The GOP leaders have a sure-fire strategy to win the Senate in 2014 – follow the 2012 election strategy, but this time do it right! I wish this was a joke with a punch line, but sadly it isn’t.
During the 2012 election year, I sat through dozens of inside-the-Beltway meetings being assured by various GOP pundits and leaders, including NRCC and NRSC operatives, that Obamacare and the economy were the two issues that would win both the White House and control of the Senate. For most of that year, unemployment was in the double digits, and in meeting after meeting historical charts were displayed proving that no one could be re-elected president if unemployment was over 6.5 percent.
This line was repeated over and over again in 2012: “We just need to tell the voters about the draconian effects of Obamacare and the Senate is ours.” Each Senate race was outlined in meetings, with dramatic evidence supplied by the Republican consultancy about how Democratic senators up for re-election would fall with ease and the GOP would control the Senate in 2013, with President Romney leading the way to lower taxes and the end of Obamacare.
The GOP bet – and bet big – early in the 2012 presidential election cycle that American businessmen would roll over and play dead, making no attempt to save their companies from the worst recession in a century. Things were going to be so bad economically the day of the election that Mitt Romney would be swept into office, along with control of the Senate and an increased majority in the House.
How did that work out?!
Fast forward to meetings I attended in March of this year at which Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke. At those meetings, McConnell assured everyone in attendance that a GOP Senate victory in the fall was assured by the bad economy and the failed launch of Obamacare. The true believers in the room nodded, and I think I heard a couple of people present say “amen.” I sat in true awe of the self-delusion of the inside-the-Beltway GOP believers whom I have been associated with for decades.
The only other Republican vote-getting issue discussed at these meetings was to “show the American people that we won’t back down from Mr. Putin the way Obama did.” The GOP leaders actually think Russia’s involvement in Ukraine is the third most important issue to Americans after 6.7 percent unemployment and Obamacare, even though polls show that 60 percent of those Americans who are even aware of the Ukraine situation are against American involvement there.
Furthermore, the inside-the-Beltway GOP consultancy has the Republicans running for office believing that any politician who voted for Obamacare can’t win in November because of the overwhelming public opposition to the law. In reality the Real Clear Politics average of all polls on Obamacare currently shows that 53.2 percent of Americans view the law unfavorably. Drilling down further in those numbers, it is discovered that 10 percent of those do not favor the law because they think it does not go far enough and that there should be a complete government takeover of the medical system.
The same GOP strategists are also counting on the 6.7 percent unemployment rate to get votes and take the Senate. That jobless rate seems really bad, until Democrats and their media allies remind voters that more than 93 percent of those who want to work do have jobs, and that those not seeking jobs are pretty happy with their unemployment checks, food stamps and welfare payments.
Thus, the GOP consultancy claims that all Republican candidates have to do to win in November is convince the 93 percent of workers who have jobs and who probably have some kind of medical insurance that their lives are horrible because of unemployment and Obamacare. This is the same “winning” formula the GOP consultancy, Mitt Romney, Sen. McConnell and Speaker Boehner had in 2012.
NEWS FLASH: The tea-party leaders don’t think McConnell and Boehner are doing enough to fight Obamacare and want the GOP to be taken over by new leaders even more vested in the failed 2012 strategy.
On the other side of the campaign coin, the non-Obamacare “positive” GOP campaign issues require several steps of logic to understand. How do you get from “lower the taxes on the rich” to “create more jobs”? This argument takes five steps of logic that include building wealth capital, risk investment and entrepreneurship. Run that logic by a young single mom working as a waitress, who under federal law may be paid as little as $2.18 an hour, and see if she votes Republican this fall.
The leaders of the GOP are all political detail junkies who thrive on abstract logic; the leaders on the Democratic side understand that simple ideas requiring only one-step logic to understand win votes. It does not require five steps of logic to promote an increase of the minimum wage for a single mom waitress from $2.18 to $3.62, or even $7.25 an hour.
But so sure are the GOP leaders that running on just the two issues of the economy and Obamacare is a winning strategy that they are willing to jettison the social conservatives who have been the key to Republicans holding majorities in one or both Houses of Congress for the past 20 years. The issue of traditional marriage, which saved George W. Bush from election defeat in 2004, is avoided at all costs by the Republican candidates. Likewise abortion – the life issue – is only used to campaign south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and then only in local races.
To sum up the GOP strategy:
- Remind the voters of the bad economy. (The Dow is near its highest ever.)
- Remind the voters of the high unemployment rate (6.7 percent).
- Remind the voters of how bad Obamacare is. (The law affects about 20 percent of the population.)
- Remind the voters that a low minimum wage creates jobs. (Good luck with this.)
- Remind the voters that lowering taxes on the rich creates even more jobs (a real vote getter).
- Tell the voters Republicans can protect them from President Vladimir Putin. (Vladimir who?)
- Toss out the social conservative votes (except maybe in the South.)
This GOP delusion comes partly from the public polls, which do not include questions that concern the daily lives of the people. For example, “the economy” always comes out as the top issue in polls, and as a result the GOP thinks this is “the” issue. But many of the pollsters’ questions are not on the minds of the voters until they are given the questions the pollster has pre-ordained – questions the GOP consultancy want to hear the answers to.
Perhaps GOP strategists should just check Google.com/trends to discover issues that are truly important to Americans, particularly young voters – such as Johnny Depp’s new girlfriend and the coming zombie apocalypse.
Historically, the odds are in favor of an opposition party taking over the Senate in the mid-term elections during a second-term presidency, and there probably will be GOP victories in November. However, with a clear understanding of the 2014 GOP strategy, which is a double down of the 2012 strategy, don’t hold your breath expecting a GOP takeover of the Senate.
