WASHINGTON — Republican leaders, worried that their party's conservative base is demoralized, lean hard on one reed of hope these days: Election day is almost six months away, leaving lots of time to get voters mobilized.
But there already are signs that the surly mood of the party's core supporters is taking a toll around the country -- in morale, in fundraising and in early election contests.
In the Rocky Mountains, a registered Republican was so dissatisfied that he wrote a $26,700 check to the Democrats' Senate campaign committee.
In San Diego, Republicans worry that conservatives unhappy with the GOP candidate for a vacant House seat will stay home rather than vote in the June special election.
In Pennsylvania's primary last week, conservative Republicans unseated more than a dozen state legislators, in large part because critics believed the party establishment had abandoned GOP fiscal principles. "It's time for Republicans to start acting like Republicans," said John Eichelberger, a conservative who defeated the state Senate's GOP president.
That is a complaint increasingly heard across the country when conservatives outside Washington talk about the national GOP establishment.
"I voted for President Bush twice, but in my opinion we have no leadership in Washington from the president or the Congress," said Warren H. Ingram Jr., a Missouri libertarian.
Some Republicans are so discouraged by the direction of the country and the record of their party --including the growth of federal spending, turmoil in Iraq, and Bush's immigration policy -- that they have begun wondering if Republicans might be better off losing control of Congress.
"Two years in the political wilderness would do us a lot of good," said one Republican member of Congress who asked not to be named because of his heretical view.
The conservative National Review magazine recently pictured an elephant's rear on the cover of an issue headlined "A View of Congress." An article inside lambasting the GOP concluded: "As bad polling piles up, nervous Republicans will ask themselves, Can this Congress be saved? But the question frustrated Republican voters are increasingly asking is, Is it worth saving?"
Such disillusionment is reflected in recent polls showing declining support for Bush and Congress, even among conservatives who have been the most loyal part of the GOP base.
