Charlie Cook on Candidate Recruitment

Charlie Cook, one of the most respect election analysts around, takes a look at candidate recruitment so far--and finds both parties wanting:

There is little doubt that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois has made recruiting a top priority. Republican incumbents like Reps. John Sweeney of New York and Deborah Pryce of Ohio find themselves facing serious challengers for the first time since they were elected.

But it is also true that Democrats have missed a number of opportunities.

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For their part, Republicans have been less successful at getting serious candidates to run against potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents such as Reps. Stephanie Herseth of South Dakota, Dennis Moore of Kansas, Jim Matheson of Utah, Lincoln Davis of Tennessee and Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota. Democrats have kept their vulnerable open seats to a minimum. Just one seat is in serious jeopardy, thanks in large part to the boneheaded move of their highly touted candidate, state Sen. Charlie Wilson, in Ohio. Wilson's inability to get 50 valid signatures on his nominating petitions means he now must win his party's nomination as a write-in candidate this May.

Cook's analysis is usually dead on and I can't help but think that the lack of a clear agenda for the Democrats hurts their chances a great deal. Nearly everything is going their way but the Democratic party still can't come to an agreement on what their agenda will be, beyond being against anything the Bush Administration does.

I have long believed the while President Bush is no longer acting like a conservative, even a compassionate conservative, I had thought that the base of the GOP was strongly united on just a few core principals of limited government, personal responsibility, lower taxes and business is good for the economy. The Democratic party cannot seem to unite on a core philosophy--which is leading to their downfall. As Michael Goodwin writes in the New York Daily News:

That belief system is still clearly a work in progress. As reporters Shailagh Murray and Charles Babington recounted, Reid and Nancy Pelosi, his House counterpart, met with Dem governors who appealed for help in crafting a message that emphasized "just two or three core ideas." Sources told the paper Reid offered six ideas, and so did Pelosi - though they weren't the same six. Uh-oh.

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The disarray is a sign of the chickens coming home to roost. For years, Democrats have been more of a collection of disparate interest groups than people united around a political philosophy. Attempts to identify core beliefs inevitably end up either offending some of the interest groups or being so wacky that swing voters run in the other direction. This inability of Dems to broaden their base explains why Republicans have won seven of the last 10 presidential elections.

Despite some moderate successes at recruiting this year, the Democratic bench is getting a little thin. State legislatures and city government have always been a place were future congressional candidates are born and bred, but if Cook is right, a Democratic party without a core philosophy and a roster of minor leaguers ready for the majors, the GOP is going to be running things for a long time to come.

Speaking as a Republican, that is a bad idea. We need opposition to fuel innovation and ideas. I don't like Democratic politics, but a bad choice is better than no choice.


Hat tip: Real Clear Politics for a lot of the links