More Active Posts
Front Page
The GOP gets a taste of November?
 |
 7 Comments |
Republicans are said to be “panicked” after their third loss this week in a series of special elections to fill open Congress seats gave Democrats a welcome-to-reality hat trick in one-time securely conservative districts.
Tuesday in Mississippi, Travis Childers trounced Greg Davis in a 54-to-46 vote. The first two races were in Louisiana, where Don Cazayoux won a seat in the GOP’s grip for 33 years, and Illinois, where Bill Foster took former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat. Intra-party grumbling, reported by The Wall Street Journal and others, is growing over whether this might be a preview of what price loyalty to the Bush administration will exact in November. Newt Gingrich is worried. Former National Republican Congressional Committee chair Tom Davis wrote in a 20-page memo that this year’s election atmosphere “is the worst since Watergate.”
Media are writing Republicans’ obituaries, and Barack Obama has cited Childers’ win as proof that he, too, can do well in conservative areas. The New York Times seems to agree, saying that Childers’ win “appeared to call into question the belief that [Obama] could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.”
But in what ways is Obama actually like Childers? Or like Cazayoux and Foster? Though neither media nor Republican officials are looking closely at what kinds of Democrats are claiming victory in once solidly Red America, the answer may not suggest much for Obama’s electoral hopes; the victors are, in fact, atypical candidates—not partisan hardliners, but more in the mold of Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, the pro-life former Reagan Navy secretary whose strong veep potential has been bandied about for an Obama ticket.
In Mississippi, Childers ran on a pro-life and -guns platform. The GOP put its weight behind Greg Davis, even loosing a slew of ads trying to tie Childers, six degrees–style, to Jeremiah Wright (Childers has backed Obama). This gambit appears to have backfired, much as the North Carolina GOP’s ad tethering Wright to the two Democratic gubernatorial candidates did.
Don Cazayoux, too, is proudly pro-life and -guns. Media reported he also got a boon from opponent Woody Jenkins; besides Jenkins’ almost myopic stumping about abortion to the exclusion of other also-pressing issues, discomfiting ties to David Duke surfaced alongside news of liens on his business for failing to pay taxes. (The pollster Bernie Pinsonat put it this way: “If you can’t beat Woody Jenkins, I don’t know who you can beat.”)
Bill Foster most closely embodies a typical Democrat. He was endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice America. But even he counts himself a fiscally conservative Blue Dog.
Considering this or not, the GOP is blaming the losses on weak candidates. But could it be less about Republicans’ weaknesses and more about these specific opponents’ strengths—strengths that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the Democratic Party. Economically populist, culturally conservative, Washington-outsider types concerned with climate change and religious freedom like Cazayoux look suspiciously like the politicians many on the Right now argue could be the GOP’s future.
 |
Topic: Campaign 2008, Front Page, The Nation |  |
Email a friend |
 |
Keywords: barack-obama, Bill Foster, Don Cazayoux, Greg Davis, Travis W. Childers |  |
RSS 2.0 |
 |
Both comments and pings are currently closed. |  |
Share this: |
Soul searching
Wow, this story only broke 3 day ago. Way to be on top of it!
Oh yeah, 2008 is going to be a gang buster.
“The New York Times seems to agree, saying that Childers’ win “appeared to call into question the belief that [Obama] could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.”
But in what ways is Obama actually like Childers? Or like Cazayoux and Foster?
That would be a great question to ask Freedom Watch and other conservative 3rd parties that spent millions trying to tie both Childers and Cazayoux to Obama!!! To ask that question as if Obama is injecting his own name into the race is dishonest. Republican’s tried very much to make these special elections of referendum on Obama’s chances. It failed.
Has for the GOP blaming the candidates, it’s emblematic of their over all lack of organization. The line “we had a weak candidate” points out the NRCC’s crippled inability to raise money and recruit top tier people.
As to whether the Dems being elected are really new wave Republican’s, why don’t you look at their Iraq positions? It doesn’t help you if the candidates supposedly defining the GOP’s future are running as Democrats because your party is inseparably strapped to an idiotic foreign policy position!
Nothing you have written casts any doubt on Obama’s electability or the serious beat down congressional GOPers can look forward to in November.
They aren’t panicked - they are insane. 100 of them voted for the Farm Bill yesterday. They are incorragable, idiots of the highest order and deserve to be put in prison for their stupidity. ego maniacal fraud and criminal behaviour. They have no self control, no shame and can never be satisfied. They are political terrorists out to kill us all.
Losing the next election isn’t anywhere near enough punishment for these 100 whack jobs - but hope we will come up with something suitable.
The immigration back room fiasco we caught them trying to approve with the left taught them nothing. I am just flabbergasted that they are so blatantly evil.
I am just flabbergasted that they are so blatantly evil.
Ah, so we agree ….
I will not be voting Republican for President. I’ll have a split ticket; probably vote Constitution Party.
Yup - more whistling.
But of course the presumably correct response will be to insist on conservative orthodoxy, continued support for Bush, and bandying to the right wing base.
Excellent strategy it would seem.
God I hope so! If only they would pander more to Jsingletary and his fellow Constitution party wing nuts, than we’d really clobber them.