By David Kirkpatrick

WASHINGTON, March 15 — Republicans, worried that their conservative base lacks motivation to turn out for the fall elections, have found a new rallying cry in the dreams of liberals about censuring or impeaching President Bush.

The proposal this week by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure Mr. Bush over his domestic eavesdropping program cheered the left. But it also dovetailed with conservatives’ plans to harness such attacks to their own ends.

With the Republican base demoralized by continued growth in government spending, undiminished violence in Iraq and intramural disputes over immigration, some conservative leaders had already begun rallying their supporters with speculation about a Democratic rebuke to the president even before Mr. Feingold made his proposal.

“Impeachment, coming your way if there are changes in who controls the House eight months from now,” Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer, declared last month in an e-mail newsletter.

The threat of impeachment, Mr. Weyrich suggested, was one of the only factors that could inspire the Republican Party’s demoralized base to go to the polls. With “impeachment on the horizon,” he wrote, “maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all.”

For weeks, Republicans have taken to conservative Web sites and talk radio shows to inveigh against the possibility, however remote, that Democrats could impeach Mr. Bush if they gained control of Congress. Mr. Feingold’s censure proposal fell far short of a demand for impeachment. Most Democrats in the Senate distanced themselves from it, concerned that they would be tagged by Republicans as soft on terrorism. But the censure proposal provided Republicans an opening.

“This is such a gift,” the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh told listeners on his syndicated radio program on Monday, saying the Democrats were fulfilling his predictions. “They have to go back to this impeachment thing,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, a conservative standard-bearer, echoed the thought. “We’d like to congratulate the Wisconsin Democrat on his candor,” its editors wrote Wednesday in a column headlined “The Impeachment Agenda.” The Republican National Committee sent the editorial out to its e-mail list of 15 million supporters.

Brian Jones, a Republican spokesman, said the e-mail messages generated a higher response than anything the party had sent in several months, including bulletins about the Supreme Court confirmations.

“Clearly on our side it is something that is energizing our base a little bit,” Mr. Jones said.

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Republican voters didn’t come out in 1996 when Bob Dole was running for president. Although I think he was a subpar candidate for president, I simply believe he didn’t win because the Republican Party base didn’t have the passion to come out and vote. In 2004, Republican voters came out in droves and allowed George Bush to win by 3 million votes.

Why would the Republicans do that in 2004 and not in 1996? For one, voters demonstrated safety was their number one priority, and Bush has chosen time and time again to keep America safe. Second, there was a passion for conservative values and ideals that the liberal left could not match. If Republicans get their base out to vote in the 2006 elections, there will be no stopping the Republican Party. However, if the party does not take advantage of opportunities to unite, like Senator Feingold has so gladly given, expect to see federal spending and tax rates go up as Democrats take control of Congress.