The RNC guys are getting it done today. Nice work guys:
When I posted the video earlier of Mark Halperin criticizing Obama for no 2nd term agenda, I meant to post back-to-back videos of Joe Scarborough saying the same thing (and thought I had). It got me to thinking it would be great to have a rapid fire run-down of the media or non-Republicans who have identified this glaring weakness in Obama’s re-election effort. Well the guys who are paid for these types of things are on top of their game because the RNC Rapid Response team has the list out this morning Clink on this link where they give you the context and citations for each one of these damning quotes:
The state GOP party in Nevada is one of the worst in the country. It was fully taken over by Ron Paul zealots who mostly won’t support Mitt Romney. Seeing this coming far in advance the RNC helped form “Team Nevada” which is essentially the fully funded state party since all the funds were yanked from the formal state party. Despite these hic-cups the state remains a strong possibility for GOP pickup despite Team Obama bravado to the contrary. Now they are getting a boost of fire-power from now through the election day to bring this one home:
The Republican National Committee is deploying two regional directors to Nevada through the Nov. 6 election to boost GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign in the battleground state and increase his chances of defeating President Barack Obama, a top Republican official said Tuesday. Rick Wiley, the political director of the RNC, said Republicans just surpassed making 1 million voter contacts in Nevada and added 100,000 more Romney supporters with the election seven weeks away and both campaigns kicking into higher gear with frequent visits from Obama and Romney. Wiley said the 1 million voter mark is five times the number of voters Republicans had contacted at this point in the Nevada campaign in 2008 and in 2004, when President George W. Bush won re-election.
Democrats registered voter advantage diminished
Obama won in 2008, easily beating U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., thanks to a huge voter registration drive that added 100,000 Democrats to the rolls in Nevada. The Democrats have a 60,000 registered voter edge over Republicans now, and it’s growing by the day along with new nonpartisan voters. Wiley dismissed the Democrats’ voter registration advantage, saying it’s more important for Republicans to turn out longtime GOP voters and loyal Romney supporters who are more likely to cast ballots Nov. 6. He said the campaign is focusing on swaying nonpartisan voters, who could make the difference.
Campaign priority
The launch of the more aggressive GOP effort in Nevada comes as Romney is scheduled to campaign in Las Vegas on Friday, a month before early voting starts Oct. 20 in the state. The visit will be Romney’s sixth campaign stop in Nevada since April, when he became the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and his 16th stop in the state since February 2011, a GOP official said. Obama, too, has focused on Nevada more than any other battleground state, visiting 14 times since he became president in 2009 – more than any White House occupant – and seven times this year. Vice President Joe Biden has visited Nevada several times this year as well. And GOP vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, has campaigned twice in the Silver State so far.
The bad economy albatross
Nevada also is a key test of whether Obama’s plea to give him four more years to fix the economy will work because the state has been hit harder than any other with record high unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure rates. On Friday, the day Romney plans to campaign in Las Vegas, new Nevada unemployment figures are scheduled to be released, giving him an opportunity to highlight the issue. Last month, the jobless rate rose to 12 percent – 12.9 percent in Clark County – or several points higher than the national average.
Between now and the start of the convention August 27th in Tampa, Florida there will be plenty of news around the staging on the convention and the Vice-President nomination. Now the headlining speakers list is rolling out with an interesting mix of GOP heavy hitters and fresh faces:
The Republican National Committee on Monday identified the first batch of people who will be speaking at the presidential nominating convention in Tampa – a list that showcases the party’s ethnic, ideological and gender diversity. Notably absent from the list is anyone who challenged Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican nomination. Speaking at the convention, which runs Aug. 27-30:
- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee
- Ohio Gov. John Kasich
- New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez
- Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain
- Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
- Florida Gov. Rick Scott, whose state is hosting the convention
The list includes people who are to the left of Mr. Romney on various social and fiscal issues, suggesting the party will use the nationally televised convention to attract centrist and independent voters. Ms. Rice, for example, favors abortion rights – a position Mr. Romney doesn’t share. Gov. Martinez supports a comprehensive solution to illegal immigration that would provide a path to legal status for people living in the U.S. illegally. Mr. Romney has taken a strict stance on illegal immigration, calling for undocumented immigrants to “self-deport.”
