US politics: Paul Krugman thinks the GOP alliance is cracking up, but Mark Halperin thinks the GOP base will hold and prevail in November

1. Things Fall Apart -- by Paul Krugman (from the NY Times)

Right after the 2004 election, it seemed as if Thomas Frank had been completely vindicated. In his book "What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America," Mr. Frank argued that America's right wing had developed a permanent winning strategy based on the use of "values" issues to mobilize white working-class voters against a largely mythical cultural elite, while actually pursuing policies designed to benefit a small economic elite.

It was and is a brilliant analysis. But the political strategy Mr. Frank described may have less staying power than he feared. In fact, the right-wing coalition that has spent 40 years climbing to its current position of political dominance may be cracking up.

At its core, the political axis that currently controls Congress and the White House is an alliance between the preachers and the plutocrats - between the religious right, which hates gays, abortion and the theory of evolution, and the economic right, which hates Social Security, Medicare and taxes on rich people. Surrounding this core is a large periphery of politicians and lobbyists who joined the movement not out of conviction, but to share in the spoils.

Together, these groups formed a seemingly invincible political coalition, in which the religious right supplied the passion and the economic right supplied the money.

The coalition has, however, always been more vulnerable than it seemed, because it was an alliance based not on shared goals, but on each group's belief that it could use the other to get what it wants. Bring that belief into question, and the whole thing falls apart.

Future historians may date the beginning of the right-wing crackup to the days immediately following the 2004 election, when President Bush tried to convert a victory won by portraying John Kerry as weak on defense into a mandate for Social Security privatization. The attempted bait-and-switch failed in the face of overwhelming public opposition. If anything, the Bush plan was even less popular in deep-red states like Montana than in states that voted for Mr. Kerry.

And the religious and cultural right, which boasted of having supplied the Bush campaign with its "shock troops" and expected a right-wing cultural agenda in return - starting with a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage - was dismayed when the administration put its energy into attacking the welfare state instead. James Dobson, the founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, accused Republicans of "just ignoring those that put them in office."

It will be interesting, by the way, to see how Dr. Dobson, who declared of Bill Clinton that "no man has ever done more to debase the presidency," responds to the Foley scandal. Does the failure of Republican leaders to do anything about a sexual predator in their midst outrage him as much as a Democratic president's consensual affair?

In any case, just as the religious right was feeling betrayed by Mr. Bush's focus on the goals of the economic right, the economic right suddenly seemed to become aware of the nature of its political allies. "Where in the hell did this Terri Schiavo thing come from?" asked Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, in an interview with Ryan Sager, the author of "The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party." The answer, he said, was "blatant pandering to James Dobson." He went on, "Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies."

Some Republicans are switching parties. James Webb, who may pull off a macaca-fueled upset against Senator George Allen of Virginia, was secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. Charles Barkley, a former N.B.A. star who used to be mentioned as a possible future Republican candidate, recently declared, "I was a Republican until they lost their minds."

So the right-wing coalition is showing signs of coming apart. It seems that we're not in Kansas anymore. In fact, Kansas itself doesn't seem to be in Kansas anymore. Kathleen Sebelius, the state's Democratic governor, has achieved a sky-high favorability rating by focusing on good governance rather than culture wars, and her party believes it will win big this year.

And nine former Kansas Republicans, including Mark Parkinson, the former state G.O.P. chairman, are now running for state office as Democrats. Why did Mr. Parkinson change parties? Because he "got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right."


2. Ace of Base -- by MARK HALPERIN

BILL and Hillary Clinton have been known to cite a quip widely attributed to Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” George W. Bush and Karl Rove live by an alternative dictum: Why do things differently when you like the results you have been getting?

In the 2002 and 2004 national elections, the president and his top political adviser won by margins provided by conservative voters who shared the White House’s view that the country should continue to move right. Although the president is not on the ballot in November, the Bush-Rove model animates the Republican Party’s election strategy for 2006.

Yet two years of controversy over the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, and the perils of high gas prices and low poll numbers, have led many to believe that the Republicans’ strategy of fighting from the base has worn out its welcome. Therefore, this view holds, a campaign that appeals to moderates, one waged from the center, is the only way for the party to maintain control of the House and Senate.

