Amy's Robot

Republican identity crisis

What is going on with the Republican party? The Democrats are more or less rolling along just fine with a handful of interesting yet predictable candidates that voters seem pretty happy with. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose for the Republicans.

I don't even care that much which Democrat gets the nomination; the Republicans are a thouasnd times more interesting. Who are those people going to nominate? No idea. AP reports today that 23% of registered Republicans don't like any of the candidates, which is up from 14% who said the same thing in June.

Here's what's going on with the leading candidates:

• Giuliani: His popularity has been in steady decline, from 35% in March, to 27% in June, to 21% now. Still the front-runner, but time is not on his side. Republicans are more likely to say they like no candidates than that they like him.
• Romney is spending more money than he's raising, and last quarter he loaned $6 million to his campaign from personal funds, something he said would be "akin to a nightmare". His support is at about 11%.
• McCain is in free-fall. Almost completely out of money, and his staff is out the door. It's over.
• That leaves Fred Thompson, whose support has been steady at about 19%. He'll probably get a surge when he finally announces he's running. But really: an ex-Senator? Pretty doubtful.

The biggest Republican candidates are all so different from each other that they seem to have split the base into fragmented clusters that won't unite behind any one person, and also created a growing base of dissatisfied voters. Without some Karl Rove figure pressing the hot buttons, it's going to be hard to mobilize these people next year.

So who's going to get the nomination? Some are guessing it'll be a Giuliani/Thompson ticket. Your guess is as good as mine.

categories: Politics
posted by amy at 3:35 PM | #