I love this ad since Obama and his surrogates in the media counter the Republican critiques by parroting that the “You didn’t build that” quote was taken out of context. The problem is the quote was part of an unscripted rant by Obama against entrepreneurs and successful businesses. Thankfully the Republican National Committee sees the same thing and decided to make sure you could see and hear Obama’s antagonism towards business in its full context … and it makes his comments even worse:
Mitt Romney’s campaign stop in Pennsylvania Tuesday created plenty of buzz and a renewed sense of confidence in the GOP. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus spoke to The Morning Call following the visit:
There’s been much ado over whether Pennsylvania had slipped to a second-tier swing state after consistently picking Democrats in presidential elections. The conventional wisdom has been that Barack Obama has to fight hard to ensure he keeps it, but Mitt Romney has the luxury of focusing his resources on states with greater swing potential like Ohio. But Priebus said the national committee is eyeing Pennsylvania has a state it can win, and plans to “spend a whole boatload of resources.”
“It can be the knock out punch,” he said in a phone interview. “If we can win, which we can do, then it’s lights out for Barack Obama. We wouldn’t be coming up here if we didn’t think Pennsylvania was a state we could win. We have to work hard, we understand that.” Priebus held little back in his portrayal of how the Republicans would go about winning over undecideds in the state. The GOP strategy is to convince voters that Obama hasn’t kept his word to bring the economy back. Pennsylvanians can’t stand show ponies, he said. “While he is in love with the sound of his own voice and his image in mirror he hasn’t been so good at being in love with his own promises,” Priebus said.
Asked how Romney, a man of great wealth and privilege, will endear himself to blue collar Americans, Priebus suggested that the greater goal is to convince voters they don’t want Obama rather than convince them they want Romney. There are two general check boxes for voters, Priebus said. The first is whether Obama fulfilled his mission as president — are voters better off than they were four years ago. The second is whether Republicans put forward a suitable alternative. He said at least half of the electorate has said no to the first box. The process going forward, at the convention and into the fall, is to get them to say yes to the second.
The guys over at First Read have been on top of the fact that the fundraising disparity between the actual campaigns which decidedly favors Barack Obama is a much bigger advantage than the gross fundraising totals (which are mostly even) would lead readers to believe. This is because Romney is restricted to spending only primary campaign dollars until after the nominating convention. To make up this gap outside groups and now the RNC are launching ad campaigns to keep Romney close:
[S]peaking of TV ads, we learned yesterday that the Republican National Committee is going up with a $5.1 million ad buy in the battleground states of Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. This is the RNC’s first TV buy of the general election. Why is the RNC getting into the act? Remember we told you earlier this week that the Romney campaign is being outspent right now because it can’t use general-election funds until after the GOP convention? Well, don’t be surprised if the RNC is now hitting the airwaves to help make up the difference — and more.
The Obama campaign has been unusually vocal about the alleged certainty that Mitt Romney will be the first Presidential challenger to out-raise the incumbent (which isn’t true). Something never felt right about these claims considering Obama raised $750 million dollars in 2008 and he had far more lead time (with no challenger) this cycle. Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner breaks down the truth behind Democrats fundraising advantage over Republicans in recent Presidential campaigns:
First of all, Obama’s campaign has raised much more money than Romney’s [see near right], it has spent more money than Romney’s, and it has more cash on hand than Romney’s, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
But you can’t just count the campaigns. After all, when Obama hosts his $30,000-a-head fundraisers, he’s raising money for his campaign and the DNC — and the DNC is spending that money basically to re-elect Obama. On the national committees, Obama is beating Romney, too[see far right].
So, although Obama claims “I’m talking about the Romney campaign itself. Those outside groups just add even more to the underlying problem. The Romney campaign raises more than we do,” that seems to rely on an interesting definition of the word “raises.” They mean, in a minority of months, Romney raises more than Obama. At most, Obama can claim he’ll be outspent by counting outside money. This may or may not end up being true. But if that’s his method of counting, then he’s also clearly not telling the truth in this email, because he claims “I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign….” But if you count outside money, Bush was outspent in 2004.
