Democratic Governor’s Association executive director Nathan Daschle told reporters this morning that the slate of Republican gubernatorial nominees chosen by voters in last night’s primaries show that the GOP is moving too far to the right to be competitive in the fall.
“If you peel back the layer you’re going to see this is a very bruised and damaged brand,” Daschle said of the GOP. He said that all across the country, Republican candidates had been forced to run far to the right to keep the tea partiers happy, increasing the chances for Democrats to snag independent and moderate voters in November.
One prime example of the shift right, according to Daschle is California, where GOP nominee Meg Whitman was forced to take strong anti-immigration positions to secure her party’s nod against the more conservative Steve Poizner. Daschle said the primary had damaged Whitman’s chances in the general election against the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Jerry Brown.
“The Meg Whitman that emerged from the primary is not the Meg Whitman who started out the campaign,” Daschle said.
The DGA executive director said there was a similar story in the nation’s other primaries, where Republicans, according to Daschle, shunned moderates in favor of selecting the more conservative candidates.
In the California race specifically, Daschle said that Whitman’s run to the right will alienate the state’s more moderate general electorate. He also suggested Democrats will attack her for being a political novice, something Daschle said Californians aren’t interested in after two terms of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R).
There is more to the dynamics of the California race than just the GOP’s internal warfare though. I asked Daschle how his party plans to match Whitman’s unbelievable monetary advantage. She spent more than $80 million on the primary fight (much of it from her persona fortune), and there’s little evidence to suggest she’s not prepared to dig even deeper in the general.
“We haven’t decided yet,” Daschle said when I asked him how much money the national party is going to pony up to help Brown close the money gap with Whitman. “This is a priority. We believe in him. We’ll play big but I I don’t know how big.”
