Party divided? Splintering? Fractured? Voters not sure how they'll vote? Are pretty damn sure the opposition is going to win in 2008? Are less than satisfied with the candidates for 2008?
So what else is new? Factions! Disagreement! The same old Democrats!
Except the CBS/New York Times poll shows that all this splintering and fracturing stuff refers to Republicans now.
In a survey that brought to life the party’s anxieties about keeping the White House, Republicans said they were concerned that their party had drifted from the principles of Ronald Reagan, its most popular figure of the past 50 years.
Forty percent of Republicans said they expected Democrats to take control of the White House next year, compared with 46 percent who said they believed a Republican would win. Just 12 percent of Democrats said they thought the opposing party would win the White House.
Even as Republican voters continued to support President Bush and the war in Iraq, including the recent increase in the number of American troops deployed there, they said a candidate who backed Mr. Bush’s war policies would be at a decided disadvantage in 2008. And they suggested that they were open to supporting a candidate who broke with the president on a crucial aspect of his Iraq strategy.
Bottom line: Republicans may not vote, or may vote in much smaller numbers in 2008.
“There is going to be so much antiwar in the news media that there is no way the Republicans are going to win,” Randy Miller, 54, a Republican from Kansas, said in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. “The Democrats will win because of the war. I think the Republicans just won’t vote.”
