Kossacks might want to consider the possibility that all the ranting and raving about the incompetence of national Democrats is misplaced. Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer, Dean and the rest of them seem to be doing something right. More below the fold
1. When Bush in 2005 announced his intention to use what he liked to think of as his "political capital" to undo Social Security, his support began a nosedive from which it has yet to recover.
2. The ongoing strategic blunder in Iraq has even conservatives fleeing association with the GOP. Apparently many of them prefer to be called "independents" these days.
3. After 9/11, on learning that Bush ignoring the CIA's warnings on bin Laden, Americans were probably too scared to think about the implications. But he wouldn't get the benefit of the doubt twice. When Katrina was permitted to bring another great American city to its knees (despite clear warnings) Americans began worrying about what else might go wrong on Dubya's watch.
4. Gas prices? Although to me strictly secondary to the incompetence with which he's managed foreign and domestic affairs and the ocean of red ink he's created in the federal budget, the cost of running the family fleet of cars and SUVs is another political disaster for Dubya and the folks in charge of Congress.
5. It's no wonder the latest Harris Interactive poll gives Bush a 29% approval rating, down from 43% in January. He's starting to test areas that are rarely charted in presidential opinion polls.
6. And it's hard to pick up a paper these days without headlines about the latest Republican Governor, White House aide, or Member of Congress under indictment. (It's astounding that Dubya loses his Domestic Affairs adviser on shoplifting charges and it barely registers in the public consciousness because so many other much more important things are going so terribly wrong.) This is the most corrupt government and political party I recall in 40 years of watching politics. Amidst a sleazy scandal that put the American government up for sale to the highest bidder, both Tom Delay and Porter Goss walk the plank in the same week.
7. I'm shocked at how quickly it all started to fall apart for the GOP. When Delay and Goss committed public hari-kari it was almost immediately driven off the front pages by the revelation that Bush's NSA has been spying on every American without a Qwest telephone account. The death spiral has developed a momentum that I don't recall since Watergate.
8. Now consider what happened to Tony Blair's Labour Party in local elections last week. Labour lost more than 200 local council seats. In England, nobody makes any bones about it: the local results are based on public disgust with the national party.
9. Finally, even the dullard David Broder draws the connection between the national GOP disaster and the likely effect on the Fall 2006 Congressional elections. In yesterday's Washington Post he wrote: "Indiana politics was rocked last week by a story that went unnoticed outside the borders of the Hoosier state.
"In the May 2 Republican primary, state Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Garton of Columbus, a 36-year veteran and one of the most powerful legislators in the nation, was soundly beaten by Greg Walker, a young accountant making his first bid for any office...
"What happened in Indiana is a signal of the voter restlessness that imperils incumbents of both parties this year -- but especially the Republicans who control Congress."
10. The conservative meme is that Democrats can't localize the GOP's national problems. The liberal meme (before which conservatives also genuflect) is that the Democratic leadership is too incompetent to take advantage of the Republican implosion. We should give ourselves more credit. The Democratic leadership, operating from a position of weakness, has handled things pretty well.
The Republicans are running the Democrats' campaign for them. We should thank them; they're doing a pretty good job. As the late Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago once asked: "Why get in the way of a train wreck?"