In terms of the political strategy they are now pursuing, the national Republican Party can accurately be labeled clueless: blind, shrill opposition to a president with deep personal popularity, reliance on a dated government-is-the-enemy philosophy that voters have roundly rejected as deregulatory excesses have sunk the economy, and unblinking and highly public fealty to a bombastic talk show host who is wildly unpopular with voters outside of the G.O.P.’s conservative base.
This is clearly not the formula for a lasting revival of Republican dominance, but it’s also possible that – completely and totally in spite of its strategy – the G.O.P. could be in for a wave of good news at the polls over the next two years. This possibility is rooted in the electorate’s history of rallying behind the opposition party – almost no matter what its public posture – when it grows restless with the governing party, along with specific factors that favor the G.O.P. in some of the marquee races on tap for 2009 and 2010.
Start with the next high-profile election on the docket, the special election at the end of this month to fill Kirsten Gillibrand’s old House seat in New York’s 20th District. There are other special elections for House seats taking place around the country (a primary in Illinois’ overwhelmingly Democratic 5th District, which Rahm Emanuel represented before joining the Obama administration, was held earlier this week), but this is the only one playing out in a politically competitive district, so the national media will treat it as an early referendum on Obama’s presidency – and the G.O.P.’s rehab efforts.
The problem for Democrats is that they’re probably going to lose, since the district, while winnable for them under the right set of circumstances, simply has too many Republican-leaning voters. Gillibrand was able to break through in 2006 thanks to the prevalence of anti-Bush and anti-G.O.P. Congress sentiment, and a similar mood – plus the benefits of incumbency – allowed her to score a second term in 2008.
But now Bush is gone and the G.O.P. has been relegated to an afterthought in Washington. Not surprisingly, there’s already a poll that has Republican Jim Tedisco, the Assembly minority leader, 12 points ahead of the Democratic nominee, venture capitalist Scott Murphy. In the first closely watched election of the Obama era, the Republicans are likely to win, and the posture of their national party will have nothing to do with it (although the resources the national G.O.P. is pouring in will be felt).
