Right up until 2006, the momentum was on the Republican side. In each of the three previous elections, more and more people came out to vote for Bush. The first midterm election was a remarkable Republican victory.
Much of that was due to grass roots get-out-the-vote organizations. Not one of the candidates NARAL supported in 2002 won, and every one of the candidates that Emily’s List supported won.
Frankly, all of that fell apart in 2006, and the chief reason was growing disillusionment with the Republicans in congress and with the president. It was lose-lose, because the party lost and many of those same organizations started to bleed financial support, as new members pulled back, disillusioned by the failure of that long effort.
Now, I think everyone is pulling himself together again, but the earlier confidence is pretty much gone. We need to do some serious rebuilding, we need to get the various parts of the coalition working together again, and we need—somehow or other—to select a strong candidate whom everyone can support.
I think the best available candidate to do that is Fred Thompson, but I’m not at all sure whether the party understands that at this moment. This could easily go either way.
Fred is the unity candidate. Libertarians, Federalists and, begrudgingly Socons can support this guy.
He's NOT the Socon's ideal candidate...but he's close enuff, won't rupture the party and he can win.
There is a symbiotic relationship between RINOs and Democrats. The Democrats can't afford to have RINOs do too badly, while RINOs can't afford to have conservatives do too well. I would expect that the RINOs would be perfectly happy to have the GOP shattered into a million pieces, because their piece would be protected by the Democrats while their opponents were scattered to the winds.