(05-17-2018 03:51 AM)Native Georgian Wrote: (05-16-2018 07:35 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: Part of the problem lies with party leadership. Republicans have allowed some real nutcases to get senate nominations when they had much better candidates available, including:
2010-Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle
2012-Todd Akin
2017-Roy Moore
Not sure about Sharron Angle in Nevada, but I know that McConnell was against the other 3 and supported different candidates in the primaries (Castle in Delaware, Strange in Alabama, I forget who in Missouri but it wasn’t Akin). People have no obligation to follow his advice, but it’s dishonest to reject his advice and then blame him when things don’t work out.
Quote:But I think the real problem is that republicans simply haven't had a coherent message, and leadership has been unable to keep the rank and file on message. Newt did that in 1994, and they won big. Nobody in leadership on the republican side has done that since.
The only time a party’s national message is truly set by the Senate/House leadership is when it is the “out” party in a midterm election. Other than that, the credit/blame belongs with the president or presidential nominee. So if GOP lacked a coherent message in 2010 and 2014, I think McConnell (and Boehner) can be fairly blamed for a lot of that. Yet, those were actually good elections for the GOP, nationwide.
Perhaps it wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I was making three separate points.
One, McConnell, Boehner, and Ryan have been ineffective leaders. They have certainly seemed pretty weak at whipping their troops into line compared to Reid, Schumer, and Pelosi.
Two, in part their job has been made more difficult because the party has failed to quash the candidacies if some pretty unattractive candidates. If McConnell were working with a majority of 55 rather than 51, he would have considerably more leverage. This is meant more as wider criticism of generic party leadership who placed McConnell in this situation, rather than McConnell specifically. The fact that McConnell campaigned against most of the nutcases but they still got nominated does suggest that either McConnell didn't carry much weight or he didn't campaign hard enough.
Three, I think one reason why republicans have been vulnerable to nutty candidates is the lack of coherent message. This is meant as still wider criticism than the first two. In 1994, Newt's Contract expressed a coherent message that had been tested with extensive polling, and candidates were told, "This is the message. Stay on it if you want to win." Republicans stayed on message and won the biggest victory in recent memory. Then they promptly forgot to stay on message in governing. I once had a very interesting conversation with John Sununu in which he said, "Your ideas mean nothing if you don't win the election." Democrats seem to understand that a lot better than republicans. Yes, 2010 and 2014 were pretty good for republicans. If they were better at politics those could have been better elections. But if they were better at politics, they probably would not have had to fight back from losses in 2006 and 2012, and particularly the devastating one in 2008.
The lack of coherent message is the one that bothers me the most. It was so bad that during the Obama years it handed democrats a sound byte, "Republicans have no ideas. All they know how to do is oppose Obama because he is a black man. They even met after his first election and vowed to make him one-term president." Well, can anyone tell me the last time democrats did not want to turn a new republican president into a one-termer? The lack of a message allowed democrats to turn a difference on issues into a vile personal attack on individual republicans. Now, I have no problem with opposing everything that was on Obama's agenda--not because he is a black man but because I think his ideas are wrong-headed and harmful. And before someone chimes in with the inevitable, "So you oppose Obamacare because you want people dying in the streets?" let me point out that before Obamacare very few people were dying in the streets (except maybe from being shot by gangs in Chicago). But when I was critical of Obama, I tried to make it clear what I had in mind instead. Republicans don't do that, because they don't seem to have a clear idea of what they do stand for. And if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Donald Trump had a message. I disagree with al lot of it, and a lot of it has been pretty badly perverted and misrepresented by a generally hostile media, but at least he was out front with here's who I am and this is what I'll do. And guess what, he pulled the biggest republican upset since 1994.