The GOP's Election Day Schizophrenia

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-02/the-gops-election-day-schizophrenia/full/

The GOP's Election Day Schizophrenia
by Benjamin Sarlin

Republicans will test their strength in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York today. But will the party’s conservative base or the alienated independents prevail?


It’s been a year since the Republican Party was blown out in the 2008 election. On Tuesday, voters will go to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey to choose governors—the first major electoral reality-check since the Obama era began. While the party out of power traditionally makes gains in off-year and midterm elections, the GOP is facing an unusual set of contradictory signals as its rank and file head for the voting booth. How the contradictions are resolved Tuesday may speak volumes about Republicans’ chances for making major gains next year—and even reclaiming the White House in 2012.

On one hand, the GOP’s conservative base is enthusiastic and organized, leading significant protests against the Obama agenda within his first three months and helping to push his approval rating down from the high 60s after his inauguration to an average of about 50 percent today. With top flight Senate candidates entering races in Democratic strongholds like Illinois and Delaware in 2010 and some Republicans even predicting a takeover of the House, what once looked like a disastrous election cycle is an increasing source of excitement for conservatives.

The GOP is “off death row, but it’s still in solitary confinement,” says former Bush strategist Mark McKinnon.

But the GOP’s ability to capitalize on Obama’s vulnerabilities is constrained by the fact that Republicans have managed to become even less popular than they were under President George W. Bush. The party's favorability rating is at its lowest point in the most recent CNN/Opinion Research poll since the Clinton impeachment, with 36 percent of voters expressing positive opinions and 54 percent negative, versus 53 percent positive and 41 percent negative for the Democrats. In an even more historic drop, an anemic 20 percent of American voters identified as Republicans in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, the lowest percentage since 1983. The same poll showed Democrats leading 51 percent to 39 percent in a generic congressional ballot, numbers on par with Democratic blowouts in 2006 and 2008 and in line with a broader trend in the polls toward House Democrats after a brief dip over the summer.

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Disadvantages

Purging Moderates Doesn’t Work…
…in the Long Run.

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It’s Hard to Love the Party of ‘No’

Opposition to Obama has been the glue that's held the party together over the last year, but that strategy is not without its own risks as the president remains generally popular and Democrats have hammered the GOP as the “party of no.” One recent poll by Public Policy Poling found that the president has won over twice as many people who voted against him as he has lost people who voted for him. Popular perception that Republicans are not making a good-faith effort at bipartisanship, especially after no House Republicans voted for the president's stimulus plan in February, could also get him off the hook for pushing through partisan legislation, as the health-care bill is expected to be in the end.

McKinnon cautioned that obstructionism could only win back so many seats for the opposition.

“It's not enough to just be the party out of power and get default support when the party in power doesn't deliver. In order to regain majority status, Republicans can't just be the party of 'no', but need to a party with plan and vision for the future.”