Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/wdcpix.com)

“There’s not a seat in America held by a Democrat that can’t be won,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio told “Fox and Friends” Monday. “Massachusetts proves that. When Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, any seat’s in play.”

But while Republicans are hoping Brown’s victory foreshadows a GOP landslide, a number of political experts are warning that the country’s restless anxiety — as evidenced not only in Massachusetts, but in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Florida as well — is less a backlash against Democrats in particular than a rebuke of the business-as-usual politics of Capitol Hill in general.

Even as unemployment soared and housing markets tanked, voters have watched lawmakers bicker endlessly over a stimulus bill that proved too small and a health reform proposal that remains unfinished. Meanwhile, the banks have bounced back on the wings of a taxpayer bailout, paying out billions of dollars in employee bonuses this month while the jobs crisis outside Wall Street only worsens. In such an environment, some experts caution, incumbents on both sides of the aisle could find themselves surprisingly vulnerable in November.

“The public is mad, and they’re prepared to take it out on the establishment,” said Tony Coelho, the former California congressman who served as campaign chairman for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential run. “That doesn’t just mean the party in power. That means everyone.”

In Iowa, Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is looking at the first tough re-election campaign of his career, as three Democrats line up for the right to challenge the veteran lawmaker. While his approval numbers remain above 50 percent, something many incumbents can’t say, they are down significantly from 2008.

Iowa’s Democratic delegation is no safer, as five Republicans are vying to take on 3rd District Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell and three are running to unseat 2nd District Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack.

There are even two Democrats starting the uphill struggle of unseating 5th District Republican Rep. Steve King.

David P. Redlawsk, a political scientist at Rutgers University and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, agreed. “The stock market has gone up, but that’s Wall Street, and many voters do not see how that benefits them,” Redlawsk wrote in an e-mail. “There is real risk to incumbents on both sides of the aisle.”

Redlawsk said that the Democrats, because they control both Congress and the White House, have absorbed the brunt of the nation’s discontent. But for Republicans to interpret that as partisan anger, he added, would be a mistake.

“This is not a partisan backlash by voters as much as it is a backlash against the powers that be — who happen to be Democrats,” he wrote.

The evidence of voter discontent has been everywhere in recent months. An early signal came in Virginia and New Jersey last November, when the incumbent Democrats were swept out of the governor’s office by Republican challengers who wouldn’t have stood a chance a year earlier. More recently, the virtually unknown Brown overcame a 30-point deficit to steal the Senate seat vacated by the late Edward Kennedy in the liberal bastion of Massachusetts.

“The message coming out of the Massachusetts special election is clear: No Democrat is safe,” said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “In the aftermath of Scott Brown’s victory this past week, it has become evident to Democrats that to run for reelection in this toxic political environment is to ensure defeat at the ballot box in November.”

Yet recent polls indicate that the voters aren’t exactly thrilled with Republicans either. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted earlier this month, for example, just 24 percent of respondents said they have either a “great deal” or “good amount” of confidence in Republicans to lead the country – down from 29 percent a year earlier. For Democrats, the number was 32 percent, down from 43 percent in January 2009.

Another survey, conducted this month by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, tells a similar story, revealing that just 30 percent of respondents have a positive feeling about the GOP, while 42 percent view the party negatively.

The message hasn’t been lost on some Republicans. Indeed, Brown packaged himself more as an independent outsider than a man of the Republican Party — a bow to the anti-establishment tea-party movement that mobilized so ardently behind him. Republican consultant Brad Todd told CQ recently that the mid-term elections will be governed by a “taint of incumbency.” Even Boehner conceded this week that voters “don’t trust either party.”

Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., might have summed it up best. “The American people have fallen out of love with the current direction, but they haven’t fallen in love with Republicans,” he said last week.

“It’s a pox on both your houses,” Coelho said of the country’s mood toward Democrats and Republicans alike. “That’s why the teabaggers have a voice. They’re saying, ‘The hell with both of you.’”

Supporting that theory, new polls Tuesday revealed that Marco Rubio, the upstart Republican contender fighting for Florida’s Senate seat, is leading GOP Gov. Charlie Crist by three points. The party scheme is different, but Rubio’s anti-establishment theme mirrors that of Brown’s message to Massachusetts voters.

