Blogs For Victory

Stuart Rothenberg, as I’ve noted, says its impossible. I say its not – and here’s a bit of analysis which tends to agree with my view:

The claim that parties cannot bounce back from rough elections and claim the mantle of “change” in the subsequent election is unsupported by history. In 1946, Republicans gained 55 seats and took control of the House of Representatives after sixteen years of unified Democratic control of government. Two years later Democrats were back, gaining 75 seats and re-taking both Houses. After double-digit losses in back-to-back years in 1978 and 1980, including a drubbing in the 1980 elections that gave Republicans de facto unified control of the government, the nation eventually became dissatisfied with the Reagan Administration, and Democrats gained back 27 seats.

And in 1996, Democrats actually picked up enough Republican seats to take back the House. They were only foiled by the high number of Southern Democratic retirements, which allowed Republicans to take enough heavily Republican open seats from the Democrats to keep their losses to a minimum. The Republicans’ task in 2010 is not so much to take on the mantle of change, as it is to convince the voters that the change they are receiving is not the change they voted for in 2008.

It will, of course, take some leadership on the part of the GOP to make anything happen. Thus far, except for the unified House vote against the Spendulus, leadership has been sadly lacking – which is why I think that it will have to emerge from the ground up. The Tea Party movement is showing the way – the key for GOP victory in 2010 will revolve around how much influence the rank and file of the GOP can exert on the leadership.

The more bottom-up influence, the stronger the GOP will be – the more top-down influence (such as party moves to find “moderates” to run in Florida and Pennsylvania as opposed to conservatives popular with the rank and file), the worse the GOP will do. In the end, I expect the GOP to pick up House seats – 5-10 if the leadership is running the whole show, 20-30 if a groundswell of action comes from the people. But even in my rosiest scenario – a 30 seat GOP gain – we still don’t capture a House majority. For that, we’ll need not just solid leadership and great plans, but the Democrats entirely screwing up. While I’d like to rely on that happening, I’m never going to make my plans or predictions upon it. As far as the Senate goes, the less said, the better – our first real opportunity shows up in 2012 and then continues into 2016 when a host of first-term Democrats come up for re-election. But, we can win one or two seats in the Senate – notably in New York with Giuliani, as well as good opportunities in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Connecticut. Just getting up to 43 Senate GOPers will be considered by me a smashing GOP victory.

The whole key for 2010 will be the people vs the powerful – the people voted for change in 2008, no doubt about it; but they haven’t got change…all they got is the status quo on steroids. How anyone figured that the Democrats promise of fiscal responsibility was something other than a bald-faced lie merely for the campaign season is beyond me. President Bush and the defunct Congressional GOP of the previous ten years did a lot more spending than any GOP government should do – but as we can see with Obama increasing the 2009 deficit by at least 50%, there’s simply no comparison with the ability of Democrats to go on a spending binge (and, remember, Obama wasn’t even in charge for the first four months of FY 2009 – its quite a feat he’s pulled off, increasing our debt that much, that fast). We must hammer on the theme – “who do they work for?”. Anyone who is in office must have that question asked of them – including GOPers, and especially GOPers who are long in office and urging the rank and file to be more “moderate”. We need to have it demonstrated to us that they are working for us – if not, they’ll have to be replaced by someone who knows who he’s working for.

If we hammer on the theme of people vs powerful and put forward programs of real change, then we can come roaring back in 2010 in preparation for ejecting Obama and his Democrats entirely in 2012. All we have to do is fight for it – from the ground up.