12.09.11
GOP enthusiasm dropping, and anti-incumbent mood taking hold
It looks like the failed success of the tea party wave to change our government for the better is beginning to take it’s toll on the GOP. Failed austerity isn’t a very popular or successful governing strategy, Republicans Less Enthusiastic About Voting in 2012.
Republicans’ enthusiasm about voting has dropped and, as a result, the enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats has narrowed significantly. This marks a change from the decided enthusiasm advantage Republicans enjoyed just two months ago and in last year’s midterm elections.
Gallup tries to blame the waning GOP enthusiasm on the “bruising battle for the GOP nomination”, but that’s not likely. As Democrats know from 2008, a battle between good candidates only helps the party in the long run. The problem for the GOP and their enthusiasm is that they have bad candidates, Republicans still long for other presidential options.
First, this really should be humiliating for the Republican Party. They’ve been planning to take on President Obama for three years, and as of last week, had at least eight candidates to choose from (more if you include guys like Buddy Roemer and Gary Johnson). And yet, just 26 days before the Iowa caucuses, leading GOP voices are still trying to figure out how to get a better candidate nominated.
Second, the party should probably give up hope now of a brokered convention, at which a white knight can come save the party. It’s “not going to happen.”
And just as an aside, I can’t help but wonder how Mitt Romney, who’s been running practically non-stop for five years, feels about all of this.
And here’s a snippet from Nate Silver on the subject, The Real G.O.P. Dark Horse: None of the Above.
The motive is pretty simple: Republicans are dangerously close to having none of their candidates be acceptable to both rank-and-file voters and the party establishment. It’s not quite clear what happens when this is the case; there is no particularly good precedent for it. But since finding a nominee who is broadly acceptable to different party constituencies is the foremost goal of any party during its nomination process, it seems distinctly possible that Republicans might begin to look elsewhere.
And Gallup is also reporting a Record High Anti-Incumbent Sentiment Toward Congress.
About three-quarters of registered voters (76%) say most members of Congress do not deserve re-election, the highest such percentage Gallup has measured in its 19-year history of asking this question. The 20% who say most members deserve to be re-elected is also a record low, by one percentage point.
This isn’t surprising as the new tea party GOP members of Congress have been able to do little, if anything, to create jobs like they promised since being elected in the 2010 mid-term election.
Look next week for there to be some filing news in Williamson County. It’s time to start working to take advantage of this anti-incumbent sentiment at the local level.
[UPDATE]: Just got this via email, Republican Incumbents Out of Touch and Increasingly Vulnerable.
The latest Democracy Corps survey of the Republican House battleground shows the incumbents out of touch with their districts, a climate less favorable to Republicans, weakening support and vulnerability to attack. With numbers virtually identical to those of Democratic incumbents leading into the 2010 disaster, the House is surely in play in 2012.