Why Republicans Should Be Afraid

BROOKS, DAVID

Why Republicans Should Be Afraid An awful lot can go wrong for them this fall. BY DAVID BROOKS REPUBLICANS have been pretty sanguine about their prospects in this fall's midterm elections. They...

...GOP, Members, and candidates must fight back against this label," the study reported...
...The Enron scandal broke months ago...
...That was the scandal that presented maximum peril to Republicans...
...The political benefits from the war on terror have been reaped...
...Any David Brooks is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Republicans have been comfortably assuming that the rise of this investor class would help them, because as people put money in the market, studies show, they are more likely to vote Republican (even controlling for income...
...The core threat for Republicans is not the scandals...
...With deregulation...
...Most people believe, rather, that there are some dishonest people who have done horrible things in corporate America...
...it's true that president Bush's popularity ratings remain high and that, asked which party they would like to see control congress next year, the voters are still evenly divided...
...The Republicans control the debate on the war on terror and domestic security, but while they have admirably spent their days keeping the country safe from attack, Democrats have been seizing control of the domestic agenda...
...This has happened in past midterm elections...
...Americans don't connect this anxiety to politics, because it's July...
...Worse, many of them have the feel of a bygone era...
...It must be saved...
...history has such a huge scandal revolved around one of the closest supporters of the president of the United States...
...Because they have this category in their heads, Democrats see the corporate scandals as tainting the whole Republican party...
...In the first place, the corporate scandals will serve to motivate Democratic voters...
...How many times in u.S...
...One party looks fine for months and then suddenly, 10 days before the election, its numbers collapse...
...That's unlikely...
...That's a lot of angry voters...
...Still, the Democrats seem to think that there is this organized entity called Corporate America, made up of senior executives, Republicans, white country clubbers, and people who were cheerleaders and prom kings in high school...
...But those studies were conducted in the 1990s, as markets rose...
...The markets could continue their slide...
...Anxiety over this is reflected in a sharp rise in the percentage of people who say the country is on the wrong track...
...They recommended that Republicans respond to the issue by declaring, "Social Security is a sacred trust...
...More corporate scandals could come to light...
...Many Democrats—including Dick Gephardt, who last week predicted his party would pick up as many as 40 House seats—seem to think they can win by linking Republicans to dishonest corporate fat cats, by keeping the issue of CEO scandals alive and in the public eye straight through the fall...
...Meanwhile, the number of people who believe the overall economy is in excellent or good shape has dropped to 35 percent from 69 percent when George Bush took office...
...They are now the most aggressive champions of domestic reform, and will be until Republicans come up with their own (rather than just a me-too) agenda on domestic reform, a platform that is as startling and brave as their international effort to combat the axis of evil...
...As the market drops, investors may take revenge on the people they think lured them there...
...And in midterm elections, motivation trumps polling, because party loyalists have to be propelled to actually go out and vote...
...If they can get the rest of the country to hate these people as much as they do, then they will win elections...
...With a crusade to shrink the size of government...
...What's more, the rise of a large investor class makes it more likely that market declines will have political effects...
...With cuts in the capital gains tax rate...
...Third and most important, the landscape favors the Democrats...
...But also that George W. Bush is an admirable man who is doing his best for the country, even though he once worked for a corporation, and has friends who are in business...
...These ideas, admirable on the merits, are as politically implausible now as any that can be imagined...
...Democratic attacks on the alleged evils of social security privatization could decimate Republicans, as Democrats tie seniors' worries about their pensions to the collapsing markets...
...In other words, they see the scandals as a crisis of character, not a crisis of capitalism...
...The Tarrance Group offers effective recommendations on how Republicans can portray themselves as fervent anti-privatizers and so neutralize the issue...
...They suggested that Republicans not try simply to change the subject or laud themselves for having the courage to tackle the entitlements issue...
...And Republicans may be able to neutralize other Democratic issues...
...When that happens, incumbents, and the party perceived to be in power, suffer...
...According to a Gallup Poll conducted July 9-11, 43 percent of Americans think the markets will go down over the next year, while only 29 percent think they will rise...
...How exactly do Republicans respond to the current moment...
...In a survey conducted July 11-14, 49 percent of voters told Ipsos-Reid pollsters that the country is headed south, a rise of 10 percentage points over the previous three weeks...
...AARP is a dangerous adversary in this debate...
...American exit polls in 2000 revealed that voters who were bearish on the markets tended to vote for Gore, while the bulls backed Bush...
...Liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall (www...
...But Americans who have not been suckled on the Marx-Engels Reader do not carry these categories around in their heads...
...What if the bulls of 2000 blame Republicans for the market of 2002...
...Over the past months the country has been hit by a barrage of stories about Wall Street, the Catholic church, the FBI, and CIA—all of which suggests that many fundamental institutions of American life are in disrepair...
...The Tarrance recommendations make for disconcerting reading for Republicans...
...But that's cold comfort, because there are few issues that offer significant Republican upside...
...Anglo-American journalist John O'Sullivan has pointed out that British homeowners who were encouraged to buy homes in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher took it out on Thatcher in 1990 when home values dropped...
...It won't be enough to repeat that the fundamentals are sound, or to mention the important work that was done to organize the Office of Homeland Security...
...This is the first time in a year that bears have been in the majority...
...It's the institutions and the economy...
...They have greater credibility than any entity on this issue and are not viewed as partisan," the consultants continued...
...talkingpointsmemo.com) recently published the leaked results of a Tarrance Group study commissioned by the National Republican campaign committee...
...prescription drug benefits could return to the fore...
...But as November approaches and people begin to think electorally, there could be sharp swings...
...But Enron produced no political fallout...
...They shouldn't be...
...They perceive no one organized entity, Corporate America, that ruthlessly exploits another, Ordinary Americans...
...number of issues could break their way...
...With entitlement reform...
...It could be that the axe swings both ways...
...second, a powerful wave of anxiety is now sweeping across the country as the markets tank...
...Part of the reason some Republicans have been lulled into a false sense of security is that the Democratic diagnosis of the coming election is wrong...
...The sEc could be critical of Dick cheney's Halliburton stewardship...
...The public may not blame Republicans for the market's collapse, but sooner or later people will ask, What are you going to do to get us out of this mess...
...But these numbers may be misleading...
...With the flat tax...
...Domestically, the Republican party is as bereft of plausible policy ideas as at any time in the past quarter century...
...Democrat attempt to label GOP position on social security as favoring 'privatization' presents serious threat...

Vol. 7 • July 2002 • No. 44


 
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