Not even 9 months complete, some political handicappers consider President Obama's presidency to be such a failure that right now is not "will Republicans make gains at the midterm elections?" but "how large will those gains be?" I don't know about that. While the party in power almost always loses seats in midterm elections, a lot has to happen or not happen before next November for big changes. However, ignoring that incumbents tend to win in a very high percentage and that a number of somewhat moderate Republicans who could probably attract Obama supporters, have already announced they are not running again next year, the GOP has a bigger problem -- their leadership gap. In 1994 the GOP had Newt who, while out there, was somewhat rationale. He had a 10 point Contract for America plan and some of it made sense to Clinton supporters. Also, the purge of moderates that Reagan democrats could vote for hadn't begun yet. I don't see that with the GOP today. While there are those who do have good ideas they are being shouted out by the crazies whose main goal is just to obstruct. But even so, the GOP has other problems.
Just because they choose to highlight their celebration of ignorance and their passion for stupidity does not mean the rest of the country is going to follow that path. They point to the teabaggers as their new base but, if that is the case, why were the teabaggers not out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the other pork-barrel spending that President Bush refused to veto -- much of which was passed when the Republicans held both houses of Congress? Are we seeing a real grass roots movement or just a bunch of Republican hacks in disbelief that they have been exiled from their seats of power?
If this movement was a majority, we would have seen rioting in the streets months ago. Instead we seem to have a few thousand hard-core individuals intent on destroying and undermining the man that a majority of Americans elected without any proposals of what they would do, aside from not doing what the President wants to try. That is not a grassroots uprising; that is a communication strategy, same as the ability of a very few people to mess it up for everybody because they can.
Instead of growing their base, they are appeasing their worst by chasing away Latinos, who Bush, in theory, was going to bring into the party as natural Catholic conservatives, at the same time their demographics continue to increase. Their embrace of the birthers who think the state of Hawaii was part of Kenya for a brief time in the early 1960s, and other crazy theories is also chasing away voters. Add in that many in what is left of the middle class may have finally come to the realization that the GOP doesn't always have their best interests in mind and it may be hard as sooner or later more will realize that they spent the Bush years working more hours for less dollars, at least until their jobs were outsourced so CEOs could enjoy the additional profits that their tax cuts failed to provide. Their only real hope is that President Obama continues to show the lackadaisical leadership lately that has helped to lead his poll numbers down. If the President stops speaking softly and starts using his big stick then that might be it.
Who do the GOP have now on the national scene? Rush Limburg? Glenn Beck? Sarah Palin? Screaming "you lie" is not leadership. Instead of grooming new leadership they have concentrated on chasing away all but the pure, who will just follow without question. The GOP's supporters may be loud but they are fewer in number then they were 16 years ago and coverage of some of their antics feels more like filler news because there is not much else interesting going on.
The GOP may gain some midterm seats, many if the healthcare war ends badly, or the auto and bank bailouts turn out to not have helped the economy and unemployment remains high. But unless they get the crazies out, like the Dems did over the last 25 years or so (with Kennedy gone are there any real liberals left?) they're going to set themselves up for a bigger disaster in 2012.
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