committee, offered no response.
But Cole's job performance as head of the House GOP political arm is under internal challenge. In a recent private leadership meeting, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, sought the dismissal of the group's two top campaign aides, saying the committee lacked aggressiveness.
Cole refused and said he would quit first before firing the staff. Boehner, the party leader, backed down, at least temporarily, but may yet seek to install a senior aide at the committee. The officials who discussed the events did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.
After a long turn in power in Congress, LaHood and other Republicans say the change in fortunes is partly the result of historical cycles. "The American people like a change," he said.
At the same time, President Bush's approval is stuck in the mid-30s and the Iraq war remains unpopular with the public.
Nor have the ethics woes that plagued the party in last year's elections abated. Corruption investigations swirl around Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and California Rep. John Doolittle. To the particular distress of party leaders, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct last summer in an airport men's room sex sting operation and has yet to make good on an earlier pledge to resign.
Stevens and Doolittle deny all wrongdoing, as does Craig, who has asked a Minnesota judge to permit him to withdraw his guilty plea.
Polls, too, chart the decline of the Republicans.
A recent Gallup poll reported that 59 percent of those surveyed have an unfavorable impression of the Republican Party. By a margin of 47-42 percent, they said Democrats will do a better job of protecting against terrorism and military threats. Asked which party would better maintain prosperity, the majority preferred the Democrats, 54-34.
Despite their woes, numerous Republicans say they may have weathered the worst of it.
The race for the 2008 presidential nomination may sort itself out as early as February, they say, giving the party a new face months before the elections.
"Whoever it is, it won't be George W. Bush," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. "I deeply admire the president, but many Americans have a somewhat unmovable impression of the president at this point," he added.
Others predict Clinton will win her party's nomination for the White House and say her polarizing effect on the voters will benefit GOP candidates in swing areas currently held by Democrats.
"A Clinton candidacy would help energize Republicans to go out and vote in down-ballot races," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster working in House and Senate campaigns. "It will help the Republican case for divided government."
Pence also said the military situation in Iraq is improving, and that a looming spending struggle between Bush and the Democrats should help reassure conservative voters who have become disaffected.
But efforts to draw clear distinctions with the Democrats can cut both ways.
Senate Republicans from New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon and Minnesota, who face particularly tough races in 2008, all voted in recent days for a children's health care bill that Bush has pledged to veto.
"I just do not understand his decision, and I think it would be terrible," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. She faces a challenge from Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine.
>>>By a margin of 47-42 percent, they said Democrats will do a better job of protecting against terrorism and military threats.<<<
How? I don't think the Democrats are ever asked that question. But the perception is there.
>>>"The Democrats will continue to be the majority party in the House and Senate and Hillary Clinton will make history by being the first woman president" in 2008, predicts Rep. Ray LaHood, one of three Illinois Republicans to announce his retirement so far.<<<
Shooting ourselves in the foot and playing right into the hands of the media...again.
>>>Fundraising for Republican campaign organizations lags. That is strikingly so in the House, where the party committee spent more than it raised in each of the past two months, reported only $1.6 million in the bank at the end of August and a debt of nearly $4 million. Democrats reported $22.1 million in the bank and a debt of slightly more than $3 million.<<<
We used to have a giant advantage in the fund-raising department. Times they are a changing... We put ourselves in this position legislatively.
>>>Senate Republicans from New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon and Minnesota, who face particularly tough races in 2008, all voted in recent days for a children's health care bill that Bush has pledged to veto. "I just do not understand his decision, and I think it would be terrible," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. She faces a challenge from Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine.<<<
I agree. Bush chose the wrong item to pick a fight with the Democrats over. Denying poor children of healthcare? I don't care if it is pork, Republicans have a major credibility issue when it comes to spending and cracking down on healthcare for kids is about as dumb a place to start with amending that as I can think of.
If you're feeling feisty, go put a correction on the star total on the bottom of the page. It's clocking in at 4 out of 5 stars. Apparently Yahoo's readers enjoy the news.
At least we are avoiding the trap of peaking too soon!
It's not about denying poor children health care. It's about nationalizing health care for middle and upper middle class children as well.
