Dead In The Water

Hilarious. So the House Republicans had a playdate with President Georgie today, and there are pictures, too. So much for distancing themselves from the worst President in history. In fact, Republicans are downright touchy about it.

Columbus, Ohio: You boldy predicted that Bush’s approval ratings would rebound — instead he is, according to Gallup, the most unpopular presdient [sic] in history. Will you finally admit that your vision for this nation has been overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of the people?

Karl Rove: Get your facts right — there are at least three president who had worse approval ratings, Truman, Johnson and Nixon. I’m absolutely positive history will be kind to this president, who made the right decisions in a difficult time for this nation.

Won't surprise you to know that Turdblossom got his facts wrong. But that's besides the point. It's the collective denial, the touchiness, the flinging headlong into the arms of that disaster Bush, that is sending Republicans down a path of electoral disaster.

Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.

The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode.

“There is an attitude that, ‘I better watch out for myself, because nobody else is going to do it,’” the member said. “There are all these different factions out there, everyone is sniping at each other, and we have no real plan. We have a lot of people fighting to be the captain of the lifeboat instead of everybody pulling together.” [...]

And in a closed-door session at the Capitol, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told members that the NRCC doesn’t have enough cash to “save them” in November if they don’t raise enough money or run strong campaigns themselves.

They don't have the ideas, they don't have the ear of the public, and Cole is signaling that they don't have the money. Newt Gingrich is the Cassandra of the GOP, warning that disaster is imminent And it is. This is very stark language.

The Anti-Obama, Anti-Wright, and Anti-Clinton GOP Model Has Been Tested -- And It Failed

The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.

This model has already been tested with disastrous results.

In 2006, there were six incumbent Republican Senators who had plenty of money, the advantage of incumbency, and traditionally successful consultants.

But the voters in all six states had adopted a simple position: "Not you." No matter what the GOP Senators attacked their opponents with, the voters shrugged off the attacks and returned to, "Not you."

The danger for House and Senate Republicans in 2008 is that the voters will say, "Not the Republicans."

I really don't think Republicans understand the enormity of this, and I don't think Newt Gingrich is that good a messenger in the sense that he will probably not be listened to in any legitimate way. And of course, Gingrich doesn't have any real answers to this dilemma. His proposed solutions - repealing the gas tax for the summer, earmark reform and cutting the runaway Census budget (!) - are a warmed-over brew of meaningless solutions that have no support among the broader public. The fact that Newt plugs his book at the end of this clarion call shows that he's looking out for himself more than the party, and that he considers his readers to be little more than suckers.

P.S. -- Father's Day is just around the corner and there are great gift ideas available at great prices at Newt.org. Just click here to order personally signed copies of my new novel, Days of Infamy, as well as Pearl Harbor and Real Change. With the purchase of either of these three personally signed books, you can get a signed copy of Gettysburg for only $5. If you buy both a personalized copy of Pearl Harbor and Days of Infamy, you will receive a signed Gettysburg for free!

P.P.S. -- The Days of Infamy book tour took me to New York City last week where Callista took some great pictures of us on the set of Hannity and Colmes, The View, The Daily Show and others. You can view them here.

I'm continuing the tour with a signing in Marietta, GA Wednesday. Click here for details.

This is what the conservative movement is reduced to - hawking their books while the party hollows out and lumbers toward permanent minority status. Their Idiot Boy King broke the party, and nobody can remove themselves from his embrace.





Good luck, Republicans.

Bill Kristol, Super-Genius

So I guess professional fabulist Bill Kristol today proposed a McCain-Bobby Jindal ticket for the Republicans, suggesting that the young governor of Louisiana would defuse the age issue while riling up the conservative base with his staunchly pro-life views.

Uh-huh.

There was a special election in Louisiana, in Jindal's back yard, right in Baton Rouge, the home of the state capital, and his favored candidate lost. Jindal, in fact, strongly supported him. Here's the endorsement.

If he couldn't influence a race in his own backyard, why would he have any impact on a national ticket, where he's practically unknown?

The answer: I'm Bill Kristol and I've never been right!

The Good Guys Get Another Won

Democrats have picked up a seat in deep-red Louisiana.

Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated Republican "Woody" Jenkins in the race for U.S. Representative from the 6th Congressional District.

In the 1st District, Republican Steve Scalise easily defeated Democrat Gilda Reed.

So, this was a seat that went 59% for Bush in 2004, where the opponent and Republicans went after Don Cazayoux by trying to link him to "liberal extremists" like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. That dog clearly does not hunt.

Apparently, winning a Republican-held seat means that "this should come as a warning shot to Democrats," according to the NRCC. Yeah, keep trying with that one.

If the Mississippi seat comes through in a couple weeks, we will have virtually swept the contested seats in special elections leading up to November. Now, Cazayoux isn't going to be everybody's favorite Democrat on a lot of issues, but the optics are absolutely terrible for Republicans. They may end up with less than 200 seats in the 110th Congress.

What an embarrassment George Bush and the Republicans anymore. And oh by the way, they can't win seats by scaring people anymore, so worrying about "the Republican attsack machine" is officially nonsense.

We're Going To Win A House Race In Deep Red Louisiana Today

While the traditional media ping-pongs back and forth between Jeremiah Wright and Miley Cyrus, they're missing the fundamental political story of 2008: George Bush broke the Republican Party and nobody's going to be able to put it back together.

There is no way that a Democrat should have a chance in the 6th district of Louisiana. But Don Cazayoux has a nine-point lead over Woody Jenkins in the latest poll headed into today's special election. George Bush got 59% of the vote here in 2004. Today, we're going to flip this seat blue. Swing State Project will have the results tonight.

And that's not the only seat where we're seeing such a phenomenon. In MS-01, which is normally just as Republican, Travis Childers may be able to take that seat as well. The DCCC is putting a lot of money into that race, almost twice that of the Republicans, suggesting that it's very close.

There are no more Republican districts. George Bush is incredibly disliked and he's dragging down the whole party.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could hurt his presidential hopes. So could his comment about “bitter” small-town America clinging to guns and religion. And Americans might question Sen. Hillary Clinton’s honesty and trustworthiness.

But according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the bigger problem appears to be John McCain's ties to President Bush.

In the survey, 43 percent of registered voters say they have major concerns that McCain is too closely aligned with the current administration.

Got that? George Bush is the problem. I fully expect the traditional media to now ask questions every day whether McCain will disown or divorce Bush, how Bush and McCain are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and how Bush's latest press appearance re-opened the McCain-Bush wound.

Oh wait, I don't expect that.

In fact, I don't expect them to notice that red Louisiana has turned against Republicans.

Freedom's Whoops

Yesterday I mentioned that Freedom's Watch was dumping ads into the LA-06 race to try and save a Republican seat. Turns out that they broke election law by coordinating the ads with the NRCC.

Democratic Party officials said they will file a complaint today with the Federal Election Commission alleging that a conservative political group has illegally coordinated its advertising with a Republican Party campaign committee in advance of a May 3 special election in Louisiana.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the fundraising and campaign arm for House Democrats, alleges that the script for a television ad purchased by Freedom's Watch, an independent conservative political committee, can be traced to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The NRCC stopped running ads in the race yesterday. Freedom's Watch picked up the same day and the ad was on the same topic. And the Word document on which the ad was written has metadata tracing it to the NRCC. But Freedom's Watch says it's all a Three's Company-like misunderstanding:

Patrick McCarthy, the media consultant who wrote the (Don) Cazayoux ad for Freedom's Watch, said an innocent mistake caused the document to appear as if it came from the NRCC. McCarthy, who did consulting work for the NRCC for six years, said he pulled up an old ad template from his NRCC days and wrote the Louisiana ad script over it, then saved the file and sent it to the TV stations.

"It's absurd on the face of it. They're grasping at straws if they're saying recycling an old Word document is illegal," said McCarthy, who now works at Designated Market Media.

"See, I was in the other room and I heard Jack and Janet saying 'Push it in, pull it out,' and I thought they were having sex and not fixing the plumbing!"

Please, does anybody think that the cash-poor NRCC isn't begging for outside groups to get involved in these special elections and feeding them just the sort of information they should use?

The problem for Freedom's Watch and all the rest is that they don't have unlimited bank accounts, and there are going to be simply too many races to cover in November. As for now, we can only laugh.

LA-06: Freedom's Watch To The Rescue

So here's another very Republican seat that an outside organization has to dig deepto try and save for the GOP.

Freedom’s Watch, a conservative advocacy group founded by former Bush administration officials last year, has bought advertising time on Baton Rouge television stations today – signaling a willingness for the upstart organization to help Congressional Republicans hang onto some of their more vulnerable seats.

The ad, scheduled to begin airing tomorrow, attacks state Rep. Don Cazayoux, the Democratic nominee running for former Rep. Richard Baker’s (R-La.) seat. Cazayoux is facing former GOP state Rep. Woody Jenkins in the May 3 special election.

This marks the second foray by Freedom’s Watch into a contested Congressional campaign. The group spent about $86,000 earlier in the year in a Ohio special election on behalf of now-Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio)

But it stayed on the sidelines as Jim Oberweis lost to now-Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) in the solidly Republican district of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) – which raised questions on how active the group will be in spending money in hotly-contested Congressional campaigns.

If LA-06 is in trouble, which it most certainly is (in the poll cited in the story, Democrat Don Cazayoux leads by seven points), then Freedom's Watch doesn't have nearly enough cash to save the GOP's butt. That presages about 100 seats up for grabs in November. Anyway, Freedom's Watch is crippled by internal fighting and incompetence, and isn't likely to be anyone's savior, anyway. The right keeps setting up these organizations as "our answer to MoveOn" and doesn't empower citizens to get involved with them, preferring to run them from the top down, and then they wonder why they fizzle. This Louisiana race isn't only one which tests the Republican Party's credibility, but Freedom's Watch's as well.

... MS-01 is also looking to be a tossup, and the residual effect of a contested Presidential primary is actually enhancing the possibilities for Travis Childers here.

The wild card in the races to succeed Wicker may be turnout. The highly competitive contest for the Democratic presidential nomination between Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has energized the Democratic voting base widely across the country, and Mississippi’s 1st District has not been immune to that. Democratic voters outnumbered Republican voters in the 1st District primary and runoff for November’s general election contest.

We also saw that in 6 of the 19 seats held by Republicans in California. Republicans are in so much trouble and they surely know it.

Prospects in the House

The other day I wrote about possibilities for Democratic gains in the US Senate. Today it's time to look at the House. Obviously it'd be a stretch to plot out all 435 races as opposed to the more manageable 35 in the Senate. But there are some trends that look extremely encouraging for Democrats.

The first place to look is at the fact that over 30 House Republicans have retired this cycle, which is over 15% of their entire delegation. This is not the stuff of coincidences; it's borne out of a belief by these Republicans that they have no shot at regaining the majority and would rather not stick around in the minority. Thus, many of the seats that the Republicans are "targeting" this year happen to be open seats abandoned by Republicans. As a case in point, brownsox takes a look at the 10 latest members of the NRCC's "Regain Our Majority Program."

ROMP 2008 has recently released the third instalment in its list of candidates favored for assistance, the first update to their list in calendar year 2008. I found it rather instructive as to GOP priorities, and I've posted it below:

Rep. Michelle Bachmann, MN-06
Rep. Vito Fossella, NY-13
Rep. Sam Graves, MO-06
Rep. Ric Keller, FL-08
Anne Northup, KY-03
Erik Paulsen, MN-03
Rep. Bill Sali, ID-01
Rep. Jean Schmidt, OH-02
Rep. Tim Walberg, MI-07
Darren White, NM-01

Notice that this ROMP program, ostensibly focused on regaining the Republican majority, seems disproportionately tilted towards protecting incumbent Republican Reps. In fact, out of these 10 districts where the elephants hope to ROMP, exactly one is currently held by a Democrat, John Yarmuth of Kentucky's 3rd District.

I find this to be a novel and fascinating method of Regaining Their Majority; by not targeting Democratic-held seats. I wish them the best of luck with this; I'm sure it's going to work out just splendidly. Keep avoiding the Dem-held seats, and they oughta have that ol' majority back in no time flat.

I noticed something similiar in this Wall Street Journal article hyping 17 Iraq war vets running as Republicans. Only the large majority of them are running in Republican open seats, or challenging incumbents in primaries! This is not the path to winning a majority.

By contrast, Democrats are targeting those Republican open seats as well as races where they came up just short in 2006, like Larry Kissell in NC-08 and Darcy Burner in WA-08. The DCCC has listed 59 seats they're taking a look at this cycle, and there are probably several others in addition to that. Add to this that the D-Trip has a huge financial advantage, and they'll be able to spread the field in a big way. Overall, the prospects are pretty bright for gaining additional seats. In fact, some of that might happen right away, in special elections in LA-06 and MS-01. That's right, in Republican-leaning seats in Louisiana and Mississippi, Democrats are dead even in polling. If we take either of them, it could be a big year.