Category Archives: GOP Politics

GOP Chaos?… Yes, But…

The relentless reporting in the media about internal GOP chaos in the aftermath of Mitt Romney’s defeat is entirely accurate. But that’s not all a bad thing if you’re a young Republican operative looking to make a mark and get some notice of your talent.

Chaos breeds opportunity, and after 32 years in DC, I’ve seen this several different times. It’s highly cyclical and the last big crack-up was after the embarrassing defeat of George H.W. Bush at the hands of Bill Clinton. I sank on that Titanic and, out of that chaos, came a consulting firm and lots and lots of gigs.

Did it take time? absolutely. But keep in mind the dispirit in the GOP after Bill Clinton’s win was wiped out just one cycle in the ’94 landslide.

The structural upheaval in the GOP will continue for some time, and am hardly predicting a 1994-like resurgence; the demographic trends are a powerful factor working against us in the current GOP Party construct.

But for any teenager of young twenty-something wanting to get involved and earn their way up the ladder, now is as good a time to make a mark as I’ve seen in 20 years. Campaigns are among the most upwardly mobile professions in existence. Campaign intern one day, congressional, gubernatorial or presidential staffer the next. Make it happen.

Legal Challenge to Obamacare Fading

Politico is reporting today, correctly, that window is closing for those who want to bulldoze the Obama health law in court. It is going to become increasingly difficult because courts are much less willing to overturn something that is already entrenched said Randy Barnett, the Georgetown University law professor who helped construct the Supreme Court argument against the law earlier this year.

Critics are still fighting the law in court on several fronts, and Barnett hasn’t given up hope that one of those challenges could succeed. But the more Obamacare benefits become available to people, the harder it is to undo.

There’s no question that one of the reasons why we had as much room to run as we did is we had a two-year delay in implementing most of the law, he said, referring to the multi-state lawsuit he helped fight. Had more of the health law been up and running, it would’ve been much more difficult for us to even make the challenge. That opening is closing.

Some of Barnett’s allies in the Supreme Court case seemed to indicate as much with their silence. Michael Carvin and Paul Clement, two of the other lead attorneys, said they were not tracking other anti-Obamacare litigation and declined to comment to Politico. That’s good news for the law’s backers.

Randy Barnett is right. He’s a legal scholar with a relationship to reality, said Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for American Now. I think that courts don’t like to undo programs that are already being implemented that are impacting millions of people, especially when the highest court in the land found the law to be constitutional. Revisiting parts of it is obviously political and ideological.

The 2012 Election Aftermath Analysis

Looking past the fact the 2012 election was a GOP debacle, and the allegation — fair or not — that the GOP has a “polling problem,” the election result is best analyzed by a Resurgent Republic analysis authored by by Whit Ayres, Jon McHenry and Luke Frans. Charlie Cook said this analysis, specifically, is the best he has yet to peruse.

The basics of the analysis:

The 2012 election marks the year when the inexorable march of demographic change caught up with the Republican Party. While multiple factors led to President Obama’s reelection, none was as important as rapidly increasing demographic change in the American electorate. Mitt Romney won white voters by a landslide, 59 to 39 percent, in the process achieving the highest percentage of the white vote of any Republican
challenging an incumbent president in the history of exit polling. Yet that was not enough to craft a majority of the popular vote.

Resurgent Republic’s 2012 post-election survey polled 1000 likely voters nationally, starting on the night of the election, November 6, and concluding on Thursday, November 8. The results were weighted to conform to the popular vote outcome of 50 percent for Obama and 48 percent for Romney. Following are key highlights of the survey. Full results are available at resurgentrepublic.com.

Structure of the Electorate from Exit Polls

1. The 2012 electorate contained the smallest share of white voters and the largest share of nonwhite voters in American history. White voters constituted 72 percent of the electorate, down from 74 percent in 2008, 77 percent in 2004, and 81 percent in 2000.

African-Americans made up the next largest share at 13 percent, the same as 2008, and up from 11 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 2000.

Hispanics constituted 10 percent of the electorate in 2012, compared to 9 percent in 2008, 8 percent in 2004, and 7 percent in 2000.

Asian voters made up 3 percent of the 2012 electorate, an increase from 2 percent each in 2008, 2004, and 2000.

2. Mitt Romney won a larger share of the white vote than either John McCain or George W. Bush. Romney defeated Obama by 59 to 39 percent among whites, compared to McCain winning whites by 55 to 43 percent over Obama in 2008, while Bush won whites by 58 to 41 percent over John Kerry in 2004 and by 54 to 42 percent over Al Gore in 2000.

3. Mitt Romney won white voters in almost all demographic groups, usually by substantial margins. Romney’s campaign was extremely successful at appealing to white voters across the board, and won almost all white groups except Jewish voters.

Medicare Issue Turns Against GOP

When Mitt Romney selected Paul Ryan as his Veep nominee, and initially seized the offensive on Medicare by charging “Obamacare” was funded by actually siphoning-off Medicare dollars, too many GOP consultants rejoiced prematurely.

One NRCC operative was quoted as predicting the Democrats would retreat on Medicare, and that the GOP had turned a corner on the always controversial and dangerous issue. As Charlie Black noted, if we could ‘break-even’ on Medicare, we’d be doing quite well.

But that was then. Now? GOP candidates are well advised to fight back on the issue, but not lead with it.

That was always the best approach, and the initial glow of the first Ryan offensive has clearly worn off.

Predictable DC Drumbeat that Romney is Toast

If one listened only to the Washington Beltway echo chamber this week, the presidential campaign is over.

