I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but I don’t think it’s a smart move to try to make John Boehner into the same kind of bogeyman that the Republicans turned Nancy Pelosi into in the 2010 midterms.
Rather than trying to make Boehner the face of evil, we should make him the face of impotent incompetence. In other words, it doesn’t matter what Boehner believes or wants because he isn’t running the show. We need to take his gavel away because he’s too incompetent to use it effectively. A vote for a Republican congressperson is a vote for default and government shutdown and gridlock and a bad economy. Boehner can’t keep his promises, so there is no need to even listen to him. The president figured that out. Even Boehner figured it out, which is why he will no longer even try to negotiate with the administration.
I don’t know. Maybe I only think this is the better route because I am paying attention. Maybe the facts don’t matter. But I still think a campaign that is rooted in the truth is an easier lift than one that tries to build a narrative from scratch.
What do you think?
I think it’s too cerebral to be effective. It’s all true, obviously, but it doesn’t sound-bite well. I say ignore Boehner altogether – run against the Tea Party. Make each GOP House member explicitly pick a side, endorsing the Tea Party or rejecting the Tea Party. Make the Tea Party the issue – they are, in fact, the issue – and watch the carnage in primaries where the Tea Party is rejected by the incumbent and enjoy the carnage in the general when the incumbent endorses the Tea Party.
I don’t know if “John Boehner is a pussy” is a cerebral argument. And that’s basically how I interpret Booman’s suggestion.
That could work for John Boehner’s district, but in the other districts it becomes abstract. In fact, it becomes something that individual GOP members could use to their advantage.
“John Boehner is indeed a pussy, and my job is to stiffen his spine. I can speak to John Boehner and he’ll take my call – that liberal that I’m running against won’t get his calls answered, let alone returned. I’m the one you need to represent Bumfuckegypt so that our values will have a voice in Washington!”
I think making the Tea Party the focus would be more effective, but there are many ways to skin a cat.
nice pic
Yep. We’re currently using that strategy in a county council race against genuine Tea Party candidates. I’ll let you know if it works.
We have to fight these battles one district at a time. The average voter doesn’t understand who the Speaker is or what he or she does. But they understand the Republicans/Tea Party shut down the government. In many districts that won’t matter because they’re safely red. We have so few true swing districts in this country that it’ll be hard to turn the tide. But if ever there were a time when really good messaging and organizing could pay off, this next cycle is it. We still have a very popular President to campaign for key races.
…I don’t think it’s a smart move to try to make John Boehner into the same kind of bogeyman that the Republicans turned Nancy Pelosi into in the 2010 midterms.
I agree, but mostly because Boehner, to the extent that the average non-Republican seems to be aware of him, has become somewhat of a sympathetic character. If he were a Dem, the GOP would savage him to great effect, but I can’t see the Dems gaining anything by making him out to be the evil face of the GOP; he just lacks the stature to be cast into that role.
How about Ted Cruz as the face of evil, Boehner his terrified lackey too frightened to stand up to him?
The obvious answer would seem to be: make it about Ted Cruz, not Boehnhead. Even if lots of people don’t know that he is in the Senate, not the House, they know that he was pushing for the shutdown, and anyone for the shutdown was with him.
Oh, and the debt ceiling won’t work as an issue, because people forget (or can’t understand) that being for raising it isn’t the same as being for more debt.
People won’t get the debt ceiling – you’re right about that. What they will get is how the shutdown affected their pocketbooks, to the extent that hours got cut in retail or manufacturing, for example as a consequence of all those furloughed Federal employees no longer shopping, going to movies, restaurants, and such. At least in those parts of the US hit hardest, a “your paychecks sucked during the fall because these clowns shut down the government” message might hit home.
Unless you go with something like “American families have to pay their bills on time. Why won’t Ted Cruz let America pay its bills on time?’
Being a very competent woman, Nancy Pelosi naturally terrifies Conservatives.
But Boehner being just another incompetent Village Idiot, doesn’t scare Liberals.
Just ‘paint-by-the-numbers.’
No need to get abstract here.
Exactly. The conservative opinion on Pelosi was amped up simply because she was a woman.
Why complicate matters when the GOP has written the perfect narrative for Democrats? We don’t need to make anything up. Reality is scary enough. Just show them for what they are.
“Paint by the numbers”, that’s perfect!!
I agree. The article you link points out to some problems:
I think Demcratic candidates do better when we educate people about how the federal political system was designed to function. I believe a series of 3-5 points about how the entire Republican party is not fit to rule is generally a better direction:
you get the idea.
Also, I think we need to run hard on Obamacare and make hard contrasts with that compared to the Repub response.
OT but re: strategy for 2014, what about this report that “KY kickback” previously requested by McC but not at this time was inserted by Obama and is now causing problems for Mitch?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/live-updates-the-shutdown-9/?id=a9f2
f203-96e6-4943-baf1-bc7ae85af94f
strategy or accident?
If the project is in teabagger territory, can’t see how a bagger opponent gains anything from making it an issue — and could lose support by doing so.
Plus the funding for it appears to have been a bipartisan effort. Good and necessary public project or pork? That’s the question voters should always ask to determine the quality of their reps in office.
(Blaming the COE for the cost escalation is another favorite tactic of politicians. The COE is reasonably competent. (One of the better public agencies in drawing good specs and realistic budgets.)
it looks like that’s how it’s functioning already. McC does have a bagger opponent.
