You Lose, You Resign
by Patrick Ruffini :: May 13th, 2008 10:46 pmThere is no sugarcoating tonight’s result in MS-1. Thankfully, the NRCC doesn’t even try, issuing a soberly worded statement from Chairman Tom Cole in lieu of the usual upbeat results memo:
[T]he political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. Therefore, Republicans must undertake bold efforts to define a forward looking agenda that offers the kind of positive change voters are looking for. This is something we can do in cooperation with our Presidential nominee, but time is short.
I encourage all Republican candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall by building the financial resources and grassroots networks that offer them the opportunity and ability to communicate, energize and turn out voters this election.
The problem with this is that they’re pushing a “change” message with the same faces. The guy at the top of the ticket represents his own kind of change. But if we want 2008 to be more than a “lonely victory” you need a changing of the guard at the leadership and the candidate level.
I’m not going to say that heads roll because of these three elections alone, but if we fail to recapture the House or make surprising headway towards that goal, we need to be pretty firm that the current leadership must resign en masse. Boehner and Blunt have six months to turn this ship around.
In fact, this should become a standing rule: You lose, you resign. We will start winning a lot faster once there are consequences for losing.
That’s how it works in every Parliamentary system. One party loses the election even by a little, and the old guard turns over the keys. It may take two or three tries, but usually this results in leaders who not only talk different but are different. The grassroots needs to work to create this same sort of accountability here. And we need quit outsourcing Congressional elections to the Presidential level, since nationalizing the electon worked real well in MS-1 and LA-6.
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The problem with throwing out the leadership at every election is that it tends to prevent the leadership from being able to make substantial changes. The new people brought in don’t have the capital to make anything significant happen; this tendency toward fratricide is one of the things that pundits say has caused the Tories so much pain since 1997.
And in any case, if you look at history, it has often been the case that the old guard hasn’t left after a defeat. Look at Churchill in ‘45 and ‘50; he won in ‘51. Or ‘55, where Attlee had stuck around for Labour. Labour would have kept the same leader in ‘59 and ‘64 had Gaitskell not died in the meantime. Heath and Wilson traded the premiership back and forth in ‘66, ‘70, ‘74. Callaghan left in favor of Foot, who left in favor of Kinnock, but he fought both ‘87 and ‘92. Only very recently, since 1997, has it been common to behead the Parliamentary party with every election, and it hasn’t honestly worked that well.
How and ever, today’s Republican Leadership reeks of aimlessness and lack of a coherent message to send to the country. Given Boehner and Blunt six more months merely stays the execution.
Send them packing now. The House Republican Conference needs to go to the Country with a coherent attack plan. It has nothing but jello. As Mr. Churchill rightly remarked in a somewhat different situation, “Madame, this pudding has no theme.”
@Ethan Osten,
To suggest that a Conservative Party with William Hague or Michael Howard as its Leader or a Labour Party in 1997 with Neil Kinnock still at the helm would have produced the same results is dubious at best.
I have my issues with David Cameron, but he represents a decisive break from the Tory past. If he can’t win next time around, I don’t know what Tory can.
The surest sign that your side is heading straight down the toilet is when you’re discussing 50-year-old British election results. Kids, look around. Americans are getting ready to puke out the bloody hairball that calls itself the Republican Party.
If you’re lucky, you’ll lose only 40 House seats and 8 Senate seats. If the Democrats patch it up and don’t screw it up too badly, and if your side fights the last war (which you and I both know it will do), we’re talking upwards of 60 in the House and 10 in the Senate.
Go check 1974, 1964, 1958, and 1932. That’s what you are headed for.
Re: Laughing at You
24.18.134.216 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) is a single purpose IP with no constructive edits that has been disrupting Talk:Matt Sanchez with vulgar commentary and personal smears. I removed one of these as a personal attack[28] and addressed its content civilly at the IP talk page.[29] The IP replied twice in bad faith.[30][31] Please review. DurovaCharge! 19:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, nationalizing the election provides a lot of opportunities. Sorry Laughing, it’s likely Republicans who will be laughing.
