GOP Control of Congress Under
Threat
NPR
October 6, 2005
All Things Considered, October 6, 2005 ยท The uproar among many
conservatives over President Bush's choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme
Court only added to the long list of political troubles engulfing the
Republican Party these days. An unpopular war, high gasoline prices, the
response to Hurricane Katrina, and a series of ethics problems are making
Republicans worried about next year's elections.
Ask any optimistic Democrat about the Republican troubles and they'll tell
you it feels a lot like 1994 or 1974 -- two other election cycles when members
of the majority party were swept out by a wave of anti-incumbent disgust.
"At this point what you'd have to say is that there are enough parallels to
the 1993-94 cycle that Republicans ought to be very, very nervous," says former
Republican congressman Vin Weber, now an informal adviser to the Bush
administration.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agrees that the Republican Party is at an
important crossroads. "I think we're either going to be the party of very
dramatic change, or we're going to be the party that tries to explain and
defend failure," he says.
Political analyst David Gergen, who has worked for both Republican and
Democratic presidents, has seen his share of political sea changes. "It strikes
me that the more serious implications of what's been happening over the last
few months is not whether the party control will change in 2006, but whether
the conservative effort to build a long term, durable majority, which was one
of the main enterprises of the Bush administration, whether... that's now hit a
wall," he says.
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