The "O" in "GOP" should be capitalized; it stands for "Old," not "of." As in "Grand Old Party," despite being the younger of the two.
Hasn't Congress' overall performance rating been in the shitter lately? I seem to remember seeing that statistic somewhere, but, understandably, I am now beginning to question my memory of such statistics.
Yeah "GoP" was a typo. I capitalized it right later in the post and in my previous posts.
Congress approval ratings are always in the shitter, people are never really sure what congress is doing other than not what they want, so it's where all dissatisfaction with the government goes.
Nancy Pelosi has a positive net approval rating (by two points!) right now, which might actually be more surprising than the GOP being at net -50. I honestly don't know the last time that's happened, I'm not even sure her predecessor ever had positive approval ratings. And while the democratic congress does have a net negative approval rating, it's only about -14, which is decent for congressional approval ratings. The Democratic Party is at +20 approval rating while the GOP is at -30, and there really aren't any signs that the GOP's unpopularity has bottomed out yet.
The Republicans are really going to have to work hard to grow their brand again or they're going to be fucked for the next two elections. Right now it looks like the Dems may very well pick up another 4-6 seats in 2010, and while 2012 is forever away, unless something drastic happens they're going to have the Obama bump working for them again. Hell 2014 could be bad for the GOP too, considering that should be the first election after time at which a lot of economists are predicting our economy will recover, and whether or not they're actually responsible, Obama and the Dems are probably going to get the credit for that.
I'm not sure what happens if they GOP falls under 30 seats in the senate. We've already got the most lopsided congress since 1977 which was voted in following Nixon's resignation. If it gets more lopsided, which seems entirely likely, you have to go back to the 1965 congress that was elected following Kennedy's death. We could very well pass that even, which means you're looking at 1935-1941 congress under FDR, when the GOP almost collapsed.
Even in 77 it was a totally different era, much less in 35. I'm just not sure how you build a national presence when you fall that far behind in the modern era.
If a right or center third party ever wanted a shot at supplanting the republicans then the next few elections are probably as good as they'll get in the foreseeable future.