Considering that there are fewer genuine swing voters in the voter pool, if we were really in the midst of a Republican wave, conservative candidates wouldn’t need to lean left to win. Yet several candidates running in the most hotly contested races are doing just that.
These hardheaded Republican candidates are wisely eschewing the assumption that Greg Walden embraced, which was presuming Obama’s that low poll numbers are proof that a rightward shifting electorate is eager to vote in more Republicans.
The problem with that analysis is it ignores the Republican Party’s own poll numbers, which are demonstrably worse than Obama’s and those of the Democratic Party. GOP favorability is generally in the mid-30s. In the most recent CBS poll, Republicans scraped bottom at 29 percent, while Democrats earned a relatively healthier 41 percent.
Republican insiders are aware of the hurdles they’ve created for themselves. As Politico reported last week, “Nearly a year after the government shutdown, Republicans privately say the party’s tattered public image is dragging down candidates in key races.” Two years of heavy obstruction, minimal cooperation, and little idea generation has cemented the public impression of Republicans as unserious about governing, and unreformed, despite the economic debacle that capped the George W. Bush presidency.
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