What do the Republicans have to do to get their message back on track?
819115
I agree, sister.  I think once again, Rush is right.\n\nDoesn't it bite big-time to watch these dems parade when we know that the problem with the administration was too much liberal appeasement?
820988
Democrats cant deal with real issues. they have to revert to tactics such as the BIG LIE, distortions, smears, creating scandals, diversionary tactics , fear-mongering, class war-fare and history revision
773587
I believe they've been keeping them artificially low to try to give the American voter the warm fuzzies for the Republican party. . . any day now the CEO's will be starting to tweak things back to welcome the Dems into power.
910484
The Republicans are keeping their distance from him, \nwith good reason.
1076769
It is hard to get a conservatives who is taught to do as they are told and to stand by their father figure regardless of ones actions. The other reason is fear for their career. You have to point out that these republicans today in the White House are not the good old boy republicans like Eisenhower who had a slogan, 'Vote for Peace", "Vote for Eisenhower". That is all you can do, point out that these are not real republicans.
984867
Drop em like we dropped Republicans.\nBest advice.  Stick with the people that make you happy.
826152
If that's the plan, it better not work.\n\nYou think Karl Rove is the entire Republican Party?
1134930
The republican party is looking for issues that can carry them in the upcoming elections.\n\nIn 2000-2004, they struck a chord with gay marriages, and war on terrorism. But now, these issues are either non-issue, or infact, a drag on republican party - especially war on iraq.\n\nIn order to hold on to conservative, or near conservative vote bank, the next topic of interest is immigration. The fact is, illegal immigration and also legal immigration helps another bastion of republicans - industrialists, who want cheap labor.\n\nBut there are only so many rich industrialists, to a large population of white conservatives. Also, the appeal of immigration is also for many blacks/ hispanics, who are now naturalized, and dont want others like them to come in, and take away their jobs.\n\nThus, immigration is a good wedge point for republicans - get back the white conservatives, who may be drifting away becuase of Iraq, and also, get new voters - poorer blacks/ hispanics, who dont want more immigrants to come in.\n\nTherefore, suddenly every republican, and FOX news is talking about that immigration issue, while thousands continue to die in Iraq war, we continue to pollute the environment, we continue to run massive deficits, and the rich continue to get tax breaks, while the rest of america continues to loose essential services, and well paying jobs
835424
Republicans are grasping at straws
1085751
I wouldn't point it to GOP voters as much as the Religious Right who are overwhelmingly GOP. They're trying to win over the people they lost by the simplest tactical means. Problem is, many GOP are smart enough to realize they're being dooped.
368765
This administration is a day late and a dollar short on ideas. Americans have wised up now. FOX News blames everything on congress for their problems, or this week the FISA courts, and Democrats for a proposal to abolish FEMA. The GOP is engaging in the blame game big time, whoo, whoo, whoo, whine, and hiss an moan, oh woeies me, poor right wingers. They need Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh to ride in and save their mojo.
596313
I think that anyone that says dems have screwed up as much as Republicans needs to actually pay attention to what's happening...\n\nbut to answer your question... I'm not sure... there are a lot of Republican states out there that are going to vote for their republican Representative, even if the Representative is skull f*cking the decaying corpse of Jesus Christ himself on national tv... just saying...\n\nSo I think the dems are going to make progress... but it's tough to fight that kind of blind loyalty overall
897329
The checks and balances of our governmental system will not allow them to do this unilaterally.  The can apply pressure and have more ability to control the debates on what will be done but they still do not have the 2/3 to 3/4 majority needed to do things by themselves, they will need Republican cooperation.
897718
Hopefully voting the candidate will come back into practice again.\n\nIt used to be the norm and was effective.  There was always fringe members of the party (liberal republicans or blue dog democrats) who could swing enough votes either way to see the best was done.\n\nWith the past 1992 change in power, the GOP went to where it didn't matter how popular a bill was, it needed a "majority of the majority" which later grew into "A clear majority of the majority" to ever reach the floor for a vote - ie - a bill could have the support of over 70 senators and not reach a vote.  Even then an issue was sometimes buried if it was againt the parties platform.  This was accomplised 2 ways -  1. intimidation from the party leadership  2. control of campaign finances from the party leadership.  Because of this, unless the party was in power, it didn't matter what their stances were - if the issue wasn't in line with the main GOP platform, the issue would never come up, so it was important to have your rep part of the controlling party.\n\nHopefully this will come to an end.  The blue dog democrats have a lot of members now and are traditionally not afraid to take on the party leadership, while most of the leadership of the GOP have left or been swept aside.
983997
The Republicans lost because they became complacent. Sure they lowered taxes, saved the economy from a major recession, and took the battle to the terrorist those are all facts. What they didn’t do was keep the American people aware enough to buy into their plans going forward. Republicans did a bad job of communicating and leading the American people\n\nWhen people questioned the war in Iraq and they did not respond to their questions with facts, figures and examples of how things were going well. Instead they accused the people of being traitors and not supporting the troops. Instead of making an honest effort to communicate they said, “We’re doing a great job… now shut up.” That’s why Rumsfeld was the first to go after the election. It took a slap in the face to get their attention.\n\nThe Republicans let a pedophile run loose in the House and didn’t do anything. They should have exposed Foley immediately if not sooner after discovering his emails to House Pages. The Republicans lost the moral high ground on this and it might have been the single most important issue to bring down the Republicans in this election. It demonstrated how low they would stoop in order to stay in power. It was a great tragedy for those of us Republicans that find this type of behavior inexcusable. \n\nThe Democrats won and they don’t have a meaningful plan for anything. But people would rather hear “we can change things” than “shut up stupid.”\n\nI think we Republicans need to regroup and clean out the closet. Rumsfeld is a good start. Republicans need plans for social security, medical care for the middle class, the redistribution of wealth in Corporate America and a plan to address the illegal alien problem. Bush introduced plans for most of these and they were rejected by the Republicans. It makes me sick. We deserved to lose this election. We need to recapture the moral high ground and get our act together if we don’t want a Democratic President and House in 2008. It might be too late already...
763797
Republicans have a real problem here - they can't afford to let Kerry run his mouth uncontested, but they are skating on thin ice concerning Iraq with the nearing election. I would not want to be in a position trying to justify our being there (even though I feel that we need to stay at this point). Politicians are just slinging mud - when the overspray of mud hit the voters in the eye, the election can be affected drastically. Republicans need to be mindful of the shaky ground that they are on and proceed cautiously.
695104
They honestly don't deserve to do so, but the GOP has proven itself unreliable to truly govern.\n\nI still feel the GOP retains the edge, but it will be too thin to declare a mandate and they will have to deal with the Dems