The GOP's Problem: Way Beyond Image

Forget Jack Abramoff and Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Tom DeLay and Mark Foley could prove to be the least of the Republican Party's worries. Disturbing surveys, and even some GOP strategists, are beginning to suggest a new trauma for their party, one that could portend a return to the dark winter of the so-called permanent minority, when Democrats held control of Congress for four decades.

That Republicans will face a potentially devastating political year in terms of House and Senate races should come as no surprise to anyone. After a little more than a decade in power on Capitol Hill, Republicans grew too casual with their power, spending lavish sums on Bridges to Nowhere and other irresponsible earmarks, openly courting lobbyists who flaunted ethics rules and only slowly reacting to personal scandals involving their own members.

In short, after twelve years of a GOP-led Congress and six of a Republican in the White House, the party's reputation is in the dumps. The party trails a generic Congressional match-up with Democrats by as many as 18 points, a gap as wide as the one just before the 2006 election. Even Republican voters have a low opinion of their party's performance in Congress. And the party is feeling the financial pinch as well; national Democrats' House and Senate campaign committees have far outpaced their Republican rivals heading into November's elections. But the dismal landscape Republicans face now could be just the tip of the iceberg. How can the party possibly survive if successive generations won't even give them a second look?

Republicans regained power in the early 1990s, when, according to surveys, voters between the ages of 18-29 were essentially divided in their loyalties to the Democratic and Republican Parties. Those Generation X voters, who grew up in the 1970s, under unpopular Democrat Jimmy Carter, and 1980s, under popular Republican Ronald Reagan, favored the GOP by a narrow 47%-46% margin. To a new generation of voters, the Republican Party was home, and they delivered enough votes to force Democrats to give up the Speaker's gavel after the 1994 election. From 1996 through 2000, when few Congressional seats changed hands and Republicans maintained a majority, the last Generation X and first Generation Y voters favored Democrats, by six points in 1996 and eight points in 2000.

Now, as Generation Y comes to prominence, those between the ages of 18-29, who will make up the next generation of regular voters, have no qualms about siding against the party their predecessors called home. Having grown up with Bill Clinton in the White House, when the economy soared and people were confident about the direction of the country, and come of age with President Bush at the helm, when public optimism sank to depths never seen before, younger voters now identify with the Democratic Party by a huge 58%-33% margin. If that self-identification holds, Democrats could remain solidly in control of the national political landscape for decades.

"Trends in the opinions of America's youngest voters are often a barometer of shifting political winds," Pew researchers Scott Keeter, Juliana Horowitz and Alec Tyson wrote. "And that appears to be the case in 2008." Most notably, a gender gap that first emerged in 1992 -- when women favored Democrats by a twelve-point margin as opposed to men, who preferred the party by a single point -- has expanded even more dramatically. Men now back Democrats by a slim three-point margin, while women favor the party by a whopping 22 points. Among 18-29 year old voters, women favor Democrats by a stunning margin of 63%-28%. Younger men, who favored Republicans by ten points in 1992, now back Democrats by fourteen.

Some Republicans will dismiss the results as a simple backlash against President Bush and a few bad apples in Congress who tarnished the party's once-clean image. But as Glen Bolger, a prominent Republican pollster, warns in a monthly memo to friends and clients, the problem is deeper than image. The trou