California Conservative

Last November, I told friends that the midterm elections were an idea-free campaign. I don’t think that that’ll be a factor this time around because it appears as though House Republicans are going on an issues offensive. Here’s what they’re reporting in the Politico:

Confronting a dire outlook for next year’s elections, House Republicans have begun to fight back with a new three-pronged strategy: painting the new Democratic majority as part of an unpopular Washington status quo, forcing Democrats to make unpopular votes on tough issues and locking arms around a new GOP issues agenda.

House Republicans might well be expected to be watching their better-funded, in some cases cocky, Democratic competitors from the fetal position.

Public opinion remains sour about the White House and the war in Iraq, and some House Republicans in tough districts have exacerbated the party’s weaknesses by deciding to retire, giving Democrats a better chance of picking up some choice swing seats.

Indeed, many strategists in both parties see a likelihood that the GOP minority will lose even more ground in both the House and the Senate come Nov. 4, 2008.

Putting it bluntly, the GOP should fire these doom-and-gloom strategists and replace them with men like Patrick Ruffini. Simply put, if we can’t take the initiative to run effective campaigns against the most unpopular congress in history, we shouldn’t be a political party. Anybody that thinks that Republicans will likely lose seats in the House isn’t running an issues-oriented campaign. They’re running their campaign from the fetal position.

I’m also not buying into the notion that the Bush administration is that unpopular. If they were, why aren’t Democrats be getting the better of him? Up until now, they’re the ones getting their backsides paddled. Let’s take this a step further.

As I said here, it isn’t like liberalism became wildly popular and conservatism became wildly unpopular:

It’s important to remember that it wasn’t that people got fed up with low taxes, sensible spending priorities and a government that protected them from terrorists.

I’d dare anyone to tell me which of those issues shouldn’t be a winning issue for Republicans. It isn’t like Democrats suddenly became serious about killing jihadists. If they were serious about killing jihadists, they wouldn’t want to leave Iraq until we had annihilated AQI.

How will the Democrats explain why they aren’t the corrupt status quo party? With 18 term corruption machine John Murtha as the face of their party, that’s a tough uphill fight. The fact that they’ve done next to nothing substantive won’t help Democrats make their case to voters that they’ve governed.

Jennifer Crider tried putting lipstick on the Democrats’ pig:

“When average Americans think about Washington, they think about George W. Bush,” Crider said, adding that Democrats would portray their opponents as rubber stamps for the White House.
Asked about the tough votes Democrats had been forced to take, she said: “Our members are representing their districts, and their votes reflect their districts.”

Young Ms. Crider is whistling past the graveyard when she says that Americans think about President Bush when they think about Washington. The truth is that voters think about Nancy Pelosi’s hyperpartisanship and her getting next to nothing done when they think about Washington.

Ms. Crider is trying to portray Democrats as voting in their districts’ best interest. That won’t fly when people see supposed Blue Dog Democrats voting MoveOn.org’s interests. If they’re representing their disstricts, why is it that Democrats huff and puff initially about ending the war, then cave like a house of cards when President Bush turns up the heat?

The 17 GOP members running for reelection on the campaign committee’s ROMP program, designed to protect vulnerable incumbents, narrowly outraised their Democratic counterparts: Those incumbents raised an average of $274,400 for the quarter, while the 29 members on the Democrats’ Frontline program raised an average of $259,000.

It’s looking like Tom Cole finally figured it out that fundraising will be fine if Republicans start acting like Republicans instead of squishy moderates. Democrats have the difficult task of not being portrayed as beholden to the MoveOn.org crowd.

I think Tom Cole is right on the money with this quote:

The results yesterday show Democrats blew their chance to make a good first impression on the country, Cole said. ‘The American people think they’ve not governed effectively.” And if voters are in a firing mood, both parties will suffer, as in 1992 when dozens of incumbents lost with no significant change in the makeup of the House. But because of sheer numbers, Cole argued, Democrats should be nervous. “They’ve got more incumbents than we do, and they run this institution,” he said.

Reports I’ve heard say that Cole has recruited a good roster of candidates to challenge Democrats, especially challenging freshmen Democrats who’ve voted with ‘Queen Nancy’ far too often for their district’s taste.

While it’s true that the DCCC has a decided campaign cash advantage, that shouldn’t be as big a concern as it would’ve been a decade ago. Candidates can get their message out via YouTube and other new media. Besides, Democrats still have the problem of defending Charlie Rangel’s $1 trillion tax hike and their doing nothing to improve Americans’ lives.

Technorati Tags: Tom Cole, John Boehner, NRCC, John Murtha, Corruption, Do Nothing Congress, DCCC, Nancy Pelosi, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 6:23 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Election 2008, Iraq, Pelosi, Special Interests, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.