National: Republican Party

The Republican Party is turning to some familiar faces as it prepares for Senate races in 2010.

To appreciate that Michael Steele has already performed a valuable service for the Republican Party, you need only enter the name of his closest competitor in the January election for party chairman into Google’s search bar.

The name of Katon Dawson, the South Carolina G.O.P. chairman who was edged out by Steele on the sixth ballot, prompts the search engine to suggest the following additional search terms: “country club”; “Forest Lake Club”;...

In terms of the political strategy they are now pursuing, the national Republican Party can accurately be labeled clueless: blind, shrill opposition to a president with deep personal popularity, reliance on a dated government-is-the-enemy philosophy that voters have roundly rejected as deregulatory excesses have sunk the economy, and unblinking and highly public fealty to a bombastic talk show host who is wildly unpopular with voters outside of the G.O.P.’s conservative base.

This...

HOOSICK FALLS, N.Y. -- For the Republican Party, the long road to a comeback winds through the hills, small towns and dairy farms of Upstate New York and runs smack through such places as the Halftime Sports Bar and Grill, where Mark Hansen was recently nursing an afternoon beer.