THE WORLD TURNED RIGHTSIDE UP

GOP Aims for Dominance in '04 Race: Republicans to Seek Governing Majority by Feeding Base, Courting New Voters (Dan Balz, June 22, 2003, The Washington Post)

Republican strategists see the 2004 election as their best opportunity in a generation to construct a durable governing majority, and they have set in motion a systematic and coordinated strategy designed to leverage President Bush's popularity and break the impasse that has dominated the country's politics since the mid-1990s.

The president himself established the ambitions behind the 2004 strategy earlier this year, when he authorized advisers to begin planning for a reelection campaign that began in earnest last week with a series of fundraising events. According to several GOP strategists, Bush told his team: Don't give me "a lonely victory." Said one top Bush adviser, "He said, 'I don't want what Nixon had. I don't want what Reagan had.' "

It is Mr. Bush's willingness always to up the ante that is the most remarkable facet of his political personality. It would have been easy for Ronald Reagan, with a booming economy, to make such a play in '84, but to his shame he focussed on a 50 state presidential victory instead, with a truly selfish last minute stop in Minnesota, when he could have been out stumping for Republican Congressional candidates instead. For Mr. Bush to set his sights on genuine realignment even as he faces what would right now appear to be a difficult re-election bid--with a slow growth economy--demonstrates, once again, a visionary streak that few understood when he was first running for president four years ago. It is the quality that made it vital to the future of the party and the nation for him to defeat John McCain. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 9:03 AM