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A Restive Base Throws the GOP Off Balance

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Times Staff Writer

Republican leaders, worried that their party’s conservative base is demoralized, lean hard on one reed of hope these days: Election day is almost six months away, leaving lots of time to get voters mobilized.

But there already are signs that the surly mood of the party’s core supporters is taking a toll around the country -- in morale, in fundraising and in early election contests.

In the Rocky Mountains, a registered Republican was so dissatisfied that he wrote a $26,700 check to the Democrats’ Senate campaign committee.

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In San Diego, Republicans worry that conservatives unhappy with the GOP candidate for a vacant House seat will stay home rather than vote in the June special election.

In Pennsylvania’s primary last week, conservative Republicans unseated more than a dozen state legislators, in large part because critics believed the party establishment had abandoned GOP fiscal principles. “It’s time for Republicans to start acting like Republicans,” said John Eichelberger, a conservative who defeated the state Senate’s GOP president.

That is a complaint increasingly heard across the country when conservatives outside Washington talk about the national GOP establishment.

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“I voted for President Bush twice, but in my opinion we have no leadership in Washington from the president or the Congress,” said Warren H. Ingram Jr., a Missouri libertarian.

Some Republicans are so discouraged by the direction of the country and the record of their party --including the growth of federal spending, turmoil in Iraq, and Bush’s immigration policy -- that they have begun wondering if Republicans might be better off losing control of Congress.

“Two years in the political wilderness would do us a lot of good,” said one Republican member of Congress who asked not to be named because of his heretical view.

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The conservative National Review magazine recently pictured an elephant’s rear on the cover of an issue headlined “A View of Congress.” An article inside lambasting the GOP concluded: “As bad polling piles up, nervous Republicans will ask themselves, Can this Congress be saved? But the question frustrated Republican voters are increasingly asking is, Is it worth saving?”

Such disillusionment is reflected in recent polls showing declining support for Bush and Congress, even among conservatives who have been the most loyal part of the GOP base.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in April found that conservative Republicans’ approval of Bush stood at 80% in April -- still high, but a sizable 12-point drop from January. Conservatives’ approval of Congress dropped to 29% in April, down from 41% in January.

Also worrisome for the GOP are signs that Democratic voters are approaching the midterm elections with more energy than Republicans: The poll found that, by 11 percentage points, Democrats are more likely to express high interest in the campaign.

GOP strategy now is aimed at energizing the party’s base, with an agenda packed with conservative crowd-pleasers. After a long delay, Bush last week signed a $70-billion tax cut. The Senate soon will vote on constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage and flag burning. Republicans have renewed their push to confirm Bush’s conservative judicial nominees.

There are risks in these efforts to appease conservatives: They may alienate swing voters -- precisely the voters needed by moderate Republicans, who are the party’s most vulnerable incumbents. “A Republican legislative agenda that plays only to the conservative base this year is a [Democratic] dream come true,” said Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group of moderate Republicans.

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The spring offensive may not be enough to energize disillusioned conservatives. Many of them see it as a token gesture. The amendment to ban gay marriage, for example, is not expected to pass.

“We don’t believe them anymore,” said Joe Glover, president of the Family Policy Network, a Christian conservative group based in Washington. “Bush twice made a big deal out of marriage [in the 2000 and 2004 campaigns]. But once he gets in that big cushy office, you don’t hear a peep out of him about marriage.”

Despite such views and grim polls, Republican National Committee spokesman Brian Jones argues that GOP candidates will fare well when attention turns to the kinds of policies that Democrats would promote if they won control of Congress. That points to a key element of the Republican strategy to motivate conservatives: Remind them what political life would be like if Democrats took control.

“The party’s most faithful supporters remain strong behind Republican candidates across the country,” said Jones. “In the fall elections, the true distinction between the two parties will be evident.”

Other Republicans are less sanguine. “You cannot ignore the fact that ... the Republican base is not energized about this election,” said Neil Newhouse, a GOP pollster with several House and Senate clients. “I don’t think this election is going to be won based solely on whether we turn out sufficient numbers in our base, but it sure as heck could be lost if we fail on that measure.”