We have previously covered the disaster that is the state GOP in Nevada due to its overrun by Ron Paul acolytes. Thankfully there is its far more competent and reliable splinter group: Team Nevada. Jon Ralston in the Las Vegas Sun breaks down the on-the-ground problems for the GOP in his latest column:
End of Nevada GOP as we know it, money edition:
The Democrats have raised more than $2 million this year for their federal PAC, mostly ($1.7 million) from transfers from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that have been poured into a field operation that worked so well in 2008 for the president and 2010 for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Democrats have about $653,000 cash on hand. The state GOP has raised about $188,000 and has $167,000 on hand, with only $41,000 from the national committees.
$1.7 million to $41,000. Those numbers don’t lie. Caveat: Team Nevada (not the state GOP) will get nearly all of the national committee money.
End of GOP as we know it, base-problem edition:
Nevada is unique in that its ballots have a “none of the above” option. The GOP fears that this protest vote option could hurt Romney because the anti-Obama sentiment is strong but the reflexive pro-Romney default option is weak. With Nevada’s “none of the above” above options, many Romney votes may be lost with this protest vote option on the ballot. As such, the Republican National Committee has joined a lawsuit to get this option removed from the ballot. Add in former New Mexico Gary Johnson on the ballot as the Libertarian candidate and the GOP may have a real problem in a squeaker election. This has foiled the GOP before. In 1998, future Senator John Ensign lost to present Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid by 428 votes. The Libertarian candidate, Michael Cloud, received 8,044 votes and “None of these candidates” took 8,125.
End of Nevada GOP as we know it, silver lining edition:
In recent election cycles the quality of Democratic operatives has been far superior to the Republican talent. But for the first time in memory, the GOP has a team that is worthy of being on the same playing field. Team Nevada, however, is stocked with experienced state officials. The RNC’s Darren Littel and Kristin Vieira both have plenty of state experience; Sen. Dean Heller’s chief of staff, Mac Abrams has plenty of major campaign expertise; Chris Carr, a former Nevada GOP staffer turned RNC operative and on the ground here; lesser-known folks such as Ryan Cherry, a Heller veteran, and Joe Catania, a field guy for Nevada candidates and now with Team Nevada; and skilled campaign types such as Mike Slanker (Heller), Ryan Erwin (Rep. Joe Heck) and microtargeter Billy Rogers helping GOP state Senate candidates, who could help turn out base voters. Add in a Hispanic outreach effort – hey, guys, maybe we should talk to Latinos this year! – that has money and bodies and a full integration of all these working parts and this Republican Party – that is, Team Nevada – can compete with the Democratic machine.
The GOP is not a shadow of its former self [but] the shadow is better than its former self.
Republican National Committee Political Director, Rick Wiley, sent out a memo outlining the advantages Republicans have in each of the states Romney visited on his bus tour –all states Obama won in 2008. I tried to edit out as much of the partisan rhetoric while keeping the very good data. Here is his state by state breakdown:
New Hampshire
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Wisconsin has been a focal point of the national discourse on politics ever since the 2010 election that swept Republicans into power throughout the state. The recent recall success has increased Mitt Romney’s chances of carrying the state this November and CBS News take a look at three key national players for Romney who all also happen to be from Wisconsin:
Mitt Romney’s “Every Town Counts” bus tour stops in Janesville, Wisc., Monday because, as he told CBS News’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday, it’s simple: it is one of the states he plans to win in November. Thanks to the current political climate and a Republican power trio there, the Badger State, which has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every presidential election since 1984, is showing a glimmer of hope for Romney’s campaign.
I need a hero:
Gov Scott Walker, R-Wisc., who successfully passed pension-cutting legislation and a measure limiting collective bargaining rights for some public sector workers, is considered the hero of the right and is praised for having strong convictions and willing to fight despite possible political ramifications. There is “intense personal loyalty to Walker here,” Wisconsin Republican Party vice chair Brian Schimming told Hotsheet. Walker survived an expensive and bitter recall election in June, expanding his support by receiving 205,000 more votes than he garnered in his election in 2010. “Walker expanding his lead this June shows that Republicans are still winning the argument,” Marquette University law professor Charles Franklin said. Since his recall victory, Walker offered some words of warning for Romney. He has said repeatedly that Romney must propose “bold” ideas to capture Wisconsin – and the presidency.
