It Will Take Machine Guns to Keep Republicans From the Polls in 2010

Charlie Cook has been looking at the issue of voter intensity for next year's elections:

From my recent travels and conversations with friends and relatives, particularly those from the South, this description rings true. Obama's election and the Democratic gains in Congress have convinced conservatives that their view is not universally held. But that conviction just adds to the urgency they see in getting their message out and convincing others of the danger they see for our country. As the Democracy Corps report says, "They believe this position leaves them with a responsibility to spread the word, to educate those who do not share their insights, and to take back the country that they love."

Democrats and liberals can scoff and try to dismiss such views, but they should realize that adherents hold these attitudes so intensely that they will be determined to vote in 2010, and that in a midterm election in which turnout is inherently lower than in presidential years, the most-motivated voters carry a disproportionate advantage. The intensity that Democrats and liberals had in their opposition to Bush and Republicans in 2006 and 2008 has transferred to conservatives and Republicans.

Democrats would have to set up machine-gun nests to keep these people from voting, while the lethargy among Democratic voters is palpable.

But also coming through in the report is the disdain that many of these conservative Republicans have toward their own party; they see the GOP as "ineffective and rudderless, controlled by a class of political professionals who have lost touch with not only the people but the conservative values that should guide them.... They are most likely to cite the prescription drug benefit and [Bush's] failure to rein in spending or the size of government."

That is the challenge for GOP candidates next year: They must portray themselves as distinct from the Republican Party that base voters see as having let them down.

There's some truth in that. The endorsement by the NRCC of the very liberal GOP candidate in NY-23 is giving a lot of people pause when it comes to supporting the GOP.