The GOP: Dawn Breaks?
by Patrick Ruffini :: October 18th, 2007 4:57 pmI think we can finally dispense with the talk of 2008 being another 2006 for Democrats.
This hasn’t shown up in the national numbers, or likely will for weeks. I get the sense that right now is the time to sell the contract on Democrats winning the White House on Intrade. (Technical analysis alone would suggest this — check out the hockey stick-like buying pattern.) That isn’t to say they won’t win — but 63 will probably be their high water mark for quite some time.
This is not a call for celebration. We are still laboring against a significant enthusiasm gap and an unpopular war. But a few important indicators suggest we may have found a bottom. For a party that hasn’t been on the upswing since January 2005 and has been in virtual freefall since Katrina, that is something.
These are the vectors I see converging on this conclusion:
Iraq: We have had many false positives in Iraq. But this time the good news is accompanied by an actual change in strategy. For all the impatience with the war, the American people have been responsive to short term improvements on the ground. Even before this week’s relatively euphoric coverage, the “are we winning” numbers were going up off only spotty indicators the surge was working.
There is a constituency for victory. It’s may not be a majority, but between the 30th and 50th percentiles of support for the war there seems to be a strong willingness to stick it out if the strategy seems to be working.
If things stay as they are or even improve, we may be headed back to something resembling an even split on Iraq, depending on where the Republican candidate can credibly draw the line. I don’t think things will ever be seen as going well, but just being removed from the pre-surge fever pitch of “bring them home now” will help.
But most critical is Hillary’s positioning. Secure in her victory, she is giving up her anti-war positioning. I think that is a big mistake. She is calculating that a President must be measured and reasonable on issues of war and peace. That’s probably right. But how does she cope with the decidedly unmeasured feelings towards the war of not just her base, but anti-war moderates? How does she act as a plausible Commander-in-Chief while at the same time creating a mandate for herself as a decisive change agent? If she looks like Kerry 2.0 — calculating and unremorseful about her 2002 vote — doesn’t she just look like more of the same to anti-war swing voters? Couldn’t Romney, who seems to be leaving himself some space here, come in with a competence/change message? With Iraq looking better, and Hillary narrowing the differences, Democrats could be surrendering Iraq as a ballot issue.
SCHIP: This is not an obvious one, but Gallup says Americans agree with us on the policy. Framing-wise, this is still a loser (”GOP against health care for kids.”) But that would hold in virtually any political climate. This isn’t exactly the first time we’ve been attacked like this.
What’s different is that we’ve had some counterintuitive poll results showing the public rejecting new Democratic entitlements, especially when means-testing is loose to non-existent. The Hillary baby-bond idea flopped (this surprised me). And the public pretty explicitly wants SCHIP kept at 200% of poverty. The common thread: no new entitlements. If Democrats can’t move the needle on their core domestic issues, then what?
Even through the worst of it, the public stayed pretty conservative on entitlements and spending. The problem is that were in no position to exploit this winning position. Now we are.
MA-5: No, we shouldn’t read overarching national implications into this. But if the “wave” were still in force, it would never have been this close. In fact, the only race that was remotely like this in 2006, with an unknown Republican sneaking up on a heavily favored Democrat, was IN-7, and only because Julia Carson likes to consult the position of Jupiter before making staffing decisions. That was one race out of 435. This was one out of two or three specials this year.
This doesn’t signal a pro-GOP wave so much as a reversion to the norm. Candidates who run races like Ogonowski did should be competitive, even in blue districts. Guys who run as brilliantly as Michael Steele did should win, even in Maryland, and Rick Santorum shouldn’t lose by 20 points. The fact that we’re competitive right out of the gate in NM-SEN and CO-SEN, and holding steady in MN-SEN and OR-SEN, suggests a more normal political environment. 2006 was a killing field. 2007-8 is not.
You Don’t Get Two: Expanding this point, history is not on the side of repeat waves. Republicans thought 1996 would be another wave until the government shutdown in November ‘95. 1982 was not another wave. The classic example of hubris after first winning a Congressional majority was 1948.
Moreover, it’s difficult to produce a wave in a Presidential year. 1980 and 1932 are practically the only ones. In 1992, the Republicans gained ten seats. More voters, more indifferent voters, and more voters focused almost exclusively on a close Presidential election weighs down the electorate, making it harder to produce dramatic upsets down-ticket.
The House vote in Presidential and non-Presidential years makes the point. The Congressional ballot swings around a lot more in midterms. 1992 is the exception that proves the rule. That was the last election before the 1994 realignment.