Ground game:
Schimming noted that the recall election allowed Republicans to organize early and often. He said the Republican Party opened 25 offices statewide last November, a full 6 or 7 months earlier than a typical presidential election year. He said volunteers have made 4 million calls and knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors, all possibly beneficial to Mitt Romney in November. Franklin, who is director of the Marquette Law School polling unit, said the recall shows Republicans are seeing a surge of enthusiasm. “Is this significant shift in a Republican direction something that’s going to last until November? That’s an important question,” Franklin said.
Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will be in Ohio next week
During his visit to Iowa, Mitt Romney name-dropped only one potential Vice President candidate: Marco Rubio
Plenty of schadenfreude from McCain 2008 aides over the President’s “Private sector is doing fine” gaffe (complete with expletives)
Man that was fast, the RNC already has a web ad up over the President’s remarks yesterday on the private sector
‘Obama Girl’ is ‘not as excited’ about 2012, won’t endorse Obama
Rand Paul’s endorsement of Romney could tamp down Ron Paul supporters intransigence
Potential Romney Vice Presidents visited CPAC burnishing their conservative credentials
Mitt Romney’s #1 female surrogate is heading to the Sunshine State tomorrow. Ann Romney will join state Sen. Anitere Flores for a an afternoon (2pm) campaign event in Miami at Islas Canarias.
She’ll be hitting Florida at just the right time with the Romney campaign ramping up its statewide operations to match the impressive head-start of the Obama campaign. Last week we blogged the Tampa Bay Times look at the two operations and the article mentioned 23 all-important “Victory” field offices –where the Republicans coordinate get-out-the-vote operations for November–but didn’t have their locations. Now we do.
As we’ve mentioned before, Florida is often analyzed as three different states. Northern Florida is distinctly Republican while South Florida is distinctly Democrat with the middle “I-4 corridor” laden with swing voters who decide most statewide elections.The Romney campaign smartly moved its headquarters into Democrat territory in the South, right at the base of the I-4 corridor to further capitalize on its Nominating Convention in Tampa. As we can see below only 5 offices are in the Republican North, over half (12) plus the headquarters are in the swing area along the I-4 corridor (**), and 6 offices are in Democrat territory in the South (*).
The state headquarters is in Tampa: 302 Knights Run Ave, Suite 110.
Much like the Obama campaign opening field offices in Republican districts in Ohio, unsurprisingly 80% of these “Victory” offices are in swing districts or in the Democrat heavy South.
No, Romney will not win this demographic nor will any Republican any time soon. But what a Republican can do is erode the overwhelming support Democrats receive and specifically the astounding 95% support President Obama achieved in 2008. The Romney campaign is already capitalizing on the disproportionate unemployment impact on Hispanics and the RNC has a web video emphasizing the unemployment impact on various groups like African-Americans while Obama and his elitists worry about his job:
Now we see that Friday’s jobs report disproportionately impacted African-Americans as well:
Last Friday’s unemployment news crashed the stock market and upended the presidential race…Nationally, unemployment in May rose from 8.1 percent to 8.2. This is bad, especially considering how much time has passed since our economic troubles began…Lost in [all] the…news that African-American unemployment, already significantly above general levels, rose by much more. As The Root reports, for African-Americans, however, the news was much, much worse. Unemployment among Blacks rose from 13.0 percent to 13.6 percent. This is serious news for a population that is already under great economic strain, but it is in line with some trends we’ve been following here.
This creates an undeniable opportunity should the Romney campaign choose to capitalize:
The decline of the blue social model is a challenge to the survival and dignity of the Black middle class. Heavily invested in government employment and well represented in organizations like the Postal Service, African Americans are vulnerable to changes in the structure of government and the cutbacks now rippling through traditionally stable employers like the USPS.
