GOP: FACING A "COMING CATACLYSM"

Here are a few excerpts from a very interesting cover story from the National Review ... "The Coming Cataclysm: Why the GOP Faces One and How to Avoid It, written by Ramesh Ponnuru and Richard Lowry.

The plain truth is that the party faces a cataclysm, a rout that would give Democrats control of the White House and enhanced majorities in the House and the Senate. That defeat would, in turn, guarantee the confirmation of a couple of young, liberal Supreme Court nominees, putting the goal of moving the Court in a more constitutionalist direction out of reach for another generation.

It would probably also mean a national health-insurance program that would irrevocably expand government involvement in the economy and American life, and itself make voters less likely to turn toward conservatism in the future.

The issue terrain isn't any better. The great Republican triad of welfare, crime and taxes is worn out. Welfare reform and the dramatic decline of crime in the 1990s ended the first two as Republican "wedge issues" [reader wonders if the authors believe the former is responsible for the latter ... ], and there is little demand for more tax cuts after Bush repeatedly cut them.

It's almost impossible to exaggerate the Democratic advantage on domestic issues: If it's an issue, they lead. According to Rasmussen, they lead as the party that people trust more to handle health care by 32 points, Social Security by 16 points, education by 13 points, and government ethics by 8 points. The Democratic lead extends even into traditional Republican territory. In a July Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Democrats had a 25-point advantage over the GOP on cutting deficits, 16 points on controlling spending, 15 points on dealing with the economy, and 9 points on taxes. [cognitive dissonance afflicts the reader: these things are "traditional Republican territory"? Even after Clinton gave us a surplus and spending discipline? ... But I digress ...

Republicans hope that progress in Iraq will bring about a dramatic improvement in the national political environment. [hmmm .. for whom?] We share that hope. But even if events in Iraq go well, we will have plenty of days of bad news. The public will continue to be impatient about our engagement there, and unhappy about how we got there in the first place. If Republicans are lucky, their national-security advantage will reassert itself. But it is unlikely to recover to its past size. [translation: the American people have wised up to us, alas.]

The Congress has even lower ratings than President Bush, which offers Republicans further hope. But that hope, too, is illusory. Some of the decline in congressional approval ratings since Pelosi's crew took over surely stems from the Left's discovery that Congress cannot stop the war (or end the Bush administration). That disillusionment will not generate any new votes for Republicans, or even keep Democrats from turning out to vote for president. ... It isn't as though hostility to the Democratic Congress has led to any public demand that Republicans retake control of it.

The most plausible path toward a renewed center-right majority involves consolidating and deepening the trend of the decades before 2006: holding on to as much of the existing conservative coalition as possible while adding more downscale voters who lean right on social issues.