TIME Cover: Indicator of GOP Rebound?

TIME Covers are what is known as a contrary indicator. When they made Jeff Bezos Man of the year, the internet bubble was about to burst. So when TIME said Republican party is Over, they had more or less put in a market - the low is in.

Patterico dissects it as "so packed with Democratic talking points that David Axelrod could have faxed it over from the White House" and counters the hogwash that TIME put forth that it's those darned non-liberal positions that keeps the GOP from winning elections. " It's principled leadership" Grunwald says of Gov Sanford's appeal to Tax Partiers, but "only the tea-party fringe seems to be following." Ah, but is that old-time religion of smaller Government, freedom and 'get off our backs' a fringe? As Patterico puts it:

For that matter, a majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, favor harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists, and are unwilling to pay higher taxes for government healthcare. If I spent more than the three minutes it took to discover that much, I could probably find that Grunwald has nothing backing his claim about tax cuts for the “investor class,” though there’s a far amount of debate as to how that class gets defined in the first place. A solid majority still see big government as a bigger threat to the country than big business.

I posited back in November that smartness, coolness, competence, and a bunch of other non-ideological and in some cases superficial reasons put Republicans on defensive. Now 6 months later we start to see that polls Show a more Even-Divided Political Environment:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/...

Democrats began the year holding a six- or seven-point lead over the GOP for the first several weeks of 2009. That began to slip in early February, and the Republicans actually took a two-point lead for a single week in the middle of March. Since then, the results have ranged from dead even to a four-point lead for the Democrats until the GOP regained the lead.

Men favor the GOP 44% to 35%, while women favor the Democrats by the exact same margin.

Voters not affiliated with either party favor the GOP by a 38% to 22% margin.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22741.html

Nevada poll is showing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) very, very vulnerable back home. The Las Vegas Review-Journal/Mason-Dixon poll found that 45 percent of Nevada voters would “definitely” vote against Reid next year — with only 30 percent saying they want to see him return to office

http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/Party-Affiliation.aspx

The numbers:
Party affiliation. Republicans 32%. Democrats 32%.
Leaning: Republicans 45%. Democrats 45%.

A year ago, the Democrats enjoyed double-digit leads in both categories.

Well. Let me be a contrarian - the liberal MSM will continue to fluff Obama up, but voters will weary of a man and a party presiding over massive job losses and proposing only job-killing tax-and-spend-and-regulate plans as the way forward. The GOP will be in comeback mode in future cycles. But it will have to earn it.