The GOP's Strategy for Winning Hearts and Minds, and the 2016 Election

The GOP has been working at winning the 2016 Presidential Election since Barack Obama won the 2008 election. Mitch McConnell made that clear in a talk to the Heritage Foundation way back in 2010. You remember that business about the Republican priority being to limit Obama to one term? That was just one of among the many things Republicans didn't accomplish in all those 8 years.

It may be that initially, Republicans saw their opposition to President-Elect Obama as part of the "loyal opposition" tradition in politics. But when they began to see the handwriting on the wall -- the public mood and demographics meant that Obama wasn't going away anytime soon -- they turned their sights on another goal; turn Americans against government. After all, it wasn't "their government."

The Republican strategy was simple. Turn loyal opposition into outright obstructionism. If nothing works, if policies aren't prosecuted, if laws aren't passed, if vacancies aren't filled, it thwarts the Obama "liberal agenda," and as a bonus, Americans become disillusioned with government. When that happens, they'll be less likely to turn out for elections. That would favor Republicans, as it historically has, and as it did, ultimately putting the "Grand Old Party" back in control of both the House and the Senate.

The American public's approval rating for Congress has reflected the success of the GOP strategy. Back in the Year 2000, 56% of Americans approved of the way congress "handled its job." Today, that percentage has dropped to 18%.

Now, moving into the 2016 election, the presumptive nominee for the GOP, Donald Trump, trumpets the slogan, "Make America Great Again." You can buy a hat from Trump's campaign site with that slogan on it. I'd be cautious about buying anything else from Trump. His track record with truth is not good, nor are the business deals he brags about, which no less a conservative voice than the National Review, has described with poison-pen contempt.

How did such a man become the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States? The answer to that truly puzzeling question can be found in the strategy employed by the GOP leading up to the debacle that is their pending armageddon. That strategy started first with the burn down government program already addressed, followed by this general plan.

Reach out to "low information, low propensity" registered Republicans, who make up some 35% of the Republican base and generally don't vote.

Make a concerted get out the vote (GOTV) effort through direct, personal contact. These folks don't do social media. Some of the organizations leading the charge on this GOTV effort are:

UNIFIED PATRIOTS

REDSTATE

THE PRECINCTS PROJECT

US PRECINCT PROJECT

Unite the right-wing base, including the following:

National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), other gun groups, and militia organizations whose membership have exploded since Barack Obama was elected. Militia membership often overlaps with gun group membership. Republican strategists estimate that only half of the membership in these organizations are registered voters, and of those, only half vote. They consider this fertile ground for plowing.

The Tea Party, which has split into the Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Express, and unaffilated voters who call themselves Tea Partiers. A unified Tea Party gave the Republicans the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014 (with the complicity of an apathetic democratic electorate). In some sense, the success that Tea Party affiliated voters achieved in 2010 and 2014 was their undoing. They lost momentum, lost faith, became divided, and lost their punch. The Republican establishment, although anathema to Tea Partiers, will try to regain their trust, and their vote.

The 9-12 Project is a Ayn Rand sort of group with god thrown in for good measure. They describe their organization as a "non-partisan movement focusing on building and uniting our communities back to the place we were on 9/12/2001." Their principles include, "Government cannot force me to be charitable." The Republican establsihment sees 9-12 as a fringe of the Libertarian Party and hope to embrace them, at least until the 2016 election is over.

Smart Girl Politics Action (SGPA) describes itself as, "a grassroots community of women activists who believe in the free market, personal responsibility, and limited government." SGPA began with the mission to "engage, educate, and empower conservative women to get involved in the political process." They are essentially an organized component of Republican women. The RNC won't have to do much to entice them into the fold, but they may be pressed to GOTV for "The Donald."

SarahPAC.com is just what you'd expect it to be. Sarah Palin's personal money making venture desigend to capatilize on what she terms "her historic endorsement of Donald Trump." Palin's fund-raising message to prospective donors is that she's supporting "anti-establishment" candidates, but the RNC isn't particular. If they can glom on to Sarah's "momma grizzlies," they will. 

Grassfire formerly Patriot Action Network. This organization appears to be very social media centric. The RNC will use it to network with the organizations outlined above.

Evangelical Christians. In the recent midterm elections, white evangelicals or born-again Christians made up 26 percent of the electorate and voted for Republican candidates 78 percent to 22%.During the primaries, a plurality of self-identified white evangelicals voted for Trump (40%), while the majority split their votes between Ted Cruz (34%), Marco Rubio (11%), and John Kasich (10%). The RNC's challenge is to unify that voting block behind their presumptive nominee. It shouldn't be a problem, unless Trump says something really outrageous ("Two Corinthians" notwithstanding).

AsaMom is a "sisterhood of mommy patriots," or so it's website says.  Their mission is "to empower Moms and Moms at Heart in preserving our Constitution, country and children’s future." Their 9 principles are the same as The 9-12 Project's principles. The RNC has to convince this voting block that Donald Trump is only kidding when he says it doesn't matter what the media say as long as you have a beautiful "piece of ass" with you. Some moms might object to being objectified.

The problem the RNC had in trying to unify these groups whose commonality was primarily angry dissatisfation, was that the RNC was the "establishment" and it was peddling the same, tired establishment bullshit about Obama Care "death panels," "abortion on demand," the refusal of Obama to say "Islamic terrorism," the climate change "hoax," transgender "predators" in bathrooms, violation of Americans' Second Amendment rights, and the need to donate to the RNC to compensate for George Soros's flood of money going to the DNC. In other words, they totally misjudged the give-a-shit basis for their audience's disatisfaction, which was poor-paying jobs, no jobs, shitty jobs, and Mexicans taking all the shitty jobs that they didn't want, but were unhappy to see said Mexicans making money at. So yeah, "Fuck you, RNC, we'll vote for an asshole. That'll teach you!" And voilà -- Donald Trump.

“I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created.”

Donald Trump 2015 camapign announcement

What was Really Behind the Republican Shutdown?

"If the Republicans had not fought on ObamaCare,

the compromise would have been over the budget sequester." 

The government shutdown is over and recriminations, ruminations, and machinations are rebounding around the halls of Congress, mainstream media, and the blogosphere. Here I am to add my $.02.

The general wisdom seems to be that Republicans are taking the brunt of the blame for the shutdown, as well they should. Allowing TEA Party members of the House to dictate a defund or die fiscal fiasco was a fool's errand and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was the errand boy. Recriminations within party ranks have made the Republican Party look disorganized to the point of disarray. Speaker Boehner comes off looking particularly bad as leader of his party. Politically, the circus orchestrated by Cruz hurt Speaker Boehner's reputation as leader of a cohesive Party, and seems to have made Cruz a pariah among rank and file Republicans.

President Obama was seen generally as holding the upper hand in refusing to negotiate on the Affordable Care Act under threat on the Republican-led shutdown and the looming possibility of a government default. His position got stronger as the shutdown dragged on and Republicans began vacillating on what they hoped to get out of the impasse.

The Republican cause wasn't helped by some of the ludicrous things Republicans, without a consensus message for once, were saying. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told a reporter, "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this and I don't know what that even is." And that was the crux of the matter. Republican leadership knew that getting the President to cave on the ACA -- his signature first term achievement -- was a pipe dream. So what the hell were they hoping to achieve by another round of budget brinkmanship?

It may be that an analysis of the Republican shutdown that assesses the question as a party tactic won't get us a sensible answer. Rather, the shutdown may have been orchestrated by individuals within the party, with help from outside political groups, like the Heritage Foundation and its sister advocacy group and political arm, Heritage Action. The purpose in this case, would be to shift the power base of the party from the moderates to the ultra-conservatives, including the TEA Party. How did they hope to do this? By doing exactly what they did. Making party leadership look bad, and then threatening members coming up for reelection with an all-out primary challenge to replace them with their brand of no-holds barred conservative.

Between now and the 2014 Congressional elections we will see Republicans continue to thwart the President on every front, but mostly on spending. There will continue to be attacks on the Affordable Care Act, but these will be focused on undermining the act, and making it look bad (through such tactics as Congressional investigations), with the hope that Republicans can make it a cause célèbre for the 2016 Presidential election.

It will be interesting to see how Republicans structure their primary for the 2016 election. They would certainly want to avoid an all-out battle with the TEA Party over who the presidential candidate will be, but this might not be possible. People might forget the debacle that was Ted Cruz reading from Dr. Seuss during his irrelevant filibuster, but the angry Republican moderates won't. They'll be a search for a compromise candidate. In steps Jim DeMint. Know who he is?

Washington Commissioner for Public Lands

I’ve seen enough letters in our local paper, the Tri-City Herald, supporting Clint Didier  for Commissioner of Public Lands to wonder if the Tea Party is serving its members Kool-Aid instead of tea. What an absolutely crazy idea!

I felt some kinship with the Tea Party when the movement first raised the issue of our massive debt in 2008, and called for fiscal responsibility in Washington D.C. But for some reason, what seemed to start out as a reasonable collection of people opposed to bigger government, became a grab-bag of extremists spewing polemic on everything from Agenda 21 to Muslims in America.

Tea Party leaders should have distanced the party from these nutcakes, but they didn’t, and now our local Tea Party is supporting someone who embodies most of the crazy ideas the fringe membership has raised. Didier thinks Agenda 21, a U.N. roadmap on sustainable development, is in reality a sneaky plan to impose global governance, and place limits on population growth by curtailing farming. But reality isn’t something Didier embraces easily, as his stance on climate change illustrates. He says global warming is a hoax, and Arctic ice is growing, not shrinking. Fortunately for people in our hard-hit drought states, Didier is our problem, and not theirs.

What an Absolutely Crazy Idea!

Clint Didier, Candidate for Washington Commissioner of Public Lands

I’ve seen enough letters in the Tri-City Herald supporting Clint Didier for Commissioner of Public Lands to wonder if the Tea Party is serving its members Kool-Aid instead of tea. What an absolutely crazy idea!

I felt some kinship with the Tea Party when the movement first raised the issue of our massive debt in 2008, and called for fiscal responsibility in Washington D.C. But for some reason, what seemed to start out as a reasonable collection of people opposed to bigger government, became a grab-bag of extremists spewing polemic on everything from Agenda 21 to Muslims in America.

Tea Party leaders should have distanced the party from these nutcakes, but they didn’t, and now our local Tea Party is supporting someone who embodies most of the crazy ideas the fringe membership has raised. Didier thinks Agenda 21, a U.N. roadmap on sustainable development, is in reality a sneaky plan to impose global governance, and place limits on population growth by curtailing farming. But reality isn’t something Didier embraces easily, as his stance on climate change illustrates. He says global warming is a hoax, and Arctic ice is growing, not shrinking. Fortunately for people in America's hard-hit drought states, Didier is our problem, and not theirs.

Didier is running for Commissioner of Public Lands against the incumbent, Peter Goldmark. Wrote about the job of Commissioner and the qualifications (or lack thereof) of the two candidates here.

Previously, Didier ran for the Washington State Senate position held by Patty Murray. I covered that here.

The American Taliban Courtesy of "The Newsroom"

The Newsroom, a new TV show written by the inimitable Aaron Sorkin (creator of The West Wing), took on the Tea Party last Sunday and gave them a good going over. Here's the clip.
What do you think, did Sorkin get it right?

Getting to Know Rob McKenna

Rob McKenna seems to have been running for political office right out of the crib. He has an impressive resume; two bachelor’s degrees, law degree, high school and college student body president, Eagle Scout, county council member at age 33, and most recently, Attorney General for the State of Washington. According to the Seattle Times, McKenna’s high school friends joked about him being president of the United States someday.

It certainly wouldn’t surprise people who know McKenna. He is nothing if not ambitious. President may be in his long-term plans, but right now he has his aim on the State House. Being the Governor of Washington might well be McKenna’s idea of a stepping stone to a presidential run.

McKenna is a politician’s politician. On the one hand, when speaking to union employees, he states that collective bargaining is a recognized right. When speaking to Republican supporters he says that collective bargaining is merely a “statutory right,” and characterizes public employee unions as “dangerous.” The Seattle Times reported that the head of the Republican Governors Association told Washington’s delegates to the Republican National Convention that McKenna would be a leader similar to Scott Walker, the pugnacious, anti-union governor of Wisconsin.

Despite portraying himself as a moderate Republican, McKenna’s actions speak louder than words. McKenna is consistently anti tax and told a Tea Party rally, “I represent you.” The Tea Party is as strongly behind McKenna as they are their favorite, Clint Didier, who claims global warming is a hoax perpetrated to pave the way for a UN takeover of US sovereignty

In the face of increasing evidence of habitat destruction and declining biodiversity, McKenna parrots the Republican lament about burdensome environmental regulations, and he has implied that home buyers, rather than shady mortgage companies, are to blame for the foreclosure crisis.

But what really elevated McKenna to the national stage and got him noticed by Republican Party functionaries was being one of the first state attorneys general to join a multi-state law suit against the Affordable Care Act. Here again, McKenna, the adroit politician, tried to have it both ways, arguing that he was “only” against the insurance mandate. But King County Superior Court Judge Sharon Armstrong said that McKenna’s “consistent legal position” has been to repeal the entire health reform law and that his campaign talk of maintaining its popular provisions were merely “political statements.”

McKenna’s stance on health care reform and his tactical “political statements” have vaulted him into the conservative limelight and generated millions of dollars in campaign contributions from special interests, including many from out of state. He currently holds a half million dollar lead over his main rival, Jay Inslee. With less than 70 days until the election, that represents a significant advantage.

And your point is?

“This so-called climate science is just ridiculous,” said Kelly Khuri, founder of the Clark County Tea Party Patriots. “I think it’s all cyclical.”

“Carbon regulation, cap and trade, it’s all just a money-control avenue,” Ms. Khuri added. “Some people say I’m extreme, but they said the John Birch Society was extreme, too.”

(See the full article)