Interesting theory, but it probably won’t work. If the Republicans want to keep their majorities in the midterm elections, their best chance is to stick with the old, base-driven Bush-Rove electoral strategy.

Why? In the eyes of the Bush team, America is a polarized country, one where there are fundamental divisions worth fighting over. A president — and a party — should not worry about slender margins of victory or legislative control. The goal is to accumulate just enough power to use the energies and passions of the base to effect ideological change in the nation’s laws and institutions, even if — sometimes especially if — those changes might be at odds with majority public opinion.

For the Republicans, this brand of politics works because the United States in many ways remains a fundamentally conservative nation. Polls consistently indicate that there are more staunchly conservative Americans than liberal ones. Republican politicians, therefore, have the advantage of being able to proudly announce what they really think. They can go on offense.

The party is helped, of course, by superior financial resources. And the Republicans have mastered micro-aiming rousing messages to ideologically sympathetic voters. These messages, generally on hot button issues like gay marriage and abortion, stir the kind of emotion and anger that provide the energy in Bush-Rove politics.

It’s important to note, though, that this strategy depends on something else: the inability of Democrats to play by the same rules, to go on offense.

If Democrats in Congress took a secret ballot, it is safe to say there would be overwhelming support for a variety of positions that, in theory, could rally the party’s base: a timely withdrawal of American troops from Iraq; a tax increase for the wealthy; universal health care; and increased rights for homosexuals. These are all positions in line with the activist wing of their party. And yet most Democrats will not openly espouse such policies, concerned that backing them could hurt their chances in 2006.

If they actually articulated what was in their hearts, Democrats worry that they would be marching into a buzz saw of negative political commercials and White House-led attacks. Democrats rightly believe that such attacks would energize the conservative base and also eat into their support among centrist voters. But their chosen alternative — in which they swallow their true beliefs on important national issues — demoralizes their own base.

If you have any doubts about the confusion of the Democrats, just look at the party’s midterm strategy. On the one hand, Democrats are reluctant to push for liberal policies that would motivate their base. But the core of their enunciated message — both vowing to stop the president’s right-wing policies and blurring their differences with Republicans on highly charged issues — has in recent elections been a recipe for defeat. Such equivocation is the kind of themeless pudding that does not match up well with the conviction of the White House message and is uninspiring to both the Democrats’ base and the center.

For months, the president was in severe political peril, with approval ratings regularly hovering around 30 percent, in large measure because he was missing the support of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents that is essential to his majority. Despite conservative disaffection with the White House over the past year on issues like spending (and even, in some cases, on Iraq), the latest polls show the G.O.P. base is coming home — and just in time. Base support is headed toward 90 percent, just about where it was before the 2002 and 2004 elections.

The speeches the president gave about national security leading up to the fifth anniversary of 9/11 re-engaged the base and raised his overall approval rating to around 40 percent. He also has shifted the debate back to his favored playing field: national security.

Although some Democrats are energized by the aggressive posture struck last week by Bill and Hillary Clinton on national security, the couple’s visibility seems to be energizing the Republican base as well, perhaps more so.

As in 2002 and 2004, the Democrats have been baited into a heated discussion on terrorism and Iraq, blocking out debates that would be more favorable to their cause, like Social Security, the economy and gas prices. The Clintons have whipped up Democrats into a frenzy to fight back, but on Capitol Hill and on television they are largely fighting back on Republican terrain.

This is exactly what happened in the last two elections: Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove fired up the base on national security, taxes and social issues and found a way to win a majority of the electorate, even as they lost the allegiance of a majority of the country over all. The national security debate, the visibility of the Clintons and the momentum the Republicans gain from Mr. Bush’s rising poll numbers — all of these echo previous election cycles.

Critics of the Bush administration assert that the politics of the base has run its course, and that the Iraq war, the partisan zealousness and the conservative social policies of the administration have made voters yearn for a more centrist, bipartisan government. But Mr. Bush’s opponents may be imprudently lulled by the current storyline and broad national polls, both of which miss the power and consequence of a Republican base that may have one more victory to give.

(Mark Halperin, the political director of ABC News, is the co-author of “The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008.”)