FreedomWorks

A constituent base is the engine that drives a political party’s success, which is why the Republicans did well in elections last week and may do well in midterm contests next year. It also can be an albatross, which is why our party’s fundamental problems persist.

The conservative wing of the Republican Party is dominant. These often are the types of conservatives who take no prisoners on political and social issues and believe compromise is a dirty word.

The patron saints of these conservative movements are less political leaders or philosophers and more talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. To them, everything about Democrats is suspect, including their patriotism.

They also energize the minority of hard-core conservatives, who turned out Nov. 3 to elect Republicans as governors in Virginia and New Jersey and win a good share of down-ballot contests.
This energy level, compared with that of Democrats, many of whom stayed home, is likely to persist through the midterm national elections in 2010. If, as Las Vegas does for sporting events, the odds on the congressional outcome next year would feature an over/under, today it would be a Republican pickup of 20 seats in the House and three in the Senate.

Nevertheless, the GOP is in no better shape than it was a year ago. This was apparent when the party lost a special congressional election in New York after the right wing took over the contest; this was a seat that Republicans had held since the 19th century.

This illustrates the dilemma. An energized base can turn into a liability when it defines a party, turning off more independent-minded voters. That’s what happened to the Democrats through the 1970s and 1980s.

And almost every survey shows that the number of self-identified Republicans in America is actually in decline. Recent polls indicate that about 19% of the people in the US identify themselves with the GOP the lowest number in over 20 years.

Party activists and conservative leaders dismiss those numbers. Their main talking point is a Gallup poll last month that showed an increase in people identifying themselves as conservatives, particularly among independents. Since the Republicans are plainly the more conservative party in America, they are on the upswing, this reasoning goes.

But a number of the most reputable pollsters believe the Gallup data have been vastly over-interpreted: If there’s any shift in public attitudes, it’s very small and doesn’t redound to the Republicans’ advantage.

“On a feeling thermometer, Republicans have the worst scores in 20 years,” says Peter Hart, who conducts the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. Ann Selzer, who is the pollster for Bloomberg News, concurs: “There may be a few more fiscal conservatives but not social conservatives, and that’s where the Republicans have moved.”

The election results last week underscore the fundamentals. It was all about turnout: Republicans voted, while there was a huge drop in Democrats and independents, which support President Barack Obama.

What that suggests isn’t a movement toward conservatives or Republicans. It is that Mr. Obama, along with almost every popular politician from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, cannot transfer his appeal. The much-hyped Obama grass-roots machine, which was so effective in getting him elected president, doesn’t have coattails when it comes to congressional races or issues such as health care.

In elections such as 2009 and 2010, the angry and alienated turn out in larger proportions. Ultimately, the Republicans will have to offer an alternative vision of governance. That is what they did successfully in 1980.

This usually gets them in trouble on hot-button social issues. It could prove a loser on economic and fiscal matters, too. The Republican agenda — tax cuts for business and investors, pretty much the status quo on health care and an unwillingness to take on entitlements — doesn’t add up and offers minimal appeal to important constituencies such as younger voters, Hispanics and working-class women.

Red meat, not vision, is what conservative activists and their flock around the country demand; those who don’t follow do so at their own peril. For example, conservatives scored a big victory in New York when they forced out a liberal Republican candidate in favor of a conservative.

Glenn Beck orchestrated a campaign against Mr. Obama’s chief of information and regulatory affairs, Cass Sunstein, a respected law professor who incurs the wrath of liberals because of his pro-market views on regulation. He once wrote a scholarly article on humane treatment of animals. Mr. Beck and his ilk mounted a campaign against him, with the charge he wanted to give animals the right to sue humans.

It sounds silly. Thirty-one Senate Republicans voted against Mr. Sunstein.

Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, usually level-headed, recently joined the chorus of the right-wing attacks on Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, a Republican, saying “she can’t say she’s a Republican and then vote against the Republican position much of the time.” Although Mr. Pawlenty later backed down, this is the sort of anti-inclusion message that the movement right demands of presidential hopefuls such as the Minnesota governor.

Looking ahead to next November, Democrats fear an unemployment rate stuck around 10 percent and the makings of a quagmire in Afghanistan. And if they botch up health care, as Senate leaders are risking now, these internal Republican antics may not matter.

If Democrats avoid those nightmares, more important than a questionable Gallup poll will be a Republican agenda shaped by the party’s fringe elements.

That will turn off independents and other voters.

Buy your wheel barrels now because after the fool(obama) is done you will need them to haul those dollars to the grocery store. That is if you are employed.

one of my friend had work in china,and you can't image how cheap the labor there

I guess the economy is crap and obama has completely failed because America is racist. Unemployment reaching serious highs must be because Americans don't want a black President and they are refusing to work. No wonder his poll numbers suck. People are tired of the race card and liberals who use it to hide their own faults.

Media made obama out to be some kind of genius and savior when his actions are proving him to be a complete incompetent boob. He campained about fundementally changing our way of life and ran around ranting about how he was going to fix everything. My biggest fear is that he still has 3 more years to make it worse. Liberals are trying to hold back the flood gates of this bad economy with words.

He further adds insult to injury with his healthcare ideas full of huge costs to the American taxpayer. When the bread lines start who will pay the taxes this administration will need? He(obama) is unraveling and revealing the total loser he is. Heck, Kerry was a real loser and he looks good now next to obama, lol.

I believe it should be abundantly clear that whomever is responsible for passing the stimulus bill was mistaken about its benefits. Consider countries like China and India, who resisted the temptation to spend taxpayer money in a vain attempt to correct the market: Not only did they weather the recession better, but have recovered faster. Consider again the counrty of Japan that had tried to spend its way out of a recession in the eighties resulting in the "Lost Decade." Again and again we see the evidence of the failure in the belief that fiscal policy can lift us out of a recession caused by poor monetary policy. Yet as if the historical and contemporary evidence did not exist our political class continue to fall back on erroneous Kenysian economic theory that has yet to be sucessful in an objective measure.