History suggests the possibility of major GOP losses next year is not beyond imagination.

Excerpts from:
Doubts About Mandate for Bush, GOP

By John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei
The Washington Post
May 2, 2005

Six months ago . . . [a]mong campaign strategists and academics, there was ample speculation that Bush's victory, combined with incremental gains in the Republican congressional majority, signaled something fundamental: a partisan and ideological "realignment" that would reshape politics over the long haul.

As the president passed the 100-day mark of his second term over the weekend, the main question facing Bush and his party is whether they misread the November elections. With the president's poll numbers down, and the Republican majority ensnared in ethical controversy, things look much less like a once-a-generation realignment.

Instead, some political analysts say it is just as likely that Washington is witnessing a happens-all-the-time phenomenon -- the mistaken assumption by politicians that an election won on narrow grounds is a mandate for something broad. In Bush's case, this includes restructuring Social Security and the tax code and installing a group of judges he was unable to seat in his first term. This was the error that nearly sank Bill Clinton's presidency in his first years in office in 1993 and 1994 when he put forth a broad health care plan . . . .

With comparatively little furor -- and the support of a significant minority of Democrats -- Bush in his first 100 days has enacted far-reaching proposals to restructure the nation's laws on bankruptcy and class-action lawsuits.

Judged by conventional standards, such legislative victories would signal a second-term president performing at full throttle. But Bush signaled from the moment of his reelection that he was not contemplating a conventional second term.

Instead, on the advice of White House strategists such as Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and White House director of strategic initiatives Peter Wehner, he settled on a bolder-is-better strategy. The rationale, according to White House aides, is that most second-term presidents tend to lose their policymaking leverage quickly. This dictated moving quickly and decisively -- to ensure that Bush remained the dominant figure setting Washington's agenda and to take full advantage of a narrow window.

By this reckoning, White House aides say, Social Security is a natural issue, because it shows Bush taking on a problem that most politicians had timidly avoided, and it could turn retirement security -- political turf owned for decades by Democrats -- into a Republican issue.

Even among many influential conservatives, there has been a growing consensus that the Bush governing theory, at least on Social Security, has been proved wrong. The conservative Weekly Standard magazine recently warned in a headline of a "Social Security Quagmire," and argued that Bush should position himself so that a defeat on the issue does not cripple other parts of his agenda or produce big Republican losses in next year's congressional elections.

[This is what Bush was doing by releasing his "new" plan for Social Security reform, setting things up to blame the Democrats in 2006.]

History suggests the possibility of major losses next year is not beyond imagination. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll showed support for Bush's handling of Social Security at just 31 percent. That is several points lower than support for Clinton's handling of health care in the summer of 1994 -- just before the failure of what was widely perceived as an over-ambitious plan helped fuel the GOP takeover of Congress that fall.

A recent analysis by Democracy Corps, which offers polling and strategy to Democrats, concluded, "Voters have not yet turned to the Democrats as an instrument of change, but when they do, there can be electoral changes on a very large scale."

One thing Republicans apparently did not bargain for [with regard to public appetite for an ambitious conservative agenda] was that, as their majority grew, so would the difficulties of holding together the different wings of the party.

Although politicians may be prone to over-interpreting their election mandates, some skeptics warn that political analysts are prone to over-interpreting short-term controversies. The factors causing problems for Bush, for instance, are less about political strategy than something largely out of his control -- the high price of gasoline.