The right time to rebuild

After their disastrous defeat in 2006 and 2008 elections, Republicans in the United States started to rebuild their party following these demoralising losses.

They are hoping to regain the White House in 2012 and both chambers of Congress in next year's congressional elections.

Polls indicate the Republican Party is in trouble. Recent surveys suggest that while the favourable opinion of the Democratic Party might be dropping, it is still higher among Americans than that of the Republican Party.

Another poll suggests that Americans think President Barack Obama and the Democrats were doing a better job reaching out to cooperate with the other party than were congressional Republicans.

Realising this, the conservative mainstream in the party launched an outreach endeavour to reshape the party's image.

The initiative, called the National Council for a New America, is aimed at sending Republican leaders across the United States in traditional town hall meetings on healthcare, energy, the economic crisis, and national security.

The goal is to listen to the people and report back to House and Senate Republican leaders with new strategies for rehabilitating the party and winning elections in 2010. Even the leaders themselves are set to travel across the country kicking off their "possible mission".

In Virginia that has shifted in favour of the Democrats. It is quite a good idea for Republicans to take their case outside of the capital since the Democrats own Washington.

It is fundamental for Republicans, and especially conservatives, to lay out the solutions they have for the economic crisis, asserting that it was a Wall Street not a White House problem, listen to ordinary people in an open conversation about the challenges facing them, but not necessarily security ones.

For an American in California or Massachusetts, it is layoffs and the rise in Food Stamp usage that worries him the most, not a possible attack by Al Qaida.

Democrats should be defeated by the same exact weapons they have used in last year's campaign.

The trust of Hispanic voters should also be restored. It was former President George W. Bush who appointed the first Hispanic Attorney General.

Yet, Republicans failure to attract Hispanic voters in 2008 played a major role in their loss.

While having such a "creative approach", conservatives must be guided at the same time by their principles of freedom and defence.

They need to promote again a fiscal policy of small government and an intense capitalist market to save the economy from the wholesale takeover, realistic environmental regulations, a strong immigration policy, and an unshakable foreign one that will yield solid policy proposals in November 2010.

Elections to the United States Senate will be held with at least 36 of the 100 seats being contested.

Thirty-four of these are to six-year terms, and the other two are meant to fill the unexpired terms of Vice President Joe Biden and of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At the same time, there will be elections to the House of Representatives.

The Senate is currently composed of 57 Democrats, 40 Republicans, two Independents, one outstanding seat and abides by Democrats' rules.

Of the seats expected to be up for election in 2010, 18 are held by Republicans and 18 by Democrats. The Democrats gained 8 seats in 2008 and another seat last April with the repositioning of Arlen Specter who is known for flip-flopping stances as he was a Democrat until 1965.

The political landscape in America changes in a heartbeat. And as Bush said in January that popularity is "as fleeting as the Texas wind", David Frum, who created the "Axis of Evil" phrase and wrote a book, The Right Man, about the former President, can rest assured that it is the right time for the "Axis of Good" to be back on track.

Rauf Baker is a Dubai-based journalist who specialises in Eastern European Affairs.