Grim Days Ahead for GOP Campaigners

02/10/2007

Paul Munnis


Among GOP supporters the candidacy of Senator John McCain is crashing and burning.

Unable to get neo-con support he cannot attract needed support from the GOP Party base.

Without that support he cannot raise funds nor manage to garner sufficient polling support to prove his viability as a candidate.

As the McCain candidacy sinks then Governor Tim Pawlenty’s hopes for a future in politics also declines. With the GOP out of power the prospects for 2008 look grim and McCain is likely to not make the cut. Pawlenty has to now look at his own remaining term and acknowledge his dim political future. Pawlenty has peaked-out in Minnesota and he has no where to go in Washington except maybe to audition for employment in a lobbying firm.

This is leaving Rudi Guliani as the heir apparent to the political mantle of GOP Presidential Candidate. The trouble is that Rudi is not embraced by the GOP Party base either. They recognize his lack of neo-con credentials, his general lack of experience in government, and his narrow appeal to mainstream Americans. At this point Guliani is little more than the head of a PR firm hoping for a miracle and a slice of the campaign funds that flow to Presidential candidates..

This is leaving the GOP with little to battle the Democrats with. They have resorted to whining about airplanes for Nancy Pelosi as they desperately search for some issue to turn Americans against Democrats.

Recent polls suggest that voters are saying that Congress needs to get on with the job, end the war in Iraq, bring home the troops, and redirect the American government budget to invest in America’s future. That creates time pressure for Democrats but spells curtains for the GOP neo-con agenda.

Congress hears the message and that includes people in the GOP. The problem is that doesn’t change the ideological neo-con base and that is the support needed to mount a Party offering for 2008.

The GOP is faced with a daunting task, they must not only repair the base of their Party but they must then do Party building again from the ground up. They have little to work with that is acceptable to Americans. They must therefore reinvent themselves and do it by November 2008. Prospects are not good for the GOP.