Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney thinks not, comparing the GOP's current troubles to "irritating bug bites." Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, by contrast, said the other day that the Republican Party is "on the ropes" and that he'd consider himself "lucky to be re-elected" in 2006.
I think it's clear that if next Tuesday was a big election day, with lots of governorships and legislatures on the line, Republicans would pay a price for Bush's difficulties. Most people tend to view the parties essentially as brand names. They tend to like either Republicans or Democrats and vote accordingly, confident that candidates in low-profile elections won't vary too far from their preferred philosophy.
Sometimes an entire party gets punished for the sins of its standard-bearer, even if he's not on the ballot. Such was the case in 1974, when the huge class of Democratic "Watergate babies" was elected, and in 1994, when Bill Clinton's failures in health care and crime led to the GOP's takeover of Congress.
But November 8 is an election day in very few places. There won't be too many tea leaves available out of next week's elections to tell whether Republicans will suffer by association with Bush.
The polls indicate that Jon Corzine should be able to hold onto the New Jersey governorship for the Democrats. If he loses, it will surely be the result of local problems for the party--high property tax rates, corruption and ex-governorJames McGreevey's scandals--not a verdict on any national issues.
Virginia is more interesting. There, Democrat Tim Kaine is tugging hard on the coattails of the popular incumbent governor, Mark Warner. By contrast, Republican Jerry Kilgore has sought recently to put some distance between himself and Bush, refusing for example to appear at the president's speech in Norfolk on Friday. The fact that Kaine has been inching up in the polls at the time of Bush's tailspin will be taken as proof, if he wins, that Bush will cause problems for Republicans elsewhere next year. More than half the independents surveyed in a Washington Post poll last week said Bush's endorsement made them less likely to vote for Kilgore.
But the race is essentially tied, and Virginia is largely a Republican state. Ron Brownstein has an interesting piece in the LA Times saying that a Kilgore win would show just how tough things remain for the Democrats. Many conditions are in Kaine's favor, including Warner's popularity and Bush's problems. If Kilgore wins anyway, largely by trumpeting his differences with Kaine on the death penalty, Brownstein posits, Democrats will have a tough time appealing to socially conservative voters, even if the general voter mood has turned against the GOP.
We'll know more about all this next week.
