Some in G.O.P. Express Worry Over '08 Hopes



By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JOHN M. BRODER
Published: April 11, 2007

==NY Times

WASHINGTON, April 10 — Republican leaders across the country say they are growing increasingly anxious about their party's chances of holding the White House, citing public dissatisfaction with President Bush, the political fallout from the war in Iraq and the problems their leading presidential candidates are having generating enthusiasm among conservative voters.

In interviews on Tuesday, the Republicans said they were concerned about signs of despondency among party members and fund-raisers, reflected in polls and the Democratic fund-raising advantage in the first quarter of the year. Many party leaders expressed worry that the party's presidential candidates faced a tough course without some fundamental shift in the political dynamic.

"My level of concern and dismay is very, very high," said Mickey Edwards, a Republican former congressman from Oklahoma who is now a lecturer in public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. "It's not that I have any particular problem with the people who are running for the Republican nomination. I just don't know how they can run hard enough or fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the Bush administration."

"We don't have any candidates in the field now who are compelling," Mr. Edwards said, adding: "It's going to be a tough year for us."

The Republicans made their comments a day before Senator John McCain of Arizona, once the party's presumed front-runner, is to give a speech intended to revitalize his troubled candidacy. In the speech, focused on Iraq, Mr. McCain will warn against making policy about the war based on "the temporary favor of the latest of public opinion poll" and assert that the administration's strategy for securing Baghdad is the right one, according to excerpts released Tuesday by his campaign. The other two leading presidential contenders are Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts....