The GOP is forgetting the first rule of winning an election as the incumbent party: keep what you have. All the GOP needs to do is hold Ohio and Florida, and they win the White House. In fact, there's a ballot initiative in California that would make it so they could even lose one of those two states and be fine: under the proposal, 2 electoral votes would go to the majority winner in the state, and the rest would be divided by Congressional district. Under this scheme (the same as used in Maine and Nebraska), the GOP would stand to gain about 19 electoral votes - which is right about the size of Michigan.
Still, it's looking increasingly like they won't be able to hold even that. I'm going to say it right now: Rudi Giuliani cannot win the Presidency. He has a narrow plurality among GOP voters, but hasn't cracked 30% yet. Clinton, by comparison, is sitting at right around 40% among Democrats. The fundamental problem Giuliani has is that he's a pro-choice candidate in a party with a strong and active - if fractured - pro-life wing. And while this pro-life wing cannot deliver the Presidency, they are certainly strong enough to block someone from getting it.
It's an interesting period for the GOP. They control an incredibly unpopular White House, but are in the minority in both Congressional houses. Most Americans want to see the administration gone. Yet, for all that, their path to the White House is fairly easy - and if the California initiative passes, it would take remarkable ineptitude to lose the White House. Yet that's precisely what appears to be happening. The three leading pro-life candidates (McCain, Romney and Thompson) are essentially siphoning each other's votes, leaving Giuliani with the plurality.
Let's assume for a moment that on February 5th, Giuliani, McCain, Thompson and Romney are all still in the race, and let's assume that Giuliani gets between 27 and 32% of the vote in each state voting. That would give him a huge lead toward winning the GOP nomination, and would likely force at least one, if not two, competitors to step down. If that were to happen, I find it highly likely that someone like Newt Gingrich would declare that the Republicans have "lost their souls" and invoke "grass-roots conservatism" and "family values" as he launches a high-profile third-party candidacy aimed squarely at pro-life conservative Christians. There are enough voters who use abortion as a litmus test that the GOP vote would be split, and Clinton waltzes into the White House. And if that doesn't happen, the pro-life bloc will simply stay away in droves, giving Clinton the margin of victory in the battleground states she so desperately needs.
Make no mistake: a best-case scenario for the GOP involves Clinton as the Democrat candidate. In a national election, they are far more afraid of Obama or Gore. But it looks like Clinton will win the nomination. And it looks like the Republicans have become so dysfunctional and so deluded, they'll be utterly unable to capitalize on it.
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Why is this? And why is it that the Democrats, having seized control of the Congress from the inept Republicans, have managed to earn lower confidence ratings than GW himself? I think I have an answer.
We (Americans – and maybe the Brits) always have to have two sides, two teams. Building a party is not about ideas or ideology, but about building a winning team. And winning doesn't stick to ideology. In the late 1980s and early 90s, Lou Holtz's Notre Dame team played "smash-mouth" football in order to win. Later, Willingham tried to introduce a "West Coast" offense, which sort of worked, and now Weis is throwing 30+ passes a game. We can tell the same story about any other team. Why? Because playing football is about winning. You do what you have to. If smash-mouth doesn't work, throw the ball.
In our politics, we have two teams with team loyalties and team slogans ("cut and run," "tax & spend," "friends of corporate lobbyists," etc.) And players who play nice with members of the other team can get punished, relegated to the Dung and Manure Subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee.
So, for instance, while Hillary talks intelligently about international relations (I can't stand her, so this really hurts to write), her opponents—trying to move ahead of her in the depth chart-transform her ideas into Republican words.
Meanwhile, the Republicans have lost any sense of a fundamental identity. GW, in a rare manifestation of brilliant political instinct, started to make friendly with the Hispanics and to foster a good economic relationship with Mexico, gets shot down and thoroughly undermined by his own people. In the meantime, HC is a traitor to her own party now for advocating the NAFTA treaty that her husband helped negotiate and signed.
It's not really about politics and governing. It's about teams and winning.
That's an interesting insight, one that hadn't occurred to me.
As things stand right now, there are 3 "teams" in play: the administration, the Democrats and the Congressional Republicans. And they all have to tread lightly for fear of being too closely associated with either of their opponents.
It's sad, really. I'm a voter, and none of the politicians are on my team.
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