Political Economy issues are going to kill R's in the '06, '08 elections

Deficit cracking GOP's solidarity
Party-line votes no longer assured
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/27...

contains this :

""It's only a matter of time before we stop talking about cutting taxes for a very long period of time and talk basically about increasing taxes," Bartlett predicted. "The end of the era of tax cutting is going to put tremendous strain on the Republican coalition, just as the end of the era of big spending put tremendous strain on the Democratic coalition" in the 1980s. "You're hearing more and more people on the Republican side talking about major losses in the congressional elections next year and about 2008 being a really, really bad year for Republicans.""

and another article, by David Lazarus SF Chron's business columnist,

Nation's spending out of line
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/27...

says this :

"Brian Riedl, chief budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Bush administration is expected to return to Congress within the next few months to ask lawmakers -- once again -- to raise the nation's debt ceiling so we can borrow even more.

"A debt of $8 trillion is certainly a daunting number," Riedl told me. "I'm not sure we'll ever pay it off."

You heard right. The top number cruncher at the Washington think tank that's arguably friendliest to the Bush administration has come to the conclusion that our debt has gotten so out of hand, it may never go away."

So, you can see that on fiscal policy alone, Republicans should not even bother running in '06.

Furthermore, even arch conservative Pat Buchanan favors Democrats on economic issues: see the last paragraph of his Suicide By Free Trade article in American Conservative magazine:

"Indeed, if the issue is jobs, Republicans ought to be thrown out. For not only are they not creating them, they have no idea how to stop exporting them. In their hearts, some of them think it a good thing. They are like the doctors of old who sincerely believed bleeding the patient was the way to get rid of the disease because that is what their textbooks and wise men told them. "

www.amconmag.com/2004/2004_04_12/buchanan.html

Things have only gotten worse since Buchanan wrote that...and the clock is ticking.

Healthcare costs are just horrific for the average worker, wages are still behind inflation, and the rate of hiring is not what it was in 2000 and before. Also, this debt will force interest rates to rise to 6%+ in order to make an attempt to control it.

has got to have an impact. If we are not in a recession or worse ,by the time of the 06 election, they are lucky.

the Repubs in 2004, and didn't. There needs to be a 100% better effort by all Democrats to highlight the damage that the Republicans have done to this nation's economic future. Not to mention the plundering of our national treasury.