Right All Along
With the Iowa caucus tomorrow, now’s as good a time as any to start paying attention to politics (though the first primary isn’t until New Hampshire’s on the 8th). I don’t see point in sweating every rise and fall in the polls very far before a single vote is actually cast. Most people had given McCain up for dead (something he’s not altogether unused to), and now he’s fixin’ to win in NH.
But what are we to make of this?
It’s hard to believe given widespread, grass-roots conservative discontent over illegal immigration and spending gone wild, but Rasmussen is reporting an uptick in the number of Americans self-identifying as Republicans. Along with the uptick in Republican numbers, there’s a corresponding decrease in Democrat self-identification. So, perhaps Pelosi/Reid’s lousy performances–and not so much GOP accomplishments–are driving the observed rebound. As the pollster notes: “A year ago at this time, the Democrats had a 6.9 percentage point advantage as they prepared to formally take control of Congress following their victories in Election 2006. It remains to be seen whether the Republican gains can last, but it is startling to note that the Democrats have lost two-thirds of the partisan advantage since taking control of Congress.”
It’s all conjecture at this point (one reader wrote to Michelle claiming it was the Ron Paul Effect), and I certainly don’t know. But here are some possibilities.
The further Bush recedes into the political past, the better for the Republican Party. I defend him more often than not, but he is a lightning rod, and the sooner the party can be identified with somebody else—anybody else–the better the Republican chances.
As Michelle notes above, the Democrats in Congress couldn’t have behaved worse or performed more abysmally. It takes a real die-hard partisan (and there are more than a few) to stand with Harry and Nancy.
Whatever sympathy people had for Cindy Sheehan and her Pinko ilk has crumbled into dust and been carried off by the wind. Only the stain of association remains behind, and we know which party wears that stain.
General Petraeus.
People like me who voted Gore in ‘00, and Bush in ‘04. If I saw a fiscal miser and security hawk among the Democrats, I might vote for him—but Scoop Jackson died in 1983.