We are already seeing reduced support for Obama within the African-American community:
Obama is winning the African-American vote by gargantuan proportions: 90 percent to 5 percent in the first half of the survey and 88 percent to 6 percent in the second, not far off his 2008 showing (95 percent to 4 percent).
The opportunity is there for Romney but it won’t be easy. George Bush made concerted campaign efforts to court African-Americans despite the often hostile reception from activists within the African-American community. This yielded 11% of the their vote nationally in 2004 (and 16% in Ohio), far better than McCain’s dismal 4% in 2008. Those Bush totals in 2004 and Obama’s incredibly 95% in 2008 swung all-important states like Ohio for each candidate. With that state being ground zero for this year’s election, it would behoove the Romney campaign to get on this.
Nevada is a state ripe for a flip back to the GOP this election with “unemployment still close to 12 percent and the housing market at an all-time low.” Unfortunately, despite ground being made-up dramatically due to voters exiting the state, a takeover of the state GOP apparatus by Ron Paul supporters threatens to undermine Mitt Romney’s chances in what should be a close fight for Nevada’s 6 electoral votes.
The housing bust and high unemployment rates have scattered Nevadans to other parts of the state and out of the state all together, shrinking the voter rolls. Among active voters, three times as many Democrats have been taken off the rolls as Republicans. The number of active Democratic voters now stands at 433,096, compared with 531,317 in November 2008. Republicans are at 394,304, down from 430,594 four years ago. The Democratic advantage, then, is down from 100,000 to about 40,000.
So without so much so lifting a finger, an enormous Obama advantage in 2008 has meaningfully eroded to an easily closeable gap should the state GOP get on top of this. Unfortunately:
[Ron] Paul supporters have come to dominate the state GOP over the past few years, culminating in an almost total takeover at the state convention on May 5. They now control the executive boards for both the state party and for Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and is the largest county in the state. At the state convention the Paul contingent filled 22 of the state’s 28 national convention delegate spots with Paul supporters.
This led state officials to form “Team Nevada” — a “shadow Republican party of Nevada”:
Near the foothills of the Spring Mountains, 20 minutes west of the Vegas strip, the shadow Republican party of Nevada is building out its command center in a shopping plaza on the edge of town. Team Nevada, as it is known, took up residence three weeks ago in a sprawling, 6,000 square-foot office.
THE state that famously decided the 2000 Presidential contest no longer holds its preeminent position as ground zero for campaign Battlegrounds (that distinction is shared by Virginia and Ohio today). But Florida is still supremely important with its 29 electoral votes and often close polling results. Today, Adam Smith in the Tampa Bay Times has a meaty write-up on the nascent and expanding efforts of the Romney campaign in the Sunshine State and even a Battleground county mention.
Obama won Florida by less than 3 percentage points in 2008 after mounting the largest statewide campaign operation ever seen here. The effort promises to be even bigger in 2012, but Republicans are banking on a turnout operation more like George W. Bush’s formidable 2004 campaign than McCain’s. The latest Florida polls show a dead heat, and both sides understand that if Romney loses Florida it’s next to impossible for him to win the White House.
Despite the reality that Florida is not mandatory for an Obama re-election, his campaign is unloading on the state with both barrels:
For 10 months, President Barack Obama has been steadily building a voter mobilization army here and now has about 100 paid staffers, 27 field offices and thousands of volunteers working almost every day to deliver Florida’s 29 electoral votes. A click on Romney’s Florida campaign website Thursday found no upcoming events in the state, while Obama’s site showed 194 events within 40 miles of downtown Tampa.
A rather daunting operation for a candidate who until recently had little more than a skeleton operation. But “optimism abounds among Republicans across Florida”:
Veteran activists see the start of a Florida campaign operation far more robust than John McCain’s anemic effort four years ago, and they see a Republican electorate fired up to defeat Obama. “The difference between 2008 with (John) McCain and 2012 — I could cry with relief. The people running the Florida campaign today are professional, they’re sharp, they’re disciplined. It’s like we have grownups in the room, people who know what they’re doing and lots of enthusiasm from volunteers.”
