The news coming out of the Republican bastion state of Georgia these days isn’t so good for the GOP. Earlier this week Matt Towery and his InsiderAdvantage unveiled a statewide poll that suggested Bob Barr could put Georgia in play, and the Obama campaign knows it (that latter, btw, echoing something close to what Marc Ambinder said last week).
Then today comes a memo from two Republican strategists, David Johnson of Strategic Vision in Atlanta and Holly Robichaud of Tuesday Associates in Boston, in which they say that the GOP is in “the deepest hole it’s seen since the Great Depression.”
From the memo as quoted by the AJC’s Political Insider:
The Republican brand and identity with voters is at its lowest point since 1932 during the depth of the Great Depression. To compare the Party’s standing even to the depth of Watergate or the debacle of 1964 is to understate the situation….
The reason that the Party has not rebounded even marginally from 2006 is that it continues to be identified with George W. Bush. This invokes the comparison to 1932 and the midterm elections of 1934 and general election of 1936.
Democrats were able to exploit the Great Depression to become the majority Party in America for the first time since the Civil War by identifying the Republican Party with Herbert Hoover in the minds and hearts of Americans.
They were successfully able to equate Republicans with Hoover very much as Democrats are tying Republicans at all levels with George W. Bush. Indeed invoking Ronald Reagan, as is being done today, has echoes of Republicans in the 1930’s invoking Calvin Coolidge rather than mention Herbert Hoover.
Invoking Ronald Reagan now will do more for Republicans than invoking Calvin Coolidge did Alf Landon and Republicans in 1934 and 1936….
In a corporation, after losses such as the Party suffered, at the very least there would be public apologies to the stockholders and a massive public relations campaign designed to show the change and put the company on offense, at the most extreme there would be a complete housecleaning of leadership.
Political Insider has the full memo.