During the holiday season, Republicans have visions in their head of a gift that will be delivered in November 2010 - a GOP wave election like that of 1994.

A number of the elements of a wave election are starting to fall into place. President Obama’s popularity has eroded in the last few months. In the Gallup daily survey of adults, he is frequently hovering just under 50 percent, while the Rasmussen daily survey of likely voters has a small plurality of respondents disapproving of the president’s performance. Mr. Obama is personally popular, but he is considered too liberal and his focus on health care issues is not the same as the biggest concern of Americans - jobs and the economy. Growing dissatisfaction with Mr. Obama and his policies could have the same effect in 2010 as unhappiness with President Clinton in 1994.

The intensity factor distinctly favors Republicans. According to Rasmussen, although Mr. Obama’s overall disapproval and approval ratings are fairly close, those who strongly disapprove of his performance outnumber strong approvers by double digits. This effect is even more pronounced on the proposed health care bill, where strong disapproval is far more common than strong approval. Folks who care strongly about issues are much more inclined to flock to the polls in an off-year election. This effect was shown in a recent poll for the liberal Daily Kos website that showed Republicans far more excited about voting in 2010 than Democrats.

Republicans also take considerable encouragement in the results of the recent 2009 elections. The GOP swept governorships previously held by Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, states carried by Mr. Obama in 2008. Perhaps even more significant were strong gains by Republicans in big city suburbs that had been trending Democratic in recent decades. Two excellent examples in New York were in Westchester County where a Republican county executive was elected by a wide margin and, of course, in Nassau County, where the GOP won the county executive and comptroller, as well as the county legislature.

Of course, we all know that holiday wishes do not always result in the expected gift. Can Republicans end up with the equivalent of coal in their stocking next November? Yes, it’s possible. In some places, Republicans have been hampered by candidate recruitment problems. New York is a prime example, where it is very possible that neither of the top tier candidates for statewide office, Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki, will make the run, leaving the top of the ticket in some flux. The national economy and unemployment picture could suddenly improve, with President Obama and the Democrats receiving the credit, although few economists are expecting robust growth in jobs.

Probably the biggest obstacle to attainment of GOP holiday wishes is the possibility of significant intraparty dissension. The Tea Party protests and other grass roots movements have contributed to the energy level of the party, but it will be interesting to see whether activists and traditional regulars will be naughty or nice (sorry, got carried away) in working together to get candidates elected. A case study of how not to run an election was the recent upstate Congressional election in which the Republicans nominated a candidate too liberal for the party base, which resulted in the emergence of a Conservative Party challenger backed by activists and the ultimate election of a Democrat with less than a majority of the vote. The best guess is that there is enough desire to effect change in Washington to avoid many of these situations, but only time will tell.