I certainly do not believe that this is the case and it is more like 60% to 40% in favor of Republicans when it comes to this issue.
I would think the leader indicators point down for the Dhimmis — after all they control Congress and Conress has an approval rating below the basement level and falling! Isn’t it down to 12 percent?
I would think the leader indicators point down for the Dhimmis — after all they control Congress and Congress has an approval rating below the basement level and falling! Isn’t it down to 12 percent?
Know your enemy.
Hint: it’s not the Democrats.
It’s all Bush’s fault..as the Move On crowd will
be celebrating for the next 4 years...JK
David Espo has quite a pedigree on the Search function. He resembles Halley’s comet, a dirty iceball that keeps circling back, except he’s more like those ice chunks that get flushed out of airplanes.
When the Republicans go out and talk about how Democrats want to give Government Health Care to the children of families making $82,000 a year until age 25, it complete demolishes all the propaganda Democrats ran on in 2006 about being fiscally responsible.
The Democrats are in a complete indefensible position on spending, on Congressional Reform on taxes and on Iraq.
There are reason the latest Gallup poll gives the Democrat Congress an 11% approval rating.
The Democrat Party press is whistling past the grave yard here. They KNOW given Hillary’s unfavorable ratings. PLUS the 58 seats they have to defend in districts that went 51% or more for Bush is NOT going to be an easy task.
They trash talk like this because they know a bunch of supposed “conservatives” will immediately don sack cloth and ashes do everything they can to depress Republican campaign efforts.
vaudine
11 percent which is an all time historical low.
If we get a strong conservative as the Presidential nominee, maybe he can slap some sense into them, then bring them along on his coattails.
I believe there is a very strong possibility President Bush will authorize a pre-emptive strike on Iran next year. When that happens, the American people will rally around their president and his party. That will make a Big Difference in the 2008 election.
Know it all the fault of moron “conservatives” who rush around the net continually whining because our side isn’t perfect instead of EVER attacking the Left ON ANY THING.
Agree 100%.
You’re such a sucker.
Eligible children under the proposal include those at 300-400% of the poverty level.
When the Republicans quit acting like “liberal-lite”, they’ll begin to raise funds again. As long as they continue to cow-tow to liberal causes like government-funded health care, junk science, amnesty to illegals, and spying on the general populace, they won’t get the support of the citizenry. I’m holding out for the small-government, unobtrusive, low-tax, constitution-abiding government that should represent the Republican party.
If anything, it’s worse. Read The New York Times, which most Americans consider the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth. Conservatism is a thoroughly discredited ideology. Republicans have major ethical troubles; Democrats have already certified the most ethical Congress in history and haven’t had a scandal in decades. The Distinguished Junior Senator to the Great State of New York, Her Most Extremely Eternally Exalted Elite Eminent Thighness Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Next President of the United States of America and may win 400 or 500 or more electoral votes. The American people as voiced through CBS, ABC, NBC, Reuters, MSNBC, and numerous other news outlets have rejected the Republican Party, folks.
Our goal as the Republican Party now is to try to cultivate candidates for local and state races where it is not terminally impolitic to do so. We must purge the party constantly of every unethical character and operate strictly within the standards and expectations that the Democrats demand of us, maintaining the unspoken rule that the rules never apply to them. When our operatives make public pronouncements, they cannot offend any Liberal or Democrat, or otherwise seem inappropriate in the slightest even when taken from context of the implications of the thought are discerned by Democrats.
Our nation is doomed to two or three quadrennia under the wonders of the Clinton political machine. If we stealthily adopt the vocabulary of the American people as expressed through their enemies within the United States, then perhaps we can muster the political wherewithal to recapture a few House or Senate seats or even the Presidency in 2020 or 2024. If America still exists then, albeit as a severely destitute, dispirited, and dispossessed people doomed to draconian economic constraints and completely confiscatory expropriation rates. Perhaps even then, if we are lucky, we yet might earn a few thousand dollars a year through our terrible toils and keep a few pennies on each dollar to expend on a starvation diet in a price-inflated depressed economy as we occupy barren caves heated only through the bodies of our compatriots.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.