Brand on the Run

And Corker said voters did not believe the Republicans were "solving the major problems," notably guaranteeing Americans health coverage. "We just haven't been responsible," Corker said. "We deserve to be where we are. I hope we right ourselves."

The one comfort, said Davis, lies in John McCain's ability to run well ahead of his party. "McCain has his own brand. He's not dragged down by the Republican brand."

Fabrizio sees McCain as successfully employing Bill Clinton's strategy of "triangulation" by "using George Bush and the Democrats to try to define himself by setting himself off against both of them."

A Post-ABC News poll this week gave partial support to this view: While voters gave the Democrats a 21-point advantage over Republicans as the party better equipped to handle the nation's problems, McCain trailed Obama by only seven points.

Yet Obama's still-sizable lead suggests that McCain will have trouble escaping the anti-Republican uprising. Democrats are trying to limit his room to maneuver by linking the presumptive Republican nominee to Bush's policies. Fabrizio argues that McCain's urgent need to run as an independent means that "McCain could win in a landslide, and we still lose the House and Senate significantly."

In this spring of discontent, Republicans are turning on each other because even their best news is bad news.

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