Can GOP return to power?

Nancy Kruh

Upcoming off-year elections are giving pundits a new opening to gauge the strength of the Republican Party one year after Democrats dominated in federal elections.

Tony Blankley and William Kristol both take the pulse of conservatism and find it alive and ready to rejuvenate the GOP.

"The political mood is beginning to feel to me like the late 1970s, when I was working on Ronald Reagan's campaign, which used bold language, starkly conservative policies and genuine passion," Blankley writes in the Washington Times. "Then, too, many Republicans judged we would scare off the independent and undecided.

"But in times of fear, anger and passion, the opposition party must stand with that passion -- not aside."

Kristol is heartened by a new Gallup poll that shows 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative, compared with 20 percent who describe themselves as liberal and 36 percent as moderate.

"The implications of this for the Republican Party over the remaining three years of the (Barack) Obama presidency are clear: The GOP is going to be pretty unapologetically conservative," the Washington Post columnist writes. Kristol points to conservative fortunes on the rise in races in Virginia and in New York, and he concludes "that a vigorous, even if somewhat irritated, conservative/populist message seems to be more effective in revitalizing the Republican Party than an attempt to accommodate the wishes of liberal media elites."

Looking at the same Gallup poll, Patrick Buchanan fixates on a finding that Kristol's column ignores: Only 20 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans.

"If the GOP is not the conservative party, it will never be America's Party," the Creators Syndicate columnist writes.

"But what does 'conservative' mean in 2009? And where do conservatives come down on the great issues? For what the right is against -- any repeal of the Bush tax cuts, the $787 billion stimulus, Obamacare -- is much clearer than what the right stands for."

Examining the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne writes a memo to Republicans: "Talk a right-wing game in your ideological magazines and at your tea parties if that makes you happy. But to win elections, your candidates had better look like middle-of-the-road problem-solvers."

Nancy Kruh writes a weekly roundup of opinion.