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Are The Republicans Damaged Goods ?
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| Parent(s) |
Party
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| Contributor | Servo |
| Last Edited | Servo Jan 13, 2007 11:02pm |
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| Category | Perspective |
| News Date | Sunday, January 14, 2007 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | James Joyner writes about an upcoming column by Charlie Cook in the National Journal where he says this:
“Republican campaign consultants have been publicly expressing a great deal of concern that the ‘GOP brand’ has been damaged, or at least tarnished. For top strategists to be so candid about their party’s problems is fairly unusual, and it reflects just how urgent they consider the party’s need to redefine itself as it prepares for the 2008 campaign.”
GOP pollster Glen Bolger explains: “We’re still good on taxes and values, but have big problems on ‘less spending’ and ‘less government,’ and there are cracks in the wall of our strong national security fortress. The other tarnish is that for a long time, Democrats were the party of the professional politicians, while Republicans came to Washington to fix the mess and go home. The scandals and the way Republicans ran the House mean that we have been more interested in power than in doing what is right — which means we are no different than that which we replaced in 1994.”
This, I think, is the central problem that Republicans had in 2006 and will continue to have well into the 2008 election cycle absent events in the news that change the public’s focus. Thanks largely to the leadership from the White House, as well as the lackluster Congressional leadership they’ve been dealt over the past six years or so, the Republicans are perceived as not really standing for anything anymore. Less government Less Government ? Don’t tell George Bush that.
Even the one issue that used to be golden for the GOP, national security, has seen the parties’ image damaged thanks largely to what the public believes to be a completely mishandled war that was fought for the reasons that later turned out to be completely, totally wrong. |
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