Robert Novak: 'GOP's Giant Sucking Sound'

No pun intended (I think):

[...]Federal Election Commission's cold statistics. They show a commanding Democratic lead over the Republicans in raising money for the '08 elections. Such an unusual disparity is at once a symptom and a cause of the melancholy suffusing the Grand Old Party as Congress reconvenes after the August break.

As measured by offices held, Republicans have been in much worse shape during my half-century of D.C. reporting. But never before have I seen morale within the party so low. While GOP support for an unpopular war has remained remarkably strong, almost all non-war news during the dreary August recess has been bad for the GOP. The hope is that the eventual elevation of a presidential candidate will revive the party's spirits.

Are Republicans abandoning Conservative principles:

Most of the dwindled contingent of Republican governors have abandoned conservative principles to embrace the Democratic-sponsored extension of SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) to people who are neither children nor poor. Only three - Indiana's Mitch Daniels, Mississippi's Haley Barbour and South Carolina's Mark Sanford - resist the lure of federal dollars.