California Conservative

After GOP activists watched incumbents campaign from the fetal position, and with some GOP activists thinking like 2008 will be a repeat of 2006, it’s good to know that Tom Cole has noticed something promising:

Cole, who admits Republicans hurt themselves in 2006 with scandals and out-of-control spending, said the poll confirmed for him a comment he heard this week from a Republican colleague. Speaking of the Democrats, he said, “My God, they’re dragging themselves down to our level.”

It all adds up, Cole said, to a political environment reminiscent of 1992, a tough year for entrenched incumbents of both parties who suddenly saw their margins shrink or isappear. “The American people are rising up in disgust,” Cole said, “and incumbents will pay. It’s not anti-Republican anymore. It’s anti-Washington.”

He’s right in saying that the mood isn’t strictly anti-GOP. Cole’s right in saying that the prevailing attitude has turned into anti-Washington. Democrats have shot themselves in the foot by mouthing the words that their Nutroots’ puppetmasters tell them to say. That’s a huge mistake, especially following MoveOn.org’s Gen. Betray Us ad and Harry Reid’s weeklong contrived anti-Rush diatribe.

What Democrats did was say that Gen. Petraeus was a traitor and a liar. They followed up that electoral disaster by claiming that Rush suddenly loathed the military. By making these wild accusations, they’ve stripped away their credibility on national security issues, especially on Iraq.

Let’s not forget the role that John Murtha has played in this. Murtha accused the Haditha Marines of cold-blooded murder in the hopes of reaping a short term political gain. Now that Lt. Col. Paul Ware has recommended that murder charges be dropped against SSgt. Wuterich, it’s looking inevitable that the investigation will almost totally refute Rep. Murtha’s accusations.

Another thing that’ll help Republicans go on the offensive is Hillary herself. Everyone talked about how cleverly she responded to Tim Russert’s ticking time bomb question. Frankly, people in the heartland didn’t think it was clever for her to say that she wouldn’t use torture to prevent a terrorist attack. They thought that Hillary’s response was irresponsible.

Rest assured that Republicans will repeatedly use that reply to beat up on Democratic congressional candidates. That gives Democrats two options, one of which is bad; the other option awful: either they publicly agree with the Nutroots, thereby alienating the sane majority of voters or they distance themselves from the Nutroots, which dries up their campaign cash and diminishes their intensity.

“She is not going to carry Georgia or Kansas or Texas, and we have good candidates running against shaky Democrats in every one of those states. There are Democrats sitting in 61 districts that Bush carried; 47 that he carried twice. We are on the offensive in those districts,” he said.

That may seem implausible, but Cole has history on his side. In 1992, as he notes, iincumbents were hammered, 24 of them losing in November, 17 others failing in their primaries. The Republicans achieved a net gain of 10 House seats that year, a feather in the cap of the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Tom Cole. Now, no longer a hired staff man but the chairman, Cole faces a familiar challenge. In 1992, the Democrats nominated Bill Clinton for president, and he won. But his party, nonetheless, lost House seats. Cole is out to make history repeat itself.

Why shouldn’t Republican candidates be on the offensive in those 47 districts? Voters in those districts didn’t wake up in 2006 and say I’m fed up with government that keeps taxes low, sets sensible spending priorities and prevents terrorist attacks. They woke up and said that Republicans tried to out-Democrat the Democrats.

Here’s what I said last Sunday:

If we campaign on the blueprint of low taxes, setting sensible spending priorities and protecting Americans from terrorist attacks from neighborhood to neighborhood, from city to city, one state to the next, election victories will be plentiful for the GOP in 2008. You can take that to the bank.

I still firmly believe that fiscal conservatism mixed with a healthy libertarian streak is the dominant political force in American politics. It sounds like Tom Cole has figured that out, too. If that’s how Republicans campaign in 2008, people will notice. Most importantly, voters will respond by putting Ms. Pelosi and her band of status quo corruption chairmen back into minority status.

They’ll do that because they’ll have a choice of voting for politicians who believe in fiscal sanity and keeping taxes low and stable. They won’t be forced into picking between one fiscal lunatic and another.

The thing that I like most about this plan is that, in staking out these immensely defensible positions, we largely render Democrats immaterial. The best they can do is say “Me too.” That won’t sell because they’ve staked out polar opposite positions since regaining the majority. They can’t change, either. Nobody in their right mind would associate John Murtha, John Dingell, Charlie Rangel and Nancy Pelosi with the word change.

Going on offense in the 47 districts that President Bush carried twice will help with recruiting and fundraising, too. If Cole and his candidates can go on the offensive, that’ll serve to motivate GOP activists. This might effect Hillary, too. It isn’t like she can campaign as a change agent who’s coming to Washington with lots of fresh ideas. By the time Election Day 2008 arrives, she will have spent the last 16 years in Washington as a traditional-thinking insider.

Technorati Tags: Tom Cole, NRCC, Change Election, Nutroots, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Haditha, Frank Wuterich, Charlie Rangel, Hillary, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Election 2008, Hillary, Military, Pelosi, Special Interests. 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.