“There is a deep and increasingly restive anger stirring in the country,” L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote last week. “Its focal points at the moment may seem to be healthcare and ‘big government,’ but if there were a Republican in the White House, they might just as well be tax cuts and ‘limited government.’ The fact is that the president and both parties’ congressional delegations have approval ratings under 50 percent.”

The Massachusetts shakeup means that Democrats are without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and that has left party leaders scrambling to prevent a catastrophe in November. “Every state is now in play, absolutely,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said last week. “You have to make the case that you’re the one that’s on the people’s side. And people have to get it.”

With that in mind, President Obama will address Congress tonight in hopes of relaying the thought that he feels the country’s pain. The real audience, though, will be an American people grown frustrated with lawmakers’ partisan hostility, and skeptical of their capacity to lead in times of duress. For Obama, Coelho said, it’s also an opportunity to reframe his approach to governing, recognizing that the 2008 elections were a cry from voters for real change in Washington.

“It was a revolt against the system,” Coelho said of those elections. “Obama interpreted that to be a victory for his policies. But what it was was a frustration with the system not working.

“His political operatives needed to read the tea leaves,” he added. “And they failed.”

The Iowa Republican reports that Sioux City businessman and social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats could raise $200,000 for his gubernatorial campaign at an event hosted by Chuck Norris at his ranch outside Navasota, Texas. A fleet of private jets carrying the roughly 40 Iowa attendees is reportedly en route. The price is $5,000 per couple — probably not including the cost of getting there.

Norris endorsed Vander Plaats in a syndicated column last June.

Beginning Jan. 2, Iowa has established a new class of minor political party called a “political organization.”  The change is part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Green and Libertarian Parties.  Political organizations are required to have run a statewide candidate within the last decade and to complete a petition process.

The news, and the handful of new Green and Libertarian registrations, have been buried by the caucuses and the massive waves of caucus-night party changes to the major parties, but that wasn’t on the mind of Ron Kinum of Iowa City the morning of Jan. 2.  “I really was hoping to be the first if it was possible, without being egocentric about it,” said Kinum.  He went to the Johnson County Auditor’s office just before 8 a.m. on Jan. 2, after attending the Hamburg Inn’s Coffee Bean Caucus results announcement.“I filled in the form and requested they enter my registration in the computer so I would be among the first registrants,” said Kinum.  “I really did expect someone somewhere in the state would want to register before they went to work or something.  As it turned out, the clerk said I was the very first to register!”

“I was more elated over just being able to sign up as a Green after three years of complaining to the Auditor’s office and to the state ID office where I got my ID back in 2006,” Kinum said.

Kinum is still not happy about the way the process treats the Greens.  “They still discriminate about us as being a `political organization,’” he said.  Full party status still requires two percent of the vote for governor or president.  The Greens had full party status from 2000 to 2002, and the Reform Party had party status from 1996 to 1998.

As political organizations, the Greens and Libertarians will not hold primaries.  Soma activists, like Holly Hart of the Greens, are just as happy not to have a primary, since a low turnout primary leaves a small party vulnerable to takeover by candidates who do not support the party’s values.  That happened to the Reform Party in 2000, when Pat Buchanan took over the remnants of Ross Perot’s organization and drove the party’s only elected official, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, to quit the party.

Kinum was also displeased with the Coffee Bean Caucus results, noting that Green candidate Cynthia McKinney’s coffee bean jar was not added until December, shortly before her announcement.  “Many of (her) 36 (votes) were from me,” he said.  “I figure I put in at least a third of them.  I am a somewhat regular customer.”  (The Coffee Bean Caucus slogan is “One bean, one vote,” not “One person, one vote.”)

Kinum attended the Democratic caucus for his precinct, wearing green clothing and a Green Party hat.  He did not participate because he refused to re-register as a Democrat as required under party rules. 

Kinum is well known in Iowa City for attending political events in Iowa City and carrying large hand-made signs, and he made a special sign for the caucus:

GROW UP
CITIZENS OFANTI-DEMOCRACY! 

ONLY THE PRIMARY GIVES YOU A

VOTE!