Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

The Republican loss in the special election for Louisiana's Sixth Congressional District last Saturday should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.

The facts are clear and compelling.

Saturday's loss was in a district that President Bush carried by 19 percentage points in 2004 and that the Republicans have held since 1975.

This defeat follows on the loss of Speaker Hastert's seat in Illinois. That seat had been held by a Republican for 76 years with the single exception of the 1974 Watergate election when the Democrats held it for one term. That same seat had been carried by President Bush 55-44% in 2004.

These two special elections validate a national polling pattern that is bad news for Republicans. According to a New York Times/CBS Poll, Americans disapprove of the President's job performance by 63 to 28 (and he has been below 40% job approval since December 2006, the longest such period for any president in the history of polling).

A separate New York Times/CBS Poll shows that a full 81 percent of Americans believe the economy is on the wrong track.

The current generic ballot for Congress according to the NY Times/CBS poll is 50 to 32 in favor of the Democrats. That is an 18-point margin, reminiscent of the depths of the Watergate disaster.

Senator McCain is currently running ahead of the Republican congressional ballot by about 16 percentage points. But there are two reasons that this extraordinary personal achievement should not comfort congressional Republicans.

First, McCain's lead is a sign of the gap between the McCain brand of independence and the GOP brand. No regular Republican would be tying or slightly beating the Democratic candidates in this atmosphere. It is a sign of how much McCain is a non-traditional Republican that he is sustaining his personal popularity despite his party's collapse.

Second, there is a grave danger for the McCain campaign that if the generic ballot stays at only 32 % for the GOP it will ultimately outweigh McCain's personal appeal and drag his candidacy into defeat.

The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.

This model has already been tested with disastrous results.

In 2006, there were six incumbent Republican Senators who had plenty of money, the advantage of incumbency, and traditionally successful consultants.

But the voters in all six states had adopted a simple position: "Not you." No matter what the GOP Senators attacked their opponents with, the voters shrugged off the attacks and returned to, "Not you." ...

A February Washington Post poll shows that Republicans have lost the advantage to the Democrats on which party can handle an issue better -- on every single topic.

Americans now believe that Democrats can handle the deficit better (52 to 31), taxes better (48 to 40) and even terrorism better (44 to 37).

This is a catastrophic collapse of trust in Republicans built up over three generations on the deficit, two generations on taxes, and two generations on national security.

1. A summertime repeal of the federal gas tax, paid for by radical cuts in discretionary (read non-Social Security, non-Medicare) spending. In other words, kill all the local projects that inject cash and jobs into the Districts of these House members, and then ask those same members to go home, sans "the bacon" and ask for votes based on a gas tax cut that nets their constituents $30 bucks for the entire summer ... did I say Newt was one of the smarter ones...?
   
   
2. Putting the oil headed for the Stratetic Petroleum Reserve onto the open market, which Netw claims would lower gas prices 5 to 6 cents a gallon. Unfortuately, it would also deplete America's emergency reserves of ... petroleum ... and did I mention gas has gone up about three times Newt's proposed savings in the last month?
   
   
3. Announcing a one-year moratorium on earmarks (See bacon notes on #1...)
   
   
4. This one is weird, unless you understand "conservatives": Neutering the Census Bureau and turning their function over to "Internet savvy" private companies. So-called conservatives have never believed in demography, because it allows Democrats to figure out who's being discriminated against on the basis of race. The Census also turns up inconvenient numbers, like estimates of the growing number of Hispanics, which could hurt efforts to sell a borderless North American free trade blob to white, rural Americans.
   
   
5. Implement a "space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system." Call it Reagan's Star Wars fantasy meets private enterprise. Here, Newt appears to want to take advantage of the Reagan-era plan to weaponize space by twisting that program to what probably was its ultimate goal anyway: making some big, Republican-leaning corporation even richer than they are today. Meanwhile, the safety of air travel will be subordinated to the profit motive, and oversight? Who needs it!
   
   
6. Declare that English is the "official language of government." Throwing a biscuit to the Lou Dobbs crowd, which has soured on the GOP. Maybe if they do this, they'll forget about that border fence... Meanwhile, the already blanched GOP loses whatever brown voters they might have had out West. So much for putting California in play.
   
   
7. "Protect the workers right to a secret ballot." This one's about pure union-busting, another GOP technique to wrestle away Democratic voters without actually offering attractive policies.
   
   
8. and finally, "remind Americans that judges matter." Sounds vague, but Newt wants the House to begin trying to ram through Bush's right wing judges, and mount a national scare campaign to convince unhappy right wingers that the "activists on the bench" are coming to their trailers to give their daughters abortions and take their guns, which is clearly a much more pressing matter than that job they can't find, those outrageous gas prices or the foreclosure notice in the mailbox.

Labels: 2008 election, conservatives, Newt Gingrich, Republicans