Far too many Dems will have to make the case for Obama. Who is poison. They’ll own his positions. Soft on crime and terrorism. Endless racial apologies from whites, endless transfer payments from whites to blacks, endless tax raises to give money to welfare recipients from working people.
That last suggests a rich opportunity for Reps — they’ll stop the Obama-Dem tax raises. Very potent in a recession because Obama is not promising FDR-Clinton pump priming, but Save the Polar Bear (only rich yuppies care) or Welfare (for Blacks).
WV’s results are stunning. Working Whites with economic concerns figure Obama is not for them, and will raise taxes for things they either hate or don’t care about. Only 53% of WV primary voters say they’ll vote for Obama in the General. He’s the “Black Candidate” and Dems own that.
MS’s election was probably too soon for nationalization — what will be effective is the Dems themselves endorsing or appearing with Obama. “Black Candidates” who are basically Dukakis + Sharpton won’t win.
I do have to congratulate the Republicans for their latest slogan, that was borrowed from an anti-depressant commercial. You guys are going to need some of them. Ha ha ha ha!!
the problem with the current leadership is that they have no credibility in proposing changes. That had 12 years to implement a conservative agenda and failed badly.
I guess Patrick is wondering what he is going to do for a career after the Republican Party becomes irrelevant in politics.
Also, to anyone who thinks that the Republican Party can make a come back, remember that the children starting kindergarten in 2008 are less than 50% white. There is no comeback for a party that is being buried under a demographic landslide.
A few points: Nationalizing elections only works if the public perceives the election as nationalized. You can’t force it on folks. MS 1 was a guy from the rural area crushing a guy from the suburbs. Sadly, you don’t know if this guy is the boll weevil he played on TV until after he’s in.
One guy who should stand down is Davis. Let the primary loser have a crack at it in November.
You need a much better local feel. The narrator in the attack ad didn;t sound at all like she was from MS, and it gets noticed.
Finally, on this one, let’s give Haley Barbour some credit for causing this seat to flip–now was not the time to promote House members to the Senate
@superdestroyer - why do you assume that because, “the children starting kindergarten in 2008 are less than 50% white” the end of the Republican party is neigh? Seems a bit presumptuous to base the future party affiliation of kindergarteners on race.
Adam,
Go look at voting patterns based upon race and ethnicity. When Barack Obama is getting 95% of the black vote and the black population is growing as relative to the white population, it means that Republicans either have to keep increasing the percentage of the white vote it receives or somehow crack the black vote. When you realize that most 40 y/o blacks have probably never voted for a Republican, it does not look good.
Remember, demography is destiny.
I think LA-6 was an entirely different animal. From what I understand, the candidate was unappealing all on his own, having a lot of shady ties, and wasn’t appealing to fellow Republicans. Not sure how he ended up the candidate, but I’m not too worried about that loss.
Basically, Boehner and Blunt are uninspiring leaders, to say the least. But then, we sorta knew that would be the case when they were voting on the leadership, right? It’d have been nice if the House Republicans had listened to us…just another point proving why The Next Right is desperately needed.
My God, you didn’t just lose that seat, your guy was crushed! Eight points! Wow! Good God, for the Republicans this must be like one of those asteroid movies where they shot all the nukes at it and nothing happened and now everyone just waits for the rock to hit and kill all the dinosaurs.
*yawn*
It isn’t the end of the world. Not close. There has been one year when Republicans were guaranteed to win special elections in the South/Border states: 1994. Since then, we’ve lost open seats in Kentucky in 2004, two in Louisiana (LA-03 in 2004 and LA-05 in 2002)(and almost lost LA-06 in 2000 with Baker as an incumbent), and failed to take heavily R seats when open like VA-05 (until he switched parties) and NC-07 when they were open. And we lost an incumbent in AR-04 in 2000. This is just off the top of my head. Oh yeah, TN-04 in 2002. Victories in open VA seats like VA-04 and VA-02 were narrow ones at first.
At the Presidential level, the South is solidly R, and that is unlikely to change soon. But at the Congressional level, it is still very much a swing region of the country.
If you don’t believe me, read Rothenberg from today.
http://race42008.com/2008/05/13/on-special-elections/
You’ve convinced me, Sean. The three special elections don’t mean a damn thing. Full speed ahead!
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