The Race Is On: 2010 Midterm Elections

The GOP has now drunk the Kool-Aid. Having elected the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), the Republican Party is now having to deal with the consequences of a man that is off-message with the Congressional leadership and heavily promoting a book that Michael Steele says is the blueprint for a GOP comeback. Nevermind that Steele has presided over the shrinking of the RNC's finances, to the point where it now trails the Democratic National Committee (DNC) going into the 2010 midterm elections. With the first black President of the United States currently in office, it would be political suicide for them to fire Steele now, which is what many Republicans desperately want to do. It's clear that he is incompetent, and his thin resume should be an indication of his political acumen (Steele served one term as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and lost a U.S. Senate race against Democrat Ben Cardin in 2006.)*. If that weren't bad enough, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the GOP campaign arm in the House, has less money than its Democratic counterpart. And Republican retirements continue to outpace Democratic ones in both the House and Senate. Given that the Democrats are soon to pass health care reform, President Obama will have a big victory with which to move forward on a jobs package, a climate change bill, and immigration reform. What's more, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was designed to switch into high gear in 2010, just in time for the midterms. No wonder Republicans are trying to play up their chances so much: they have no program or ideas to counter the Democrats, they continue to be less popular than the Democratic Party in every poll, and they have much to fear from tea party candidates running to the right of the Republican establishment in the upcoming primaries. For good or ill, the GOP does not have a lock on the tea party movement, which is inspired by radical conservatism. With the opposition party adrift, the Democrats have had to be the grown ups and run the country. They've done a lot of things that make me mad as hell, so don't think I'm a true-blue liberal. I oppose teachers unions because they stand in the way of education reform in California, and I think that tort reform - done the right way - could help bring down the astronomical cost of doctors' malpractice insurance. And though I don't see eye-to-eye with President Obama on his continuation of Bush's policy of rescuing the financial industry, I think he is a helluva lot better than the alternative. I'll take thoughtful and charismatic over bumbling and stupid any day.

*Compare that to former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, who served eleven years as Governor of Vermont and then ran a highly successful campaign for President in late 2003 by opposing the Iraq War and collecting small contributions given through the Internet; this provided the blueprint to Obama's eventual campaign victory. Dean then promoted a "50 state strategy" during his four years as DNC chairman; the Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress in 2006 and elected Barack Obama as President and widened their Congressional majority in 2008.