Good Tidings from the Weekly Standard

Rare is the occasion that Fred Barnes can brighten. But on the occasion of this morning, this he has done, with his latest addition to the Weekly Standard titled, "Gloomy Republicans: For good reason?"

After reading it, one can only assume the question mark was inserted by other WS editors as an afterthought of readership appeasement, because Barnes leaves little doubt -- for numerous, and actually quite good, reasons -- that he's as down in the partisan dumps as he can get.

Team GOP, quarterbacked by an overconfident John McCain, just ain't lookin' good for 2008, says Barnes. In fact, he writes, "Prospects for Republicans in the 2008 election ... look grim."

On the presidential front, Barnes reminds his happy warriors of 20 percent that "More than 80 percent of Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction." His cloistered minority, huddled as it usually is around comforting and self-congratulatory talk radio, tends to forget this. But it's a statistic with a two- or three-year history of linear and upward direction, and since the man responsible for it isn't available to take the electoral beating, his would-be Republican successor is the likely whipping boy.

George W. Bush never evolved from the bumbling governor he was in the 1990s. This, of course, Barnes refuses to concede. But it's also what voters have come to realize en masse, albeit eight years too late. Hence, says Barnes, "Bush's job performance rating is stuck in the low 30s, a level of unpopularity that weakens the Republican case for holding the White House in 2008."

I'm not sure that it logically weakens the Republican "case." One man's performance is not necessarily an indicator of another man's merely because they both possess the same party label, as, undoubtedly, McCain will strenuously point out. Perhaps Barnes meant only to convey that, historically speaking, Bush's low performance rating weakens Republican prospects.

In fact, Republicans could turn the case on its head. Which is to say, if they really wanted to get creative in their efforts to hold the White House -- and who knows, their prospects may dim so low it may actually come to this -- they could inventively argue that, Hey, we created this mess, so by God it's our manly duty to clean it up. I must admit this has a certain appeal.

The thought of the non-responsible party having to conjure order out of the domestic and foreign anarchy that is now nearly institutionalized by and after eight years of Republican misrule is almost too horrifyingly dispiriting. Woe to the poor devil who inherits our welter of headaches at home and abroad. And he who inherits will soon altogether inherit, as well, the blame for Republicans' original sins.

But, back to the present and Fred Barnes' thunderingly depressed missive to the faithful.

He notes, for instance, that a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC survey found that "McCain was ... stronger than Obama among independent voters (46 percent to 35 percent)." These, says Barnes, "are terrific numbers," but wouldn't you know it? -- "they aren't enough." Even assuming Obama fares no better with independents between now and November (which is a poor assumption), McCain still loses, observes Barnes.

"The explanation for this seeming paradox is quite simple: The Republican base has shrunk. In 2008, there are fewer Republicans," which vastly increases McCain's need for independents -- you know, those solidly among the 80 percent who've lost their patience with national train wrecks and those who engineer them. Furthermore there has been -- thanks to Barack Obama -- a "huge increase in Democratic voters in 2008 that has widened the party's advantage in registration by millions of voters."

Barnes quotes a party insider: "It's the erosion in party affiliation that's pulling McCain down." The insider, reports Branes, "fears Republican leaders and McCain campaign officials 'don't realize the trouble they're going to be in'" -- the trouble, that is, they are now in, now that Obama has considerably more freedom to fight the real enemy.

On the Congressional level, Barnes is no more optimistic. He sympathetically presents the views of one smartly skedaddling-from-Washington party leader who "thinks Republicans have made little headway in improving their tarnished image."

Adds Barnes, insightfully, I think:"The worst news for Republicans in recent weeks has been the capture by Democrats of two Republican House seats in special elections in Illinois and Louisiana.... Success in special elections usually foreshadows success in the next general election. This was precisely what happened in the months before the 1994 Republican landslide when Republicans won Democratic seats in special elections."

So all in all, old Gloomy Gus Barnes made my day. His galloping sense of melancholy, resignation and hopelessness was uplifting indeed. Not once did he venture that any of the above could be turned around in time. And this is important to keep in mind, in this, the still-bloody aftermath of so much internal Democratic warfare.