Over at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Cato Institute vice president David Boaz sees president Obama as an important factor in the possible resurrection of the Republicans.

Independents who turned against the Republicans are likely to become equally disillusioned with Obama, and there’s already some evidence of that in the polls.
Support for “smaller government with fewer services” has risen in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, and independents prefer it by 61 percent to 35 percent, a margin three times as large as a year ago. The number of people who see Obama as an “old-style tax and spend Democrat” has risen by 11 percentage points.
Voters are turning against a year’s worth of takeovers, bailouts, and new spending programs. Ironically, the first four months of those programs were actually Bush’s doing. But Obama “owns” the whole shebang now.
In a July USA Today poll, a majority oppose Obama’s health care efforts and 59 percent say he’s spending too much. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll the same month, only 25 percent “strongly approve” of his health care plans, and 33 percent strongly disapprove.”

Read the whole thing here.

That being said, how long can a Republican revival last if Republicans don’t reinvest in the idea of small government? Not long, claims Sam Tanenhaus in his new book, The Death of Conservatism. His interview with Reason TV is here. Also, Steven Hayward addressed this point a few weeks ago in the Washington Post:

But Tanenhaus is right to direct our attention to the imbalance between the right’s thinkers and doers. The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level, in particular over the meaning and nature of progress.

Hayward, unlike Tanenhaus, pronounced conservatism brain-dead only.