GOP Not Dead Yet

This weekend Matthew Parris is wishing for British Conservative leader David Cameron to win, but not too soon. New Labour, he writes, needs a few more years to crash and burn completely before Cameron should face the people in a decisive election. Just like in the US, where the forward foreign policy of

neoconservatism [has] to be given its head, and crash, and burn, before a new president could persuade the nation to turn its back on the idea.

Of course this is equating the folly of government-monopoly provision of health care, education, and social services with an aggressive foreign policy to attack the “gang of ruthless men” wherever they may be found. Voters are not quite the experts on foreign policy that they are on education and health care.

But still, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg have done some polling and have found that

We are on the verge of a change election that can produce major Democratic gains. Indeed, this new national Democracy Corps survey suggests that voters are prepared for an upheaval and change of party control, if the challengers define this election, run as outsiders and show voters where they would take the country.

Well, it is true that George W. Bush has had to deal with one nasty problem after another, and the Democrats and the media have done a fantastic job of running up President Bush’s negatives.

But just how do the champions of the welfare state propose to present themselves as outsiders ready to take the country in a new direction? E.J. Dionne has already looked at the failure of the Meathead’s government-monopoly pre-school proposal in California and decided that progressives need to come up with something better. But what? Progressives just seem incapable of proposing ideas without government programs and spending attached.

Political scientist Jay Cost has taken a look at the CA 50 special election and decided that there really isn’t any grounds for expecting a Democratic surge this fall. Not yet, anyway. From his perspective, the voters in CA 50 voted “normally.”

There is no doubt that the national conditions are decidedly in the Democrats' favor - nor is there any doubt that these conditions will cause the Republicans to lose a not insubstantial number of seats. At the same time, though, Tuesday night's results imply that the Democrats' path to 15 - always a narrow one - is narrower than many have thought.

Of course, a continued fall in the stock market, real pain in the real estate market, and really bad news from Iraq could change all that.

Meanwhile, in case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. Senate has been scheduling votes on issues that Democrats would like to avoid, like the death tax and gay marriage. Expect more of that as the season progresses.