Midterms
2006 52.2 - 44.3 D (+7.9 D)
2002 49.6 - 45.0 R (+4.6 R)
1998 48.0 - 47.1 R (+0.9 R)
1994 50.0 - 44.0 R (+6.0 R)
Presidential
2004 49.2 - 46.6 R (+2.6 R)
2000 47.3 - 47.0 R (+0.3 R)
1996 48.1 - 47.8 D (+0.3 D)
1992 49.1 - 44.4 D (+4.7 D)
The takeaway: a close Presidential election creates a vortex in which it’s difficult to talk of one party having a decisive advantage at any level. The narrative next year is more likely to be: “close, vicious Hillary vs. Rudy/Romney battle” over “another Democratic blowout.” If the national environment does improve somewhat, and the nominee starts close to slightly behind, we won’t have the steady demoralizing drumbeat we had in 2006. Rank-and-file Republicans will be too focused on beating up Hillary. Democrats in red districts could be cross-pressured.
No Bush to Kick Around Anymore: 2006 was the last year in which a Democrat could effectively run against Bush. It is not possible to do more political damage to Bush. People know he’s leaving.
Is this a case for 2008 as a Republican year? Not yet. But the Democrats’ best-case scenario is probably a muted change election like 2000 or 1976.
Tagged: 2008 
bush gop hillary clinton
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How about 1968? This resembles 1968 more than any other in my memory. In 1966 Republicans made big gains in Congress to wipe out their losses in ‘64 and then some. By ‘68 you had two presidential candidates with “peace with honor” war positions that were practical indistinguishable. Nixon won in a squeaker, but Republicans made big gains in the Senate. I think they gained 7 seats. I don’t recall the House results. I think there were small GOP gains. But Nixon’s close call was due largely to the presence of George Wallace on the ballot. Without Wallace, Nixon’s win would be substantial.
Hillary is positioning herself to run against Giuliani. If Romney were to win the nomination and try to outflank Hillary on Iraq by proposing an exit strategy of his own, I think Hillary would move very quickly to protect herself on that front. She’s been pretty vague so far so she can “clarify” her position a great deal yet without actually flip-flopping.
But the GOP position in the Senate looks pretty hopeless. There are too many open seats up for grabs. It doesn’t matter if things look better than expected in New Mexico or Oregon. Those are still Republican seats that need to be defended, and it still likely that Republicans are going to lose some of them. And where are they going to pick up seats? Louisiana maybe? And where else?
Sure, Democrats aren’t going to make any big gains in the House. Gerrymandering has taken care of that. The easy seats were won in ‘06. Any additional gains will be very tough. But they have enough money to defend what they have and maybe pick up a few more while they are poised to strengthen their hold on the Senate.
Meanwhile, Hillary would be well positioned to win the presidency by a comfortable margin as Nixon would have in ‘68 without Wallace in the race. But a really good campaign by the GOP nominee could make the White House a tough race. And, I agree, that Hillary’s Iraq War stand probably makes that doable. But I can’t see Giuliani running that kind of campaign. He can’t very well promote himself even remotely as a peace candidate. He will lose too many anti-war Republicans and too many social conservatives will stay home. Romney has a better chance precisely because he has been an effective flip-flopper.
Thompson hasn’t shown much ability to articulate a firm position in the first place much less move deftly to a new one.
The election is a long way off, and we can’t be sure Hillary will be the next Democrat nominee much less try to figure out who the Republican candidate will be. But I think the straws in the wind that you cite for Republican optimism are much too thin to get very excited about even if we were much closer to the election and already knew who the nominees were.
[…] In an apparent nod to the old adage “It’s always darkest before the dawn”, Patrick Ruffini today has a post titled, “The GOP: Dawn Breaks?“ While I think his argument has some merit, and I agree with him that 2008 is more about discontent than a Democrat wave, I have concerns with our ability to capitalize on that. If the national environment does improve somewhat, and the nominee starts close to slightly behind, we won’t have the steady demoralizing drumbeat we had in 2006. Rank-and-file Republicans will be too focused on beating up Hillary. Democrats in red districts could be cross-pressured. […]
[…] Liberals are jumping for joy at the news. Writing on Wizbang Blue, contributor Larkin says the news reveals that “Republicans are now increasingly afraid to take on Democratic incumbent in next year’s election.” That’s hardly true. Last week’s near upset in Massachusetts’ 5th District by Republican Jim Ogonowski is an indication that the wave that swept Democrats into control in 2006 has already broken. […]