• Cover Story
• Table of
  Contents
• Contents By
  Topic
• Columns
  • Brownstein
  • Cook
  • Crook
  • Rauch
  • Stokes
  • Schneider
  • Taylor Jr.
• Regular
  Features
  • Hotline Extra
  • Inside Washington
  • Insiders Poll
  • K Street Corridor
  • People
  • The Week on the Hill

Who's the leader of the Republican Party? Don't know the answer? You are correct. Or at least, you're in the majority, according to a recent Gallup-USA Today poll.

Most Americans (51 percent) can't name anyone who speaks for the Republican Party today. Among those who give an answer, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney are at the top of the list, named by 13 percent and 10 percent, respectively. They're followed by Newt Gingrich and John McCain (each 6 percent). Only 3 percent name former President George W. Bush. All older, white, conservative men -- not exactly the new America.

Ask Republicans who speaks for their party, and they say more or less the same thing. Nearly half of those polled (46 percent) can't say who their leader is. Maybe Limbaugh (10 percent)? Gingrich (10 percent)? Cheney (9 percent)? Bush -- who's he? Less than half of 1 percent of Republicans named Bush as their party's leading figure.

Finding that new face won't be easy. When it comes time to nominate a candidate for president, Republicans usually nominate whoever is next in line.

The party does have an official national chairman, of course. That would be Michael Steele, who, when asked to assess Limbaugh and Cheney and Gingrich as party spokesmen, replied, "I'm here and they're not." But only 2 percent of Republicans acknowledge Steele as their leader.

In 2001, six months after Bush took office, a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll asked people to name the leader of the Democratic Party. Fifty-one percent said they didn't know. Another 10 percent said "nobody." A Democratic political consultant from Chicago told USA Today, "It's the nature of being the party out of power.'' The consultant was David Axelrod, who would make his name as Barack Obama's chief political strategist during the campaign and is now a senior White House adviser.

The Democratic Party is still riding pretty high. The public gives Democrats a 53-percent-to-41-percent favorable rating in the recent Gallup poll. The Republican Party? Almost 20 points lower: 34 percent favorable, 59 percent unfavorable. Those are among the worst numbers the GOP has received since the Republican House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton in 1998.

In fact, fully a third of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of their own party. One of those unhappy Republicans is former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" last month, "What we have to do is debate and define who we are and what we are, and not just listen to diktats that come down from the right wing of the party.''

Asked what Republicans should do to reverse their fortunes, most Americans (55 percent) feel the party should change its positions to appeal to moderates. Just over a third (37 percent) said no, the party should do a better job of selling its conservative views without changing them. In other words, the public favors Powell over Limbaugh.

But how do Republicans feel? Exactly the opposite: Sixty-four percent want the party to stick to its conservative views, while 31 percent say it should make an effort to broaden its appeal to moderates. Most Republicans agree with Cheney's views when he was asked whether he preferred Powell or Limbaugh as a spokesman. "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh,'' Cheney responded.

What about the one-third of Republicans who are dissatisfied? The same. By 60 percent to 35 percent, Republicans who have an unfavorable view of their party want it to remain conservative. They just want a new face. What Republicans are looking for now is a conservative Obama.

Finding that new face won't be easy. When it comes time to nominate a candidate for president, Republicans usually nominate whoever is next in line. That often means someone who's unsuccessfully run for president before. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain -- all of them had already tried at least once.

The pressure is on for Republicans to chart a new direction, and they seem to know it. As former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis said in an interview after Sen. Arlen Specter's defection to the Democrats and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's appointment to the Obama administration: "We're driving out the heretics, and they're looking for converts.''