Bad news for Republicans: The shift in the electorate favoring the Democrats (36% now identify as Democrats, compared to 27% as Republicans) is not just because of a bad brand. That's been the rationale offered so far by Republicans who have recognized their own party's trouble. "It's not that the ideas are bad, they've just been tarnished by a bad brand image." Or, alternatively, poor execution and corruption are to blame for America's rejection of otherwise good ideas.

But a new poll by Public Opinion Strategies suggests it's not just a tarnished image or a few years of poor leadership at the source of Republicans' woes. In a measure of messages, not identified with any particular party, Americans consistently preferred Democratic messages over Republican ones on the economy, Iraq, trade, and taxes.

That the public would side with Democrats on Iraq isn't all that surprising. But even on taxes, respondents picked the Democratic message over the Republican one 56% to 34%. Check the survey (starting on page 24) if you're worried that the language may have skewed the results. As an example, though, here is how the positions on taxes were presented:

[Republicans] say we must cut taxes on the middle class and double the federal tax credit for dependents for every family in America. We must permanently ban internet taxes and ban new cell phone taxes. We must stop corporate welfare by removing the tax loopholes that are costly and unfair. And, it is time to reduce the pressure to raise taxes by once and for all ending the tens of billions of dollars of our tax money that is squandered by Congress on useless pork-barrel projects.

[Democrats] say with such financial pressure on pressures on families, we need to focus completely on middle class tax relief and making sure government works for them, not the special interests. We should limit the influence of lobbyists and repeal the special interest tax breaks for oil companies and repeal President Bush's tax breaks for those earning over two hundred thousand dollars so that we can really help the middle class. We should extend
tax credits for children, make college costs tax deductible and cut taxes across the board for the middle class.

Seems to be an accurate enough representation of how the parties are packaging their messages. The bottom line here is that Republicans are headed for disaster this election cycle, at least in Congressional elections.

But it's worth noting that although the poll covered pretty major policy issues, it left out things like gay marriage, illegal immigration, and other wedge issues. Those are areas where Republicans probably aren't as strong as in 2004, but they may still have value as distractions for the war and the economy. Democrats' success depends a lot on controlling the narrative during the election and keeping the focus on substantive issues.