Captives Of The Crazies
by digby
They've got nothing:
Republicans are widely viewed by the public as less competent than Democrats to handle issue ranging from health care to education and energy, according to internal polling presented to top GOP officials in Congress.
The same survey found President Barack Obama holds the support of a significant minority of self-described conservative, independent voters.
The Associated Press obtained partial results of the survey, which was conducted in late March by New Models, a firm with close ties to Republicans. GOP lawmakers in Congress have generally opposed Obama's early legislative agenda, voting with near unanimity against economic stimulus legislation and unanimously against a White House-backed budget that cleared Congress on Wednesday.
The survey found the public holds greater confidence in Democrats than in Republicans in handling most of the issues that are involved in Obama's legislative agenda.
Democrats were favored by a margin of 61 percent to 29 percent on education; 59 percent to 30 percent on health care and 59 percent to 31 percent on energy. Congress is expected to consider major legislation later this year in all three areas.
Democats were also viewed with more confidence in handling taxes, long a Republican strong suit. The only issue among nine in the survey where the two parties were rated as even was in the war on terror.
It was the hubris that put them over the edge, I think. The strutting, the arrogance, the pettiness with which they governed made their failure all the more obvious. Now they have lost the economic Republicans and even many national security Republicans which leaves them at the mercy of their tea bag dittoheads and the hard core social conservatives. As long as they have a stranglehold on the party it's going to be tough to build out from that.
They'll be back and sooner than we want if the economy stays stagnant too long or gets worse. After all, it wasn't that long ago that people were comparing Democrats to neutered farm animals. But they had it all, every branch of government, and they very publicly blew it in nearly every way possible from terrorist attacks, quagmires, catastrophic incompetence in a major natural disaster to full blown economic meltdown. It's hard to see them making an early comeback. But you never know --- things sometimes move very quickly and events have a way of shifting things. Still, at this moment, they are well and truly screwed.