Not only did Romney ‘mishandle’ the sacking of the U.S. embassy in Libya, but he’s also “lost Ohio” and thus the election because of several polls confirming the President maintains a small “lead.”

And that’s one of the biggest flaws of the reporting and armchair commentary.

When one sees reporting that says Obama ‘leads’ Romney 47%-45% is state X, that’s actually terrifying news for any incumbent. This is the case in any number of states where Obama ‘leads’ Romney but is not close to 50%.

This is what GOP pollster Whit Ayres correctly calls the incumbent’s ‘never-never land of 47%, 48% and 49%.” Hitting 50% +1 for Obama will be a continual uphill fight in a variety of battleground states like Florida and Virginia — no matter what we hear and see now — due to the economy and horrendous right track/wrong track #’s.

Granted, Romney still has quite a bit to do in terms of even getting to the point of possibly closing the deal — he’s indeed behind, still needs to package his agenda more succinctly, and the ruthlessness of the Obama campaign has kept him back on his heels.

But still, campaigns change quickly.

With debates and so many surprises left in store, anything can happen — and Romney is very much in the thick of the contest, no matter what one sees from DC talking heads, most of whom, pathetically, have never even worked on a campaign.

Romney Wave or Obama Squeaker?

As the GOP Convention convenes in Tampa and Republicans eagerly await Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, the sense is developing among several analysts that either Romney will pull away at the end in a modest ‘wave election’ and win a bit more handily than the current thinking, or, Obama ekes out a narrow victory.

That is very logical, and similar to the Reagan-Carter 1980 election model whereby Reagan passed the key ‘threshold of credibility’ during the debates to allow voters to feel comfortable in dumping Carter.

Presuming a strong convention speech — it’s hard to blow it — Mitt Romney will go into the critical debate phase of the campaign highly underestimated in his debating skills vis a vis Obama. Intrade and other insider spectators (mostly from DC) continue to give Obama the advantage, and generally believe he will squeak out a win with a state by state strategy — treating the presidential race as a series of statewide contests.

That’s a smart strategy for Obama, and essentially the only plausible means towards achieving a structural electoral college victory. That is still the conventional wisdom.

But with the economy in the tank, Obama’s unfav creeping ever higher, Obama hovering at 45/46/47 in a variety of key battleground states — and an underestimated Mitt Romney — I’m betting Romney, like Reagan, will pass the credibility threshold and win by 3-4 points. The corollary benefit of that small wave will be the GOP taking control of the Senate with 51 seats.

DC Slowly Understanding Romney Can Win

While all eyes are on the Wisconsin recall tonite, and no declared winner yet, am going to have to say how slow DC moves in recognizing Mitt Romney is more likely than not to win the Presidency. Unsurprisingly, most of official Washington is relatively oblivious to the unfolding dynamic.

When Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod showed up in Boston to lead the thrashing of Mitt Romney, this was reminiscent of the Bush/Quayle ’92 campaign — which dispatched a team to Little Rock to trash Bill Clinton’s Arkansas record.

Unfortunately, I was there, and one of those in charge (to my chagrin).

It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

The only issue is jobs and economic leadership.

Barack Obama will likely take his place along side George H.W. Bush as a one term president. The current President, like Bush, is slowly sinking into the quicksand caused by poor economic stewardship.

Plain and simple.

Gingrich the DC “Outsider”

As the Florida GOP race moves to Florida and a new Rasmussen survey finds Gingrich with 41%, Romney with 32% and Santorum at 11%, the Romney campaign is wrestling with the fact Newt has completely turned the tables and is now the insurgent ‘outsider’ who will bring change to Washington.

Of course, this is preposterous. Gingrich can’t change Washington, because he is Washington.

This is a dangerous time for Romney, and the fact Gingrich has flipped the insider vs. outsider dynamic on its head with relative ease, and through sheer force of personality and intellect, will require Romney to flip the insider-outsider table back over. What a brawl.

Romney Polling Spike In South Carolina Breaks Glass Ceiling

The rap on Mitt Romney in both national surveys and states beyond just his home geo base in NH is that he cannot poke through approximately 25% in this large multi-candidate.

While just one survey, the new CNN/Time/ORC South Carolina poll puts Romney at 37% followed by Santorum at 18%.

Psychologically, if anything, this data portends good news as the sheer weight of the NH, SC, FL gauntlet bares down on the shrinking GOP field.

While NH is where Romney needs to meet his expectations, and where the focus on the deluge of polls are at the moment, this new little polling tidbit from South Carolina is as revealing as it is likely prescient of where things could be in just several weeks: over and done with.

The DC Herd Jumps on “Newt Has Peaked” Bandwagon

One benefit of my office setup — some say a liability that perpetuates a narrow Beltway perspective — is that i watch MSNBC, Fox News, CNN and CNBC throughout the course of the business day.

One benefit is sensing shift in narratives and storylines — much like ‘watching the tape’ as they use to say on Wall Street, when intuitive brokers could sense a broader market move just by watching the action in real time.

Today marked a clear turning point in Newt Gingrich’s fortunes if one goes by the metric of cable spin. All day long, Newt’s Intrade collapse and several IA tracking polls have prompted a rush by the DC class to proclaim he has peaked.

While I personally believe this to be true based simply on my own intuition, the one reality is this: Newt is being hammered with a barrage of tough advertising from Ron Paul and the Romney Super Pac, and has decided to let the negative ads go unanswered.

Bottom line: this is a fatal strategy, and Gingrich may now lose Iowa to Paul or perhaps even Romney. Newt must win Iowa to meet expectations — but that is now very much in doubt.