Elephant Graveyard

A new Gallup/USA Today poll shows the GOP has three massive problems. First, there's a huge leadership vacuum in the party right now.

Republicans, out of power and divided over how to get it back, are finding even the most basic questions hard to answer.

Here's one: Who speaks for the GOP?

The question flummoxes most Americans, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, which is among the reasons for the party's sagging state and uncertain direction.

A 52% majority of those surveyed couldn't come up with a name when asked to specify "the main person" who speaks for Republicans today. Of those who could, the top response was radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh (13%), followed in order by former vice president Dick Cheney, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Former president George W. Bush ranked fifth, at 3%.

"Mitch who? Whatshisface Boehner? Eric...Cantwell? Cantley? That obnoxious Congressman from that state? Oh I know, the black guy, Mr. Hip-Hop Republican?"

No, the GOP's actual leaders have no actual perceived leadership among ANYBODY. It's pathetic. Dubya is seen as more of a party leader than the actual party leadership, and of course the guy getting the most votes is El Rushbo!

Second, the GOP will never, ever shake the label of being the party of the Old White Guys.

So the dominant faces of the Republican Party are all men, all white, all conservative and all old enough to join AARP, ranging in age from 58 (Limbaugh) to 72 (McCain). They include some of the country's most strident voices on issues from Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court to President Obama's policies at home and abroad. Two are retired from politics, and one has never been a candidate.

Only McCain holds elective office, and his age and status as the loser of last year's presidential election make him an unlikely standard bearer for the party's future.

"It's a problem," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an adviser to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign who this month is filing the papers to create a think tank aimed at generating new ideas for conservatives. "We need the perceived leadership of the party to be those who are the future."

"We cannot be a party of balding white guys," says former Republican Party national chairman Ed Gillespie, a White House counselor for George W. Bush. "We have to have a broader appeal, but there's time for us to make that change."

And finally, a full third of Republicans are unhappy with their own party.

Dissatisfaction with the GOP extends to within its own ranks. Among Republicans, 33% had an unfavorable impression of their own party. In contrast, 4% of Democrats had an unfavorable impression of their party.

The GOP's electoral setbacks, policy divisions and image problems make it harder for the party to influence the national debate.

"It's as if the Republican Party is in a time-out chair," says Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the non-partisan Cook Political Report. "Nobody's really listening to them. Nobody's caring what they think. The question is when they're asked to rejoin the class, are they going to have something new or different to say?"

"I don't think people know what they stand for," says Troy Collett, 39, a Republican from Shelbyville, Ind., who was surveyed. In the 2008 election, he says, "all they knew was there was a war in Iraq that most people disagreed with, and spending was out of control, and gas prices were high."

So what's their big plan for a "Contract With America"-style comeback?

"There's a lot of time and nothing wrong with the Republican Party that health care reform or the cap-and-trade (energy plan) or something like that blowing up wouldn't help fix."

The GOP Plan lives!

Destroy. Obama.

That's their big plan. Trying to scuttle every positive change Obama is trying to make. That's the whole thing. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican Party is so bereft of new ideas that they are reduced to seeing Obama fail as their master stroke.

No wonder they are doing so badly. Without Obama Derangement Syndrome, they are nothing.