Here’s a novel campaign strategy from a GOP state Senate candidate in New Jersey.
Post shutdown, Republicans are saying the key is they need more senators to defund Obamacare. That seems like a pretty elementary insight. And that goes along with President Obama’s point/jab today that if Tea Partiers really want to repeal Obamacare they should focus on winning an election. But the real story, I think, is that these standoffs are seriously weakening Republican chances of winning back the Senate next year. The House is in more jeopardy post crisis. But gerrymandering, concentration of Democrats in urban areas and simple incumbency still make that a really heavy lift for Democrats.
The Senate is another story.
I would just like to welcome everyone to the ‘We Just Didn’t Shut the Government Down Enough‘ era.
Rep. John C. Fleming (R-LA): “See, we’re going to start this all over again.”
So far Republicans picking through the rubble of the shutdown debacle have identified two main culprits for their defeat: the media and moderates within their ranks.
The second of those is the richest because the lesson learned for these Republicans isn’t that they overreached, it’s that they didn’t go far enough. A lack of ideological purity and true commitment to the cause is what sank Republicans. If they had only held together tighter, then Obama and the Democrats would have blinked. It’s an echo of post-election analysis in 2008 and 2012. If only John McCain and Mitt Romney had been more conservative, the White House would have gone Republican, too.
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If only Republicans had remained unified, this all would have turned out so much better.
The President will appear shortly to make remarks on Senate passage of the debt deal. Watch.