GOP as a brand is losing its appeal. Asking people to govern who run on platforms against government and you seem to get cronyism, corruption and incompetence and more people realize this. Polls show that support for liberal social values and Democratic Party preference is up significantly. The right seems bereft of ideas except for name-calling while accusing their opponents of incivility and worse. GOP figures are starting to be barely restrained in their criticism of fellow Republicans.
This is not entirely the Iraq war's fault but it helps. Their are numerous other problems the public is blaming the GOP for. For less than the cost of the Iraq war each month the government could have given every American a full tank of gas and have money left over. I once told a supporter of the Iraq war to throw a few bills in every time he went to the toilet to represent his share of the war costs he wasn't paying taxes on yet. After over four years we have sewer lines overflowing. For the cost of the war so far the government could have built every homeless person a $200,000 house.
The GOP presidential candidates realize they and their party have a huge problem but so far they are offering the solutions Americans have rejected. 2008 is looking good for progressives, liberals and Democrats. Maybe we can get Hillary and Obama to start supporting more Democratic positions instead of moving to the right while the country moves left.
Presidential historian Robert Dallek said Republicans are fighting modern historical trends that no White House incumbent or aspirant has ever overcome. He cited the losses of Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Harry Truman in 1952 as “demonstrations of a party burdened with the legacy of a president who has pushed a failed or failing war.”
And yet the Republican presidential candidates are running campaigns at odds with this fundamental shift in public attitudes.
“This is what Bush and the other Republicans don’t get,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “There is a social revolution occurring, and they are completely out of the mainstream.”
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