Sorry, Senator. Let's Salvage What We Can.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) holds a campaign rally in Woodbridge, Virginia.
(Chip Somodevilla - Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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By David FrumSunday, October 26, 2008; Page B01
There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a
way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.
A year ago, the Arizona senator's team made a crucial strategic decision.
McCain would run on his (impressive) personal biography. On policy, he'd hew
mostly to conservative orthodoxy, with a few deviations -- most notably, his
support for legalization for illegal immigrants. But this strategy wasn't
yielding results in the general election. So in August, McCain tried a bold new
gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and
unexpected vice presidential choice.
That didn't work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither
independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has
come to support her passionately. And so, in this last month, the McCain
campaign has Palinized itself to make the most of its last asset. To fire up
the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a
radical and a socialist.
Sure enough, the base has responded. After months and months of wan enthusiasm
among Republicans, these last weeks have at last energized the core of the
party. But there's a downside: The very same campaign strategy that has
belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great
national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have
been won.
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I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it's too depressing.
You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for
the GOP.
McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a
little while ago to a senior Republican House member. "There is not a safe
Republican seat in the country," he warned. "I don't mean that we're going to
lose all of them. But we could lose any of them."
In the Senate, things look, if possible, even worse.
The themes and messages that are galvanizing the crowds for Palin are bleeding
Sens. John Sununu in New Hampshire, Gordon Smith in Oregon, Norm Coleman in
Minnesota and Susan Collins in Maine. The Palin approach might have been
expected to work better in more traditionally conservative states such as
Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, but they have not worked well enough to
compensate for the weak Republican economic message at a moment of global
financial crisis. Result: the certain loss of John Warner's Senate seat in
Virginia, the probable loss of Elizabeth Dole's in North Carolina, an
unexpectedly tough fight for Saxby Chambliss's in Georgia -- and an apparent
GOP surrender in Colorado, where it looks as if the National Republican
Senatorial Committee has already pulled its ads from the air.
The fundraising challenge only makes things worse. The Republican senatorial
and congressional committees have badly underperformed compared with their
Democratic counterparts -- and the Republican National Committee, which has
done well, is directing its money toward the presidential campaign, rather than
to local races. (It was RNC funds, not McCain '08 money, that paid the
now-famous $150,000 for Palin's campaign wardrobe, for example.) This is a huge
mistake.
In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic
realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot
fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably
can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In
these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.
A beaten party needs a base from which to recover. In 1993, our Republican base
was found in the states and the cities. We had the governorships of California,
Michigan and Wisconsin in 1993, and Rudy Giuliani won the New York mayor's race
later that year. The reform we delivered at the state and local levels
contrasted acutely with the shambles of President Clinton's first two years --
and helped us win both houses of Congress in 1994.
I very much doubt that we will be able to show that same kind of local strength
in 2009. The statehouses were the engine of our renewal in the 1990s; the
Senate will have to play the same role after this defeat. That's especially
true because of two unique dangers posed by the impending Democratic victory.
First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a
huge ownership stake in the nation's financial system. It will be immensely
tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends --
to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will
intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs,
officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The
current urgency to liquidate the government's position will subