Why GOP can do well in 2000

Associated Press, February 2, 1999

WASHINGTON -- Republicans are taking a hit in the polls by pursuing the Clinton trial, but much may happen to change the numbers before the 2000 elections, according to a variety of analysts.

President Bush's figureswere soaring just after the Persian Gulf War, said William Kristol, who was Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff and is now editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. But enthusiasm for Bush faded by the 1992 elections and few remembered which Democrats voted against the war with Iraq.

"I don't deny that the American people don't want President Clinton removed and most Republicans will vote to remove him," Kristol said. "But if there were real anger and animosity at the Republican Party, wouldn't they be doing worse in the presidential polls?"

Texas Governor George W. Bush, considered a potential Republican presidential candidate, has led Vice President Al Gore in most early head-to-head polling.

Democratic strategists are crowing about current poll findings that almost six out of 10 people disapprove of how Senate Republicans are handling the impeachment trial. Two-thirds of the public approve of the way Clinton is doing his job, according to several polls.

Some polls found that Democrats are getting better marks on handling top issues. A Pew poll of 1,200, taken in mid-January, gave Democrats a marked advantage on who has the best ideas on issues such as education, health management organization reform, and Social Security. Democrats had a wide lead in the traditionally strong Republican area of tax cuts for the middle class and a narrow edge on the global economy. Republicans had the edge on handling the issue of morality, the poll found.

While the president has been talking about issues such as education, health care, and Social Security in the State of the Union address and intermittent news conferences, Republican leaders are having to answer TV interviewers' questions about the impeachment trial.

A Republican Party spokesman, Mike Collins, said Republicans are moving ahead on other issues, even if the media is focusing only on the impeachment efforts.

"The agenda is moving forward even as the trial goes forward," Collins said, citing a GOP push for a 10 percent tax cut and the party's plans to safeguard Social Security, improve schools, and shore up the military.

Stuart Roy, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said it was impossible to know whether the impeachment trial would have an affect on the 2000 elections. He doubted that Republicans who voted their conscience would be penalized. But Representative Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and one of the House impeachment managers, warned in a letter to donors: "As visibility increases for many Republicans due to the impeachment process, the likelihood for opposition in the next election increases."

Graham was unopposed in 1998.

Republicans definitely have their work cut out for them after the impeachment trial, said Thomas Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution.

"They have taken a tremendous hit," Mann said. "A substantial amount of the public thinks less well of them than since the scandal hit. That includes independent voters and even some Republican voters."

Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, added that Republicans' "hatred for Bill Clinton is stronger than their instinct for survival."