Even the Republican Party’s own pollsters say that it will take a miracle for the GOP to keep the White House, let alone regain control of Congress, in 2008.
Despite a slight uptick in poll numbers because of some success with the surge strategy, George Bush remains a deeply unpopular president and a substantial majority of Americans see the Iraq war for what it is – a failure.
Yet most Republican presidential wannabes are not only not trying to distance themselves from their president and his war, they are avidly embracing both, and in Rudy Giuliani’s case, he’s already jumped the foreign policy shark. (“Curtis LeMay without the experience” is how one blogger describes him.)
It has been noted by pundits far more sage than I am that this situation is a result of the candidates needing to play to the party’s base in a campaign that, after all, has nearly 15 months left to go. But the last time I looked at the GOP base it resembled a prune. And isn’t courting disaffected Independent voters and YouTube vidiots just as important?
Has the GOP simply become so ossified and out of touch that it’s fallen and just can’t get up? Or in terms that the older gents who comprise most of this demographically challenged field might understand, can’t get it up?