Last night as I was walking past the TV on my way upstairs to blog I heard a Republican comment on the November mid-term elections: "A lot could happen between now and then."

Trapped not within their ideology, but within their candidates and other incumbents, Republicans are in trouble and making foot-shooting an art form.

Hotline On Call: RNC Memo Warns GOPers Not To Distance Themselves From Bush: "March 28, 2006
RNC Memo Warns GOPers Not To Distance Themselves From Bush

Republican pollster Jan van Lohuizen, in a memo written for RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, warns that if members of Congress try to drive a wedge between themselves and Pres. Bush, it'd be akin to adding weight to an anchor. GOpers are 'W Brand Republicans' whether they like it or not. And van Louhizen, who has polled (often secretly) for the Bush White House under the RNC aegis for years, is worried about low turnout.

Time Magazine first reported on the memo this weekend, but the full text is below.

---------------
Memorandum

To: Ken Mehlman
From: Jan van Lohuizen
Date: March 3, 2006
Re: Bush -- Congressional Republicans

Per our conversation, we took another look at the way voters, Republicans specifically, link President Bush and Republicans in the House and the Senate. There are several points worth making:

1. President Bush continues to have the strong loyal support of Republican voters. Despite slippage in approval ratings among all voters, the President's job approval among Republicans continues to be very high. Most members will be elected with between 80% and 100% of their support coming from Republicans. I don't see that Republicans driving a wedge between themselves and the President is a good election strategy.

2. My read of the current environment is that our problem will be turnout. '06 could become an election like '82 or '84. In '82 Republicans showed up at relatively normal turnout rates, while Democrats, because they were angry, showed up at abnormally high turnout rates. In '94, Republican turnout was elevated, while Democratic turnout was depressed. We have every reason to believe '06 could become the inverse of '82. We don't see signs of a depressed Republican turnout yet, but we have every reason to believe Democrats will turn out in high numbers. Anything we do to depress turnout, by not running as a unified party for instance, could very well lead to serious consequences in November.

3. The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party. We are now brand W. Republicans. The following chart shows the extremely close correlation between the Presidentâ€^TMs image and overall ratings of the party.

President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the '08 nomination. Attacking the President is counter productive for all Republicans, not just the candidates launching the attacks. If he drops, we all drop."

This is the reason why just who Democrats nominate in primaries is not as significant as just how we and they manage the post-primary campaign all the way to November. The talking points remain unchanged. The current version of dominant Republican conservatism is a discredited mess and there is NOT a lot that can happen before the elections except Republican strategic attempts at political deception and distraction.

The overriding theme stares us and them in the face and we ignore hammering that theme at our own risk.

The Republican Party deserves impeachment as much as does the President and Vice President.

The failed Republican approach:

(1)
Fighting the war on terror while remaining strictly stuck with the Republican Tax Cut Experiment.

(2)
Fighting a war on terror that no longer has logic, common sense or any kind of national success story attached to it.

(3)
Figthing a war on terror with an eye single to how to incorporate strategy and tactics in such a way as to create exceedling lucrative opportunities to corporate supporters of the man and his party. Halliburton is a liability that proud Republicans cannot hang their electoral hats on.

Halliburton represents Republican disaster-handling at it's stupidest - borne out by the same approach to Louisiana and post-Katrina rehabilitation.

(4)
Republican child-abuse ...
The national debt reflects an abusive act this country's Republican leadership has committed on our children and grandchildren.

The Republican Party is the current grand perpetrator of long-term child abuse in this country, inflicting a financial burden and the consequences of selfish opportunism on our innocent posterity.

(5)
Lack of health care and opposition to universal health care is part and parcel of the conservative myth about a free-market system in which employers - going back to post WWII economics. Back then it was assumed that capitalism and American employers could shoulder the responsibility for health coverage for all American workers and prove to the world the wholesome power of unrestricted free-markets.

That assumption has proven to be a disaster and corporate America, primarily a Republican sponsor rewarded by grateful Republicans, has been left at a competitive disadvantage globally and unable to resist the temptation to become competitive by robbing workers of both job and health security.

This circumstance involved both parties going back to 1946, but most recently, those in power have moved the problem to its extreme absurdity.

(6)
The Medicare Prescription Drug problem as resolved by blind, stubborn and foolish Republican politicians is a disaster and can be unequivocally laid at the feet of every Republican candidate.
Medicare D is PRECISELY what being a Republican stands for.

(7)
Republicans must run for re-election defending the federal budgeting priorities and tax cuts that openly have reduced economic, medical and educational security of our most vulnerable citizens. We must insist in our public questioning, blogging and activism that any Republican candidate defend the Bush budgeting priorities.

(8)
Bush is still posturing as some kind of "education President" who, despite the compassionate self-label, has left children behind, imposed terrible burdens on public schools, and failed to provide the necessaries to make his compassionate promises come true. Republican candidates must defend this a somehow wise and effective. They can't.

(9)
Prime Republican bread and butter is the distraction of the pseudo Christian morality that makes political mountains out of molehills at the expense of that with which any religious believer ought to be most focussed: Compassion, justice and equality.

Any Republican blowhard who throws up one of the pseudo "moral" issues needs to be immediately confronted with a question about torture, injustice and inequality inside America and globally.

"That's nice, Mr. Republican candidate, but what does your personal morality prompt in you regarding torture, injustice, inequality and the lack of compassion your party and your radical religious right supporters ignore so pointedly?"

We can knock down the entire facade of the Republican party's pretended patriotism, conservatism and regard for humanity in general because it was built on bull, bluff, personal political chicanery and swift-bloat lies.

Let them continue to tie themselves to Bush and exhort each other not to dis their president. The party deserves indictment and impeachment as much as the president to whom they willing joined themselves at the hip.

Both are one and the same as guilty and accountable as hell.

Cross posted at Daily Kos

© Arthur Ruger 2006