I expect that Tea Partiers will call the “Kentucky Kickback” McConnell’s “Thirty Pieces of Silver”.
During WWII the Russians had found a serious hole in Hitler’s security and entertained the idea of assassination but decided against it because Germany would be much easier to defeat if that idiot Hitler remained in charge. I don’t understand why anyone would want to save the Republicans from destroying themselves. I say. “Please proceed Mr. Speaker.”
What a brilliant comment Austin. I didn’t know that and it’s so relevant today. I suspect Tea Partiers are holding back what they really truly think and the rape, racist, ugly things we hear is their version of being politically correct. It is what they say often and in public.
I think it’s beginning to filter down to the least political people that the GOP is for the rich and not for them. They don’t know how it works, but that’s their impression. I’m beginning to hear it here in red state Indiana. They are suspicious of any problem and suspect the GOP is at the bottom of it and lying to boot. The Fox News watchers are following whatever is paraded in front of them to new levels of fantasy.
I very much like the idea of Boehner being the face of GOP impotence with the other side of the GOP being the Tea Party crazy destructive lunacy. I think it’s important to have both in the mix. The GOP has ridden a long time on being the Mission Accomplished tough talking strong arm party. That’s a Fox News meme too so anything that undermines that is good in my book.
The Tea Party is loud, obnoxious and can’t keep their mouths shut. They will continue to be asshats. I like the idea of portraying the “rational” side of the GOP as being impotent.
I’m so glad Boehner is there, aligned with the tea party desperately trying to hold on to his job while getting even the not so crazy Republicans to vote in lock step. If they don’t wise up we can make our next campaign theme, “Vote for any Republican and you have voted for all of them.” Makes you wonder
A certain way to lose the mid-terms is to listen to Tom Daschle(Drudgico link):
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/tom-daschle-entitlement-reform-98956.html
The theme should be “Send me a House of Representatives that will work for Americans” not “Send me a Speaker”. That’s the first issue.
John Boehner can be defeated by hugging him close and thanking him for working so well to try to end the shutdown in spite of the extremists in his caucus.
Then take aim at the extremists by characterizing what they were saying. Go after Meadows, the self-proclaimed “architect of the shutdown” and show what happened as a result of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park closing. Go after all the “I want my paycheck” Tea Partiers showing that they’re not interested in your freedoms, just interested in that Congressional paycheck.
Go for the jugular on Paul Ryan. We need that seat.
Go after “Virginia Republicans who shut down the government”, showing the whole Republican delegation but quoting Cantor and any other Virginia Republicans waxing lyrical about shutdowns. Go after Andy Harris (R-MD) for not breaking with the shutdown tactic and for silence.
Highlight NASA in Houston and hit the Texas Republicans hardest of all. Showcase all the stupid shit they have said and lump them all together.
But focusing on Boehner? That’s as dumb as focusing on Pelosi in a district in North Carolina.
The GOP in the House stuck together. Let them hang out together.
Therefore,
3. If you vote for even the best Republican, you actually vote for the worst of them.
Rather than trying to make Boehner the face of evil, we should make him the face of impotent incompetence.
Totally agree, for two reasons.
First, the shoe fits. He is incompetent, he talks incompetent, he acts incompetent, he’s perceived as incompetent. It’s much easier to sell people on something they basically know is true to begin with.
Second, the muddle-of-the-road low info voter MUCH prefers this line to the “my opponent is greater evil than Hitler” shit that the right wing peddles. The centrist world view is that most people are basically trying to do good, that they have strengths and weaknesses, and that the best solution is to balance what you have from both sides. That is, the centrist really resists believing that one side is really crazy, even if they are saying really crazy things. Not to go all Godwin, but one big reason Hitler rose to power is that although all his crazy shit was there for everyone to read the centrists at the time believed that he was saying that just for effect because of course no one could actually mean that. This is similar to how people just refused to believe that the GOP is trying to change Medicare into a voucher program.
So, the centrist will resist accusing one side of evil but is very comfortable accepting that one side tried the best they could but just failed. This was ultimately what felled Bush after Katrina – it wasn’t just Katrina, it was all his other missteps before that, but Katrina wrapped up the case and delivered it to the jury. For reasons that I personally can’t comprehend, American centrists actually liked that narcissistic entitled moronic asshole – so absent a dead girl/live boy scenario “incompetence” was the only reason they’d turn away from him.
Of course, this isn’t a uniform solution for all situations. Romney’s team uses the same strategy against Obama – they realized people liked the guy so needed to do the “tried hard but failed” thing. Nice idea, but didn’t work because people don’t see him as having failed.
Playing the nasty children card like the Reps with the scare ads, etc, would be nonproductive. OTOH, the tendency to focus the blame only on the teabaggers goes too far the other way. Boehner, pretty much singlehandedly, caused this mess to happen. He can’t be allowed to wiggle out of responsibility by pawning it off on “extremists”. He’s the perp here and nobody should be allowed to forget it.
I honestly don’t think Boehner IS incompetent, he just looks incompetent under the circumstances. I think he does what he does for strategic reasons and at the behest of the establishment GOP.
Boehner’s job is to pander to the tea party until the end. As he just did. That was vintage Boehner.
By sticking with them, he gets a pass to bow to reality when there’s no other choice.
So even now, with the “civil war” out in the open and all, I expect Boehner to continue with this game plan.
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