Some Republicans say the unhappiness is affecting fundraising. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as of March 31 had raised $56.4 million for the 2005-06 election cycle; its Republican counterpart collected $50.4 million. There are many reasons for that discrepancy, but GOP fundraisers say that the party’s malaise is making their job harder.

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“You see a sense of apathy,” said one fundraiser in a swing state who asked not to be named in order to speak freely. “People are holding back on their checks.”

Another party strategist said the impact was acute among small-gift donors, who seem especially riled by Bush’s immigration policy.

“It’s very difficult to get low-dollar donors to give money when they see the border is not secured and Congress is not taking action on immigration,” said this strategist, who also did not want to speak for the record about the party’s woes.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at least one wealthy Republican was now supporting Democrats. Although the Republican had voted for Bush, Schumer said, this person gave the maximum allowable, $26,700, to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, telling Schumer, “I see the need for more balance in government.” Schumer declined to identify the contributor.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said GOP malaise was also making it harder to round up volunteers for early campaign work, such as collecting petition signatures.

“There is a perceptible difference,” said Flake. “People are down on the party.”

Sensing an opportunity, Democrats are making unusual efforts to reach out to disaffected Republicans. The Senate campaign committee has launched a program to identify and solicit support from moderate Republicans. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently began airing an ad in four states on Christian and conservative radio stations spotlighting Bush’s plan to overhaul Social Security -- a proposal that, according to Democratic polls, is very unpopular among fundamentalists.

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Republicans say they are not worried about their base defecting to Democrats. The bigger risk is that disillusioned voters will simply not vote. Looming is the lesson of 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress in part because Democratic turnout was down.

It is impossible to predict how the mood today will affect turnout in November, but Democrats find hopeful signs in some early elections, such as the May 2 Indiana primary. In one competitive district, 46,000 Democrats turned out to nominate a challenger to Republican Rep. John Hostettler, compared with 31,000 GOP voters who turned out to support the incumbent, who ran unopposed in his primary.

In the San Diego area’s April special election to nominate candidates to complete the term of former GOP Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, 45.8% of registered Democrats turned out to vote, versus 41.6% of registered Republicans, according to Jim Hayes, a political consultant in Burbank.

Some Republicans worry that Cunningham’s solidly GOP district may be at risk in the June 6 special election runoff because Brian Bilbray, the Republican nominee, is considered too moderate for party conservatives.

“The numbers are closer than we’d like them to be,” said Resnick of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which supports Bilbray. “The base is not quite as motivated to vote.”

Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he was confident Republicans would be motivated to turn out for the special election and the November elections because Republicans would be drawing clear distinctions between the candidates on the ballot.

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“In any competitive House race, the amount of money being spent will be such that voters will know there is a race and they will know there’s a choice,” he said.

More ominous may be the signs of an anti-incumbent mood popping up around the country. That could hurt both parties, but Republicans have the most to lose because they are in the majority and may bear the brunt of voters’ wrath.

In Indiana’s Republican primary, a political neophyte defeated the state Senate president, a 36-year veteran who had been criticized for championing a generous health insurance perk for legislators.

A far broader anti-incumbent sweep came in Pennsylvania, where 61 state legislators faced primary challenges last week. At least 17 were defeated; four were Democrats.

The political match that lighted the state’s firestorm was a 2005 vote by the Republican-controlled Legislature to increase pay for elected officials by more than 50%. But the rebellion was also fueled by long-standing conservative complaints that GOP legislators had abandoned small-government fiscal principles when they raised taxes and boosted spending even more than Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell had proposed.

Last week’s primary results stunned the political establishment.

Although the sweep was driven in part by local political dynamics, analysts said it might be a cautionary tale for Republicans nationwide: Conservative voters are restless and may be ready to strike back.

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“It gave us a glimpse of just how angry Republican voters are,” said former Rep. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania conservative who backed the insurgency. He now heads the economically conservative Club for Growth advocacy group. “That certainly suggests that Republicans in Washington have a lot to worry about going into the fall elections.”

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Times staff writer Peter Wallsten contributed to this report.

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