by Jason Downs

Created on: June 02, 2009

Who will become the actual face of the Republican Party?

This question has been asked in just about every weekly poll since Obama took office, and the answers generally tend to be as banal as the question. Let's go with a blunt answer and some detailed follow up. There is no face of the Republican Party at this point, and there is unlikely to be one until late 2010 or early 2011. The real answer to the question is unlikely to be decided until the presidential race for 2012 starts to warm up, and since the races keep starting earlier and earlier, the time frame is up in the air.

This doesn't mean that there is no leadership; it just means that there is no central stage, and historically, there never has been one, for an opposition party to have one face at any given time outside of a national election. There are plenty of arguments that Gingrich, Daschel, McAuliffe, Pelosi, or Reid could be described as faces of one party or another during a Bush or Clinton presidency, but those arguments are, by and large, conducted in the world of political pundits and junkies. If you did a national poll of most of those names, you'd come up with a very low recognition level for any of them for the vast number of likely voters. Zogby's poll conducted after the last election that focused on political candidate recognition outside of the national candidates and the basic composition of Congress showed that most Americans couldn't even identify who controlled the House or Senate.

The very idea that there could be one face or voice of the Republican Party a scant six months into the reign of a new Democrat president is resoundingly foolish. It is akin to asking if Obama is the only face of the Democrat Party. He may be the most recognizable face, but there are also frequent stories about all of the ideals he continuously sidesteps and campaign promises he has already broken. The idea that one person can rise up and lead all of the 50+ million people who didn't vote for the current administration in such a truncated period of time is unrealistic.

It is for this reason that the conservative pundits like Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin and others are considered to have some kind of voice or face of the party. These men and, to be honest, several women like Coulter, Crowley, Ingraham, etc.tend to draw the attention of others because they all already have millions of fans. Yet these men and women will not be organizing the party. They draw people that either already believe

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