Amidst the building tension of the Democratic presidential primaries, it seems that everyone has been dissecting candidate records and making projections about the possible front runner -- everyone, that is, except the Republicans, who have been quietly gearing up for President Bush's reelection campaign.
At Hopkins, the leaders of the College Republicans revealed a confident optimism about Bush's chances in the November elections.
"Honestly, I believe President Bush stacks up pretty well against any [Democratic candidate]," College Republicans President Eric Wolkoff said.
The College Republicans also discredited suggestions that Bush's military record, which the White House recently made public, is lacking when compared to that of current frontrunner John Kerry, the Massachusetts Senator who is also a decorated war veteran.
"Bush has a record of having overseen two major military attacks, one on Iraq and the other on Afghanistan," College Republicans Executive Director Dan Herr said. "That trumps anything Kerry's done in his entire life."
Of the three major Democratic candidates still left standing in the primaries -- with Kerry in the lead, followed by North Carolina Senator John Edwards and former Vermont governor Howard Dean -- two officers of the College Republicans singled out Edwards as having attributes that were the most politically threatening to Bush, despite Kerry's current position as the likely Democratic candidate.
Wolkoff, referring to Edwards as a "flashy" candidate who "looks like a JFK kind of guy," attributed the candidate's appeal to his Southern roots, his short and relatively uncontroversial voting record, and the public's positive perception of his character.
With a similar attention to demographics, Herr points to Kerry's role as a Washington insider from New England as a liability.
"Kerry represents the traditional Democratic base," Herr said. "Those types of candidates generally do poorly in the general election."
"Kerry has a long history of service, and that will come under heavy scrutiny," added Wolkoff, who once worked on a Republican senatorial campaign against Kerry in Massachusetts. "My feeling is that he's riding a tidal wave of good press."
Most of the College Republicans emphasized the role of the media in determining the placement of candidates. Some attributed the success of Democratic candidates to disproportionately positive press and to what Wolkoff referred to as the "ebb and flow of politics."
According to Wolkoff, Howard Dean's fall from frontrunner status reflected just those fluctuations.
"Politics is a marathon, and it's all about who can run the whole way," Wolkoff said. "Dean was sprinting really fast, and got attacked too early in the primary season."
Wolkoff added that he sensed disappointment among Hopkins Republicans when it became clear that Dean wasn't in fact going to receive the Democratic Party nomination.
"It would've been easy to put on negative TV coverage [had Dean gotten the nomination]," Wolkoff said, referring to the mocking media coverage of Dean's televised "yelp" after his loss in the Iowa primary. "Anybody who's going to make mistakes like that you wouldn't have a problem campaigning against."
However, College Republicans Vice President Justin Klatsky cautions fellow Republicans against dismissing any Democratic candidate.
While Klatsky admitted that Dean might have posed less of a challenge to the Bush, he added that while "every Republican would love to dream of an easy pushover Democratic candidate, that's a pipedream. [Dean] would've been a very strong person to run against."
According to Klatsky, Dean's stagnating campaign points to "how pragmatic the Democratic Party has had to become," and therefore reflects the weakness of the party itself.
Among the Republicans interviewed, national security, the economy, and healthcare rated as the highest issues of concern, with a general consensus that Bush's record in preserving U.S. security would be the driving force behind the upcoming campaigns.
"It's a credit to President Bush that America hasn't suffered another attack since 9/11," Klatsky said.
In addition to showing an across-the-board support for Bush's foreign policy decisions, the Republicans were also confident that recent economic developments would work in Bush's favor in the upcoming election.
"The Democrats played the economy card too soon," Klatsky said, mentioning that positive job growth and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's support of the Bush tax cut should silence criticisms about Bush's responsibility for the current record-breaking deficit and hefty military spending.
While most College Republican members agreed on issues of foreign affairs and fiscal policy in the upcoming presidential campaign, social issues like gay marriage and abortion were another matter.
Herr, who identifies himself as a social moderate, believed that Bush should be "more proactive in releasing constraints on stem cell research," and disagreed with the President's plans to constitutionally ban gay marriage.
Herr also advocated the legalization of marijuana, and as a pro-choice advocate, disagreed with Bush's more ambiguous view of abortion.
On the other hand, College Republicans communications director Mark Sugi kept with his conservative roots on social issues, stating that marriage is "a union between a man and a woman," and opposing the recent flood of gay marriages in San Francisco as "illegal, as they're not provided for under the law."
As the College Republicans wait for the Bush campaign to get under way, they are preparing for some activism of their own.
According to Wolkoff, the College Republicans are currently involved in Congressional campaigns and, when the reelection race finally kicks off, will be engaging in poll-watching, letter-writing and other aspects of grassroots activism on campus.
"The Republicans have decided that Maryland is not a battleground," Klatsky said, "but we're going to be putting some force on-campus to get people to go back home and vote Bush."
