Republicans May Be Vulnerable... But They Know They Can Count On Steve Israel's Incompetence To Hold The House For Them

Not even factoring in Pelosi saddling the DCCC with the most incompetent loser in the organization's inglorious history, the midterms are all set up for a Republican triumph. Conventional wisdom will point out that the president's party "always" loses the midterm following a second term victory and that Obama's popularity is sinking fast-- among Democrats as well as others. And, of course, the Republican state legislatures have gerrymandered districts all over the country-- particularly in North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, Georgia and Wisconsin-- to make it next to impossible for Democrats to make significant gains in the House. But... Politico founts of conventional wisdom, Jim Vanderhei and Mike Allen, begrudgingly find hope for Democrats in the despair of anonymous Republican sources.

"It is almost impossible," they assert, "to find an establishment Republican in town who’s not downright morose about the 2013 that has been and is about to be. Most dance around it in public, but they see this year as a disaster in the making, even if most elected Republicans don’t know it or admit it." Worse shape now, they're hearing, than the GOP was before the Great Rebranding and worse than "the day after the disastrous election." Short version-- "The party is hurting itself even more with the very voters they need to start winning back: Hispanics, blacks, gays, women and swing voters of all stripes. The few Republicans who stood up and tried to move the party ahead were swatted into submission: Speaker John Boehner on fiscal matters and Sen. Marco Rubio on immigration are the poster boys for this. Republicans are all flirting with a fall that could see influential party voices threatening to default on the debt or shut down the government-- and therefore ending all hopes of proving they are not insane when it comes to governance." They forgot to mention women voters. Nearly the whole GOP House caucus voted against the Violence Against Women Act. And then there are the out-of-control states the GOP dominates that are passing voter-unfriendly agendas-- like North Carolina.

Hispanics and African-Americans and most LGBT voters are lost to the GOP in the short term and they can live without them, Women and swing voters are another story. Even seniors are having second thoughts.

To voters from the center right to the far left, the GOP is now defined by resistance, intolerance, intransigence, and economics that would make even the Robber Barons blush. We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens:

• In 2010, seniors voted for Republicans by a 21 point margin (38 percent to 59 percent). Among seniors likely to vote in 2014, the Republican candidate leads by just 5 points (41 percent to 46 percent.)

• When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2011, 43 percent of seniors gave the Republican Party a favorable rating.  Last month, just 28 percent of seniors rated the GOP favorably. This is not an equal-opportunity rejection of parties or government-- over the same period, the Democratic Party’s favorable rating among seniors has increased 3 points, from 37 percent favorable to 40 percent favorable.

• When the Republican congress took office in early 2011, 45 percent of seniors approved of their job performance. That number has dropped to just 22 percent-- with 71 percent disapproving.

• Seniors are now much less likely to identify with the Republican Party. On Election Day in 2010, the Republican Party enjoyed a net 10 point party identification advantage among seniors (29 percent identified as Democrats, 39 percent as Republicans). As of last month, Democrats now had a net 6 point advantage in party identification among seniors (39 percent to 33 percent).

• More than half (55 percent) of seniors say the Republican Party is too extreme, half (52 percent) say it is out of touch, and half (52 percent) say the GOP is dividing the country. Just 10 percent of seniors believe that the Republican Party does not put special interests ahead of ordinary voters.

Is this going to turn itself into actual Republican defeats in Senate and House elections next year? No one knows, but Republicans are especially worried about losing Georgia and Kentucky, two pretty red states where Obama did miserably but where Democratic candidates for the Senate are extremely competitive. And in the House, there is little doubt that if the DCCC wasn't saddled with a loser like Steve Israel, there could be a real swing coming, with Democratic victories in seats Israel is refusing to even look at.

Republicans are in jeopardy of convincing voters they simply cannot govern. Their favorable ratings are terrible and getting worse. But there is broad concern it could go from worse to an unmitigated disaster this fall. Most urgently, according to a slew of key Republicans we interviewed, conservative GOP senators have got to give up their insistence that the party allow the government to shut down after Sept. 30 if they don’t get their way on defunding Obamacare.

The quixotic drive-- led by Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)-- is part of Rubio’s effort to make up with the conservative base after he was stunned by the backlash over his deal-making on immigration. Pollsters say the funding fight makes Republicans look even more obstructionist, and causes voters to worry about the effect a shutdown would have on their own finances.

Whit Ayres of North Star Opinion Research, who has been drilling down on this issue for the conservative public-opinion group Resurgent Republic, said: “Shutting down the government is the one way that Republicans can turn Obamacare from a political advantage to a political disadvantage in 2014.”