The Bush Effect

GOP getting crushed in polls, key races
By JIM VANDEHEI & DAVID PAUL KUHN


John McCain is planning to run as a different kind of Republican. But being any kind of Republican seems like some sort of death sentence these days.

In case you’ve been too consumed by the Democratic race to notice, Republicans are getting crushed in historic ways both at the polls and in the polls.

At the polls, it has been a massacre. In recent weeks, Republicans have lost a Louisiana House seat they had held for more than two decades and an Illinois House seat they had held for more than three. Internal polls show that next week they could lose a Mississippi House seat that they have held for 13 years.

In the polls, they are setting records (and not the good kind). The most recent Gallup Poll has 67 percent of voters disapproving of President Bush; those numbers are worse than Richard Nixon’s on the eve of his resignation. A CBS News poll taken at the end of April found only 33 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP — the lowest since CBS started asking the question more than two decades ago. By comparison, 52 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Democratic Party.

Things are so bad that many people don’t even want to call themselves Republicans. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has found the lowest percentage of self-described Republicans in 16 years of polling.

“The anti-Republican mood is fairly big, and it has been overwhelming,” said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis.

With an environment so toxic, does McCain have even a chance of winning in November?

The McCain camp thinks so — but only if he sands down the “R” next to his name. “Nobody ever gets elected president by running on their party label,” said Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser. “The character, the qualities, the independence — that certainly allows him to rise over the party label. It is more important than usual to rise above the party label.”

This statement seems a little at odds with the current McCain strategy. The presumptive GOP nominee has spent much of the recent campaign fastening himself to the traditional Republican brand and even to Bush himself. McCain’s views on the war, the overall economy (especially supporting the Bush tax cuts he previously opposed), the mortgage crisis and judicial appointments are hardly the stuff of a new kind of Republicanism.

McCain risks looking inauthentic and conventional to both camps if he simply solidifies his standing with conservatives and then races back to the middle to appeal to swing voters.

For now, Republicans are heartened by how well McCain sometimes does in head-to-head polling with Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee. But it’s silly to watch those numbers: They fluctuate and reflect nothing more than momentary feelings about the candidates, and they come at a time when public attention is fixed on the final rounds of the Democratic slugfest.

Right now, most voters with any familiarity with McCain probably know him as a war hero, somewhat of a maverick in the Senate and a pretty affable candidate. Let’s see how they view McCain after Democrats use their decisive money advantage to paint him as a much-older Bush clone who loves an unpopular war and knows little about the economy.

Democrats provided us a look at their polling data from 17 swing states — data they’re using to craft new attacks on McCain as Bush 44. The Democratic National Committee polling, according to a memo it provided, has two-thirds of swing voters expecting McCain to pursue policies very similar to Bush’s. The voters’ top three concerns about McCain: his age, his support for the war and his similarities to Bush.

The latest DNC ad ties two of the three together, slamming McCain over the war and showing a picture of him embracing Bush. Lots more to come on that front, DNC officials said. The DNC will leave the age issue alone for now.

Many top Republicans seem heartened by Obama’s likely victory on the Democratic side. They say they’re confident Obama will pay a big price for his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the persistent questions about his patriotism and his inability to connect with working-class whites in swing states.

These are all big problems for Obama. But he will have a massive cash advantage when it comes time to fight back, and the Republican National Committee’s fundraising edge over the DNC won’t be enough to overcome it. Consider this fact: Since the beginning of last year, Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and the DNC have raised $460 million total — about $200 million more than what McCain, Mitt Romney and the RNC raised together in the same time span.

Rich liberals operating outside the traditional fundraising structure are also in private talks to vastly outspend the GOP on issue ads and voter mobilization efforts.

Still, McCain’s biggest problem is the toxic political atmosphere for his party.

It’s so toxic, some Republicans are pointing to 1976 as a favorable historical comparison. That was the year Gerald Ford ran in the dark shadows of Watergate and lost to Jimmy Carter. Says Dick Wadhams, the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party: “When voters really homed in on the choice between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and what each stood for, Gerald Ford almost won the election despite this horrible environment.”

Almost.