Republicans have found the key issue of 2010, and it isn't the economy: it's the proposal to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. They are positively giddy with glee at the prospect of spending the next 80 days or so pounding away and they aren't trying to hide it.
On the Sunday shows yesterday, Sen. John Cornyn (the head of the GOP's senate campaign committee), Ed Gillespie (former RNC chairman), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (chief deputy whip), and Ed Rollins (Reagan 1984 campaign director) all agreed that the mosque proposal would be an important part of the campaign.
Watch it here:
Cornyn tries to frame the "issue" for Republicans:
“It demonstrates that Washington, the White House, the administration, the president himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America. And I think that's one of the reasons people are so frustrated," said Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “This is the dichotomy that people sense — that they’re being lectured to, not listened to.”
No question, the poll on this particular question seems to be on the GOP's side. But it's also likely to be true that the public agrees with President Obama, that this isn't an issue that the government ought to be meddling with. And nobody wants to think of themselves as a bigot, and these guys are blatantly basing their appeal on bigotry.
Even Peter King, an outspoken critic of the mosque, is now flip-flopping on his view that there are too many mosques in the U.S. He wants them to be built, he now says, just further away.
But aside from bigotry, the real thing demonstrated by GOP's insistence on putting the mosque question at the forefront of their campaign is that they do not have anything worthwhile to say on the economy. The economy is in the tank, and it's the number one issue this fall. Compared to jobs, nobody cares about the mosque.
But the GOP has so little credibility on the economy that they'd rather go bashing Muslim Americans. And the fact that they are more excited to talk about this -- the ground zero mosque -- than their economic plans tells you pretty much everything you need to know about their fundamental weakness heading into November.