Republican Crack-up?
by Donald Devine

President Bush and his Republican Party are in big trouble. As the Gallup data collected by top Republican pollster Whit Ayres make manifest in the following chart, since June 2005 a majority of Americans have come to disapprove how George W. Bush has handled his job as president. Things were so bad that the White House sent out a statement bragging when the president’s approval went up from its all time low in May. As early as September 2004, people began to sour about the general “way things are going in the United States at this time,” but this has now increased to 65 percent dissatisfied. As for Congress, throughout this whole period people have been even more unhappy with its performance.

In this year’s elections, voters seem ready to give Democrats control of Congress for the first time since 1994. A recent July 2006 Gallup poll has now found 11 percent more people saying the country would be better off with a Democratic than a Republican majority. As the accompanying chart demonstrates, this is much greater than the advantage Republicans had when they won control of Congress from the Democrats for the first time in forty years back in 1994. The current Democratic advantage in public support represents the largest partisan margin going into any recent Congressional election for either party.

It is, of course, not impossible for Republicans to win. Congressional elections are decided by who shows up to vote on election day. Off-year elections for the House of Representatives and Senate bring out many fewer voters in total than in presidential years and are more subject to volatility in who will actually cast a ballot. With a smaller electorate, enthusiasm makes all the difference in determining who wins. For example, Republicans lost seats in the 1990 election because of the lower turnout of their upper income voters who lost their enthusiasm for President George H.W. Bush and his party when they raised taxes after campaigning two years earlier on a “No New Taxes” pledge.

When Republicans won the House in 1994, they had a 15 percent net advantage in enthusiastic voters over Democrats. When Democrats had even a two percent advantage in enthusiastic voters in 1998, they won four additional seats in the following election and when Republicans had an eight percent advantage in enthusiasm in 2002, they picked up eight more seats. The bad news for the GOP in 2006 is that the Democrats have the largest advantage in enthusiasm among their partisans ever, of 19 percent, presaging an enormous defeat this November.

What is the general population dissatisfied about? Sixty percent now say the Iraq war was not worth the cost and effort. A majority disapprove how the president and Republican Congress handled Katrina. The same is true on immigration. Even the economy, which has been the success story of the Bush Administration, is incorrectly perceived as being only performing fairly or poorly. If perceptions or the reality of the economy get worse over the next few months, the GOP could face an unprecedented disaster.

Republican core voters constitute the real potential Achilles’ heel. Strong support from these regular voters is essential. Yet, George W. Bush’s presidential performance is disapproved by one-third of Republicans. It is true that Ronald Reagan once reached this low point but it was during the recession in his first term so he had enough time to recover his presidency and he did in fact lose seats in the 1982 Congressional election. Conservative Republicans (as well as conservative independents) are especially disappointed with the inability of the president and Congress to get control of government spending. Indeed, domestic spending under the Bush presidency is double that under Bill Clinton. Many other conservatives are upset over a presidential policy of what they consider amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut by the unknown Ned Lamont received an incredible amount of media coverage celebrating the victory of the liberal base over its establishment. There was just as important a victory for the Republican base in a Michigan primary on the same day that received almost no attention. It is rare for an incumbent House member to lose re-nomination but Joe Schwartz did by a vote of 47 percent to his opponent’s 53 percent, slightly better than Lamont’s majority, for the equally unknown Tim Walberg in Michigan’s rural, Southern 7th Congressional District. Like Lamont, Walberg was vigorously supported by activist ideological groups—obviously in his case on the right—which were decisive in his victory. Unlike Lamont, Walberg did not have a personal fortune so was even more reliant on his activist base for his victory.

The Walberg win was the first ever against an incumbent by the leading conservative political committee, the Club for Growth PAC. The PAC now has an 8 to 2 record of success in Republican primaries but has until now been unable to displace someone already elected to office. The Club also won an impressive victory in Colorado’s 5th District, with conservative Doug Lamborn leading a multi-candidate field. To the extent the media covered the Walberg victory at all it emphasized his social conservatism and his support by the “religious right.” While social conservative support was important, the large role played by the economically conservative Club emphasizes that both wings of the movement participated in the victory.

Republicans were dissatisfied both with Schwartz’ social and economic liberalism. Club president Pat Toomey emphasized that “Michigan voters made it clear that they still want Congress to limit government, reduce wasteful spending and cut taxes.” National Taxpayers Union president John Berthoud noted that “Schwartz had one of the worst fiscal records of any GOP member of Congress.”

While the Walberg victory cheered conservatives nationally, it is doubtful this will help in the remaining 434 districts, where incumbents will dominate. While Schwartz’ record was worse than most Republicans’, it was not all that much worse than the majority of the GOP, which overwhelmingly supported the surge in government spending. A big majority of Republicans voted to increase national education spending by 99 percent. Only 25 Republicans voted against the budget-busting $16 trillion unfunded liability prescription drug bill and only a dozen voted against the deal boosting the minimum wage.

S.T. Karnick discusses the philosophical reasons why adopting the Democratic big government agenda is mistaken elsewhere in this issue. It is simply necessary to here to quote Claremont McKenna College professor, Andrew Busch: “If Fredrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan (not to mention the framers of the Constitution) have been invalidated—if the laws of economic and human nature have changed so that centralized state power no longer threatens prosperity, liberty or civic virtues—then by all means, the argument for limited government should be allowed to slide into disuse. If not, Republicans must find a way to make the argument for limited government more compelling.”

Republican leaders are instead betting on the power of incumbency, the fact that even the most unhappy grassroots conservatives are unlikely to vote for the other party and general Democratic incompetence. But Walberg proved the vulnerability of incumbency and conservatives need not vote Democratic but merely could express their dissatisfaction by staying home as they did in 1990. As far as Democratic incompetence, even Lamont—among many others--seems to get it. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he promoted “the lessons of his business experience,” and the first was, “Washington has utterly lost touch with fiscal reality. I am a fiscal conservative and our people want their government to be sparing and sensible with their tax dollars.” It might not be Ronald Reagan but it might be enough to win in 2006.

Dr. Devine is the editor of Conservative Battleline Online. He appreciates the assistance of Whit Ayres, president of Ayres, McHenry and Associates of Alexandria, Virginia, for making the above polling data available.