The GOP's problem: Way beyond image

Forget Jack Abramoff and Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Tom DeLay and Mark Foley could prove to be the least of the Republican Party's worries. Disturbing surveys, and even some GOP strategists, are beginning to suggest a new trauma for their party, one that could portend a return to the dark winter of the so-called permanent minority, when Democrats held control of Congress for four decades.

That Republicans will face a potentially devastating political year in terms of House and Senate races should come as no surprise to anyone. After a little more than a decade in power on Capitol Hill, Republicans grew too casual with their power, spending lavish sums on Bridges to Nowhere and other irresponsible earmarks, openly courting lobbyists who flaunted ethics rules and only slowly reacting to personal scandals involving their own members.

In short, after 12 years of a GOP-led Congress and six of a Republican in the White House, the party's reputation is in the dumps. The party trails a generic Congressional match-up with Democrats by as many as 18 points, a gap as wide as the one just before the 2006 election. Even Republican voters have a low opinion of their party's performance in Congress. And the party is feeling the financial pinch as well; national Democrats' House and Senate campaign committees have far outpaced their Republican rivals heading into November's elections.

But the dismal landscape Republicans face now could be just the tip of the iceberg. How can the party possibly survive if successive generations won't even give them a second look?

Republicans regained power in the early 1990s, when, according to surveys, voters between the ages of 18-29 were essentially divided in their loyalties to the Democratic and Republican parties. Those Generation X voters, who grew up in the 1970s, under unpopular Democrat Jimmy Carter, and 1980s, under popular Republican Ronald Reagan, favored the GOP by a narrow 47%-46% margin. To a new generation of voters, the Republican Party was home, and they delivered enough votes to force Democrats to give up the Speaker's gavel after the 1994 election. From 1996 through 2000, when few Congressional seats changed hands and Republicans maintained a majority, the last Generation X and first Generation Y voters favored Democrats, by six points in 1996 and eight points in 2000.

Now, as Generation Y comes to prominence, those between the ages of 18-29, who will make up the next generation of regular voters, have no qualms about siding against the party their predecessors called home. Having grown up with Bill Clinton in the White House, when the economy soared and people were confident about the direction of the country, and come of age with President Bush at the helm, when public optimism sank to depths never seen before, younger voters now identify with the Democratic Party by a huge 58%-33% margin. If that self-identification holds, Democrats could remain solidly in control of the national political landscape for decades.

"Trends in the opinions of America's youngest voters are often a barometer of shifting political winds," Pew researchers Scott Keeter, Juliana Horowitz and Alec Tyson wrote. "And that appears to be the case in 2008." Most notably, a gender gap that first emerged in 1992 -- when women favored Democrats by a twelve-point margin as opposed to men, who preferred the party by a single point -- has expanded even more dramatically. Men now back Democrats by a slim three-point margin, while women favor the party by a whopping 22 points. Among 18-29 year old voters, women favor Democrats by a stunning margin of 63%-28%. Younger men, who favored Republicans by ten points in 1992, now back Democrats by fourteen.

Some Republicans will dismiss the results as a simple backlash against President Bush and a few bad apples in Congress who tarnished the party's once-clean image. But as Glen Bolger, a prominent Republican pollster, warns in a monthly memo to friends and clients, the problem is deeper than image. The trouble is the GOP's very message.

Bolger, who partners with Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg to conduct surveys for National Public Radio, points to survey questions on four key issues -- the economy, Iraq, trade and taxes -- where Republicans have real problems. Asked which statement came closest to their own opinion, voters favored the answer identified as the Democratic position by wide margins ranging from 11 to 21 points.

That alone should be disturbing. More shocking were results when half the sample was given the opportunity to choose between the two positions when not coupled with either party -- that is, respondents were asked if they agreed with what "some people" said instead of what "Republicans" or "Democrats" said. In each of the four cases, those who preferred the Democratic message rose, especially among Republicans. Republican voters favored the Democratic position on taxes, trade and the economy by between 11 and 14 points.

"Our message right now is electoral poison and this isn't all about 'brand,'" wrote Josh Kahn, a Republican strategist who analyzed Bolger's numbers at the new Republican blog TheNextRight.com. Later, he told this reporter: "We really have to look at our message. We have to update what we're saying, because we haven't updated our message since Ronald Reagan. And we live in different times."

"We can change the situation we're in by updating our message," Kahn said. "Our problem is a real problem of not having something constructive to say." Kahn pointed to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose approach just months into his first term has won accolades and sky-high approval ratings. Jindal, said Kahn, is appealing to real voters' problems. That's the approach the GOP should take with voters, he said: Voters "don't vote based on philosophy, they vote based on what party is addressing our problems."

To Bolger, the message is stale. "Many Republicans are focusing on ideas that are continually recycled. And, since those ideas did not catch on with the public back when Republicans had a positive image, why would we expect those ideas to do so now," he wrote.

While the mood is glum among Washington Republicans, there may be a hope, Bolger argues. If voters care more for the Democratic message than they do for the GOP message, why not borrow from the enemy? In three past special elections Democrats have won in heavily Republican territory, Bolger points out that Democrats have done just that. "There's a strange outrage among Republicans that the Democrats who have won the two Southern open seats [in Louisiana and Mississippi] didn't do it fairly because they are values conservatives, so they didn't come out of the cookie cutter mold of most national Democrats," Bolger wrote. Therefore, he suggests, Republican candidates ought to appropriate some Democratic messages, especially on the economy, with which they feel comfortable.

In fact, Bolger says, the best way to stay afloat in a sea of bad news for Republicans is to take bold action and actively pursue swing voters who currently favor Democrats. "Between the GOP's financial disadvantage and our disadvantage on public opinion, nobody else can win your race for you. You have to do it yourself. Without being reckless, choose the bolder option over the safer option. Choose the stronger message over the softer message. Finally, target swing voters or perish," he concluded.

But the three special election losses, including a seat in Illinois in March, have caused a serious self-examination among national Republicans, and those who warned about the dangerous state of the party are no longer dismissed as needlessly worried. Not only does the Republican message not resonate, it appears President Bush has severely alienated an entire generation of voters, putting once-ruby red districts in contention. Indicating the mood of the party, and perhaps a growing recognition on the part of national strategists, Bolger, not known for exuberant optimism, writes: "I am no longer receiving emails questioning whether my pessimism is just my pollster paranoia." If the party can't find its way back into a generation's good graces, they could find the following decades a long, hard slog through the wilderness of the minority.

Reid Wilson, national columnist for Politicker.com, is also an associate editor of RealClearPolitics.com and covers Senate, House and governors' races at PoliticsNation.com. Contact him at reid@realclearpolitics.com.