The New Republic

I think it is more likely that Bond just wants to retire.

And I'd wager a box of Krispy Kreme creme filled glazed doughnuts that Jeb isn't running for Florida senate because he is going to make a run for prez.

Besides, the Republicans won't be having ANY comeback years until they do something about this vicious case of Cranial-Rectal inversion they've developed.

- GSpinks

January 9, 2009 at 1:18pm

Poor saps.

- Bukharin

January 9, 2009 at 1:22pm

It sort of doesn't matter what the externals are here or whether any given Republican chooses to run. The Senate's "Class III" is up for election in 2010, and that class of 34 members has a 19-15 Republican majority. Even if the GOP has a very good midterm election, there's just not a lot of room for them to improve on their standing in that Senate class. I'm pretty sure no party has ever won 29 out of 34 Senate seats in any given class, which is what Republicans would need to achieve in 2010 to win control of the Senate.

In fact, the GOP's 19-15 Senate Class II edge is large enough (and anomalous enough) that even in an otherwise good year for Republicans, they would be at significant risk of _losing_ seats in the Senate. Conversely, the Democratic edge of 24-9 in Senate Class I, which will be up for election in 2012, makes significant Republican gains likely even in the event of a landslide Obama reelection.

- rhubarbs

January 9, 2009 at 1:41pm

This Republican hopes the projection is right, because that would mean that the Obama administration has been a success.  Right about now the country could use some success.

But there are plenty of opportunities for failure or bad luck.  The tensions between the Democratic center and left are beginning to show on economic policy.  The Ds all hated Bush's anti-terrorism policies; no doubt they will change them.  But one big terrorist attack could put them badly behind the political eightball, whether or not such an event is fairly attributable to their actions or inactions.  If the Iraqi situation turns south during the next two years, they'll get the fingers pointed at them.  The media won't have Bush and Cheney (or Rumsfeld) to target anymore; the new targets of opportunity will be in their own beloved Democratic party.  Then there are odiferous due bills to be paid.  Card-check will never be enacted but Obama will be obliged to pimp for legislation opposed by a huge majority of Americans.  I could go on and on.

If the Republicans are smart, they'll lay back in the weeds:  support tax relief for the middle class and main street businesses, and blame the Ds for tax rises for the affluent;  tell Wall Street to look to the Ds for restraint on re-regulation since they financed the Ds return to power;  try to look like the party of fiscal responsibility again.  Would I bet on them being smart?  No more than GSpinks' box of Krispy Kremes.

- lsernoff

January 9, 2009 at 2:22pm

I have only one quibble with lsernoff's advice for the GOP: "try to look like the party of fiscal responsibility again." Which I hear a lot lately, but which always makes me say something along these lines:

WTF? It's like, dude, I was born in the Nixon administration, and never in my lifetime have Republicans been the party of fiscal responsibility. No one born after 1954 is old enough to remember a time when a Republican president or congressional majority actually displayed even the slightest interest in fiscal responsibility. I know that Republicans _talk_ a lot about fiscal responsibility, and I know that a lot of people who are both fiscally conservative and deeply stupid vote for Republicans on the basis of their fiscal-responsibility talk. But facts are facts, and in point of historical fact the GOP is not now and has not in the last half-century been a party of fiscal responsibility.

I'm willing to let Republicans slide on a lot of their claims -- such as opposing abortion, which they do only if you regard "presiding over increases in the actual number of abortions while promising to outlaw the procedure at some later date" as "opposing" -- but the "fiscal responsibility" lie is just too much to stomach.

- rhubarbs

January 9, 2009 at 3:07pm

It's a hell of a lot easier to point fingers at what is wrong than to actually fix them.  The Democrats are about to learn that the hard way.  All they've done for the past 8 years is stand in front of history and yell "Halt!" Between "torture" and wiretapping and Bush's Social Security Reform and No Child Left Behind and the Afghanistan and Iraq war, all they've done is scream about how everything was wrong.  No one likes a complainer.  The general public sees these politicians for what they are - whiny little do-nothings who can only point at all the things that are wrong without actually proposing legitimate ways to fix them.

- jwl2672

January 9, 2009 at 4:17pm

jwl writes first that Democrats are complainers, then that "nobody likes a complainer."

Given that a Democrat just won more votes for president than any candidate in history, and given that Democrats just won larger majorities in both houses of Congress than the GOP ever held since winning  control in 1994, then it must be the case either that Democrats are not complainers, or that everyone actually does like a complainer.

- rhubarbs

January 9, 2009 at 6:46pm