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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
As the fall congressional campaign gets off to an early start, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Republican strategy will be putting most of the party's eggs in one anti-Obama basket.
Although the
Gingrich, who in January proposed a new version of the contract, has since started up a group called American Solutions that looks suspiciously like a vehicle for a Gingrich for President campaign in 2010. This is so despite his inglorious resignation as speaker after he was bested by President Bill Clinton in a showdown over the closing of many government facilities in late 1995.
Meanwhile, the
Instead, under the congressional minority leadership of Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner, the
The Democrats, meanwhile, are finally getting more help from Obama, whose speeches at rallies and fund-raisers are going beyond blaming his
The DNC site lists the supposed amalgam's agenda as pure Party of No -- for repeal of health care, Wall Street reform,
Still, most of the public-opinion polls and nose-counting projections continue to forecast enough Democratic losses of
Even if Obama is right, the practical political question is whether there remains enough time between now and November for his cautious optimism to be borne out. Large corporations continue to sit on fat profits and prefer to rely on the higher productivity squeezed out of fewer workers, rather than resume hiring on a sufficient scale to generate a real sense of national recovery.
The Republican leaders are betting on that not happening to a degree that will materially change the jobless picture in the next three months. Meanwhile, the message coming from them, and particularly from the tea party movement, whether or not it really has become "an institutional part" of the
As the incumbent president, he cannot expect otherwise and must defend his record at a time of diminishing public support and an impatient electorate. His best hopes beyond a rapid economic brightening may be memories of Bush's last dismal years and the failure so far of the naysayers to offer a convincing package of alternatives.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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2010 Elections: Republicans Running on Empty | Politics
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