Trustees undertake Remedial Steps to Stop GOP Decline

All technical indicators (independent of the more publicized but inherently transitory public opinion polls) quantitatively examining this year’s political performance pointedly suggest the Republican Party’s organizational responsiveness is deteriorating so precipitously — that unless immediately arrested — GOP Congressional and legislative losses will be so substantial as to significantly marginalize Republican participation in Federal and multiple state policy deliberations for at least four to six years. This predicament renders the GOP unable to capitalize on the inevitable favorable public opinion upward shifts by virtue of its extremely weakened organizational structure unable to marshal resources to adequately respond.

This deleterious condition, while significantly exasperated by significantly adverse public events, remains the result of the GOP’s institutional failure to adequately embrace the significant paradigm shift from centralized command-dominated, television based campaigns to decentralized command, grassroots-initiated, Internet campaigns which began in the late 1990s and rapidly matured in the 2006 elections. The Republicans’ organizational defects could become more pointedly pronounced if as pollsters imply, Senator Barak Obama’s spectator rise in the September opinions polls which implies the inevitability of his election invites the renewed public scrutiny that reduces the very surge that initially propelled his gains in the polls.

The GOP’s organizational defects, more than prevailing shift in public opinion influenced by current events which are always an oscillating condition not representative of underlying political philosophies, is so precipitous as to suggest the potentiality of an electoral loss that will disintegrate into a rout not observed since the Great Depression, the last time the GOP experienced back-to-back losses of greater than 10 U.S. House seats and five U.S. Senate seats. The GOP lost 40% of its U.S. House strength in the 8-year period from 1930 through 1938, when its caucus membership declined from 218 to 88 House Republicans. 1930 also saw the GOP lose 8 U.S. Senate seats, followed by ten additional seats in 1932, 11 in 1934 and finally nine more seats lost in 1936. The Democrats retained Congressional control for the next 60 years, outside of two brief GOP interregnums for one term each under Truman and Eisenhower. Concurrently, Democrats maintained a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for 14 years.

In 2006, the GOP lost 30 Congressional seats and six U.S. Senate seats. If current opinion polls are representative of the November 4th election, the Republicans will lose another five to seven Senate seats and an additional 13 to 20 House seats. This represents a potential percentage of party changeover of approximately 5.01%. The percentage of party changeover in the House in 2006 was 7.59%. Anytime percentage of party changeover in the U.S. House greater than 5% anticipates significant long term consequences for the party suffering such loss. Likewise, in the Senate, the GOP percentage of party changeover was 10%. If it suffers such as loss in 2008 as to represent an aggregate percentage of party changeover greater than 13%, which a loss of at least three seats will represent, the GOP will be organizationally unable to regain U.S. Senate control for at least twelve years, as Senators are elected to six-year terms.

These trends are not limited to Federal elections, but are mirrored in many state legislative political balances, which is all the more disconcerting as 2010 electoral results cement electoral gains through decennial redistricting, which could represent the potentiality of party changeover of an additional 25 Congressional seats. The aforementioned GOP percentage losses in the Congress resulted in a the Democrats controlling the majority of state legislative chambers for 54 years, interrupted only twice when both Eisenhower and Nixon were first elected, although such losses percentage wise were not as significant as the Congressional losses until the 1974 Watergate elections, where the GOP lost 75% of legislative elections. The GOP was able rapidly recover by 1978 to sustain itself until it was able to obtain and retain a majority of state capitals since the 1994 “Contract with America” elections.

However, in 2006, the GOP gain control of only one state legislative chamber, while the Democrats gained 10 chambers, in their pickup of 334 state house and senate seats, apparently the most one-sided gain in modern political history. The 2006 election witnessed Democrats moving ahead of Republicans by more than 665 seats out of the 7382 or just under 55% of all legislative seats. These 2006 losses were on top of the GOP losing 25 seats in 2004, despite the fact that historically the party winning the presidency gained legislative seats in 11 of the 17 elections since 1940, with an average pickup of 125 legislative seats.

In 2008, there are legislative elections in 44 states with a total of 5,824 legislative seats up for grabs. That represents 79% of the 7,382 total legislative seats of which 3,993 are Democratic legislators, and 3,310 are Republican. It is important to observe that 642 state Senators elected in 2008 remain in office to effectuate 2010 Congressional and legislative redistricting. A shift of only one seat represents change of party control in nine chambers (the Alaska Senate, Maine Senate, Montana Senate, Nevada Senate, New York Senate, Indiana House, Montana House, Oregon House, and Pennsylvania House). Additional state houses in Michigan, Ohio and Texas, are all close enough to be in play. Democrats are targeting six GOP controlled chambers: the Delaware House, Montana House, Nevada Senate, New York Senate, Ohio House, and Wisconsin Assembly. The GOP were targeting six Democratic controlled chambers: the Indiana House, Maine Senate, Michigan House, Pennsylvania House, Tennessee House and the Wisconsin Senate. If significant Republican legislative losses occur similar, the GOP will be at an extreme disadvantage in essential Northern industrial states.

Likewise, the gubernatorial landscape is not promising. The Republican Governors Association forecasts a worst-case 2010 loss of 33 gubernatorial elections, resulting in Democrats controlling 37 governor offices to the GOP holding only 13. This factor is important when considering that four out of the last five Presidents were previously governors.  There are 10 term limited governor’s offices held by Democrats, 8 by Republicans. There are 10 non-term limited Democratic seats, 8 held by Republicans. If current trends of traditional GOP states leaning Democratic persist, the GOP’s pickup of governors may be limited only to Wyoming, while losing California, Florida, Hawaii, Georgia, Minnesota and Nevada to the Democrats.  These losses are in addition to GOP held Missouri and North Carolina gubernatorial offices at risk of loss this year.

The absence of a Republican organizational capability sufficient to counter-balance the Democrats’ increased organizational strength has already demonstrated the adverse consequences to the GOP by the significant decline in registered Republican voter turnout as measured by the party’s TLI, Turnout Loyalty Index in thirty-three states in 2006. Voter registration trends in 2008, particularly in battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, are reaching the tipping point where reliance on anything but extraordinarily high Republican turnout will be numerically insufficient to answer average Democratic turnout, which all prevailing opinion polls suggest is not a luxury the GOP can currently anticipate.

While not disavowing the Trustees’ own partisan interests, it remains indisputable that a substantially weakened two-party system is never in the public interest and represents a grave disservice to constitutional principles of governance essential for national security and economic growth. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision last term correctly refusing to apply rules of equity to internal party disputes, constitutional law still suggests the GOP’s self-inflicted attenuation diminishes the First Amendment rights of all registered Republicans, as the party downward spiral renders it institutionally incompetent to adequately enforce its party principles in public policy deliberations and formation.

The GOP’s apparent resignation to concede organizational dominance to the Democrats in 2006 and again in 2008 translates into the inescapable reality of aggregating for 2010 the investment not made in 2006 and 2008. Anemic donor support for party organizational structure fails to appreciate the reality that such organizational underpinnings remains required to constitute a sufficient buttress to withstand oscillating public opinion shifts caused by extrinsic factors such as economic or international crises, which while inflicting stress, cannot become a smokescreen for the GOP’s organizational forfeiture in the 2008 election. Likewise, ignoring organizational support only aggravates the financial advantage which such organization has afforded the Democrats in this election cycle, which according to latest accountings, shows Senator Obama outspending Senator McCain three to one in specific battleground states.

What is equally disturbing that the GOP organizational deficiencies become self-fulfilling prophesy generating a pronounced panic which merely aggravates downward spiral, Senator McCain’s announced pullout in Michigan and unannounced pullout in Pennsylvania contributes to the sense of inevitability of his Democratic opponent, which emboldens the balance of the Democratic ticket.

In part to provide a remedial solution to the GOP’s deleterious condition and in response to extrinsic financial constraints imposed by prevailing atmosphere of anemic donor response, the Trustees of the Republican Leadership Trust have readjusted their strategic offering to Republican Party committees to provide a preventive opportunity to arrest the rapidly accelerating declines in GOP organizational capacity, in order that the party will be able to capitalize on expected narrowing of the Presidential opinion polls while aligning itself to immediately commence post-election party-rebuilding without the burdensome imposition of vexatious demands on scarce resources.

Specifically, the Trustees seek to raise the maximum allowable Levin funds of $10,000 for targeted counties first within Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia; thereafter specific counties within Michigan, Pennsylvania through a nationwide webcast to be aired Sunday, November 2nd at 9:00 A.M. local time per each time zone. The Trustees seek to raise $640,000 for Colorado, minimally $670,000 (and up to $3,790,000 per each of the 379 city Republican committees) for Florida, $160,000 for Nevada, up to $600,000 for New Hampshire (30 towns within Hillsborough County, 11 cities and towns in Belkap County, 19 towns in Carroll County), $330,000 for New Mexico, and minimally $500,000 each for Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia; all for a total $4,900,000 in addition to raising reserves for the Trustees to assist the GOP in the essential 2010 gubernatorial and legislative campaigns. Because Levin funds are exempt from the McCain-Feingold state party affiliation rules, with their own per committee $10,000 limits, such remains the only viable option readily available for rescuing state, county and local Republican Party committees.

Click here for your copy of Pennsylvania Republicans Confronting Self-Inflicted Meltdown analysis by the Trustees.

© Copyright 2008 The Trustees of the Republican Leadership Trust. All rights reserved. Paid for by the Trustees of the Republican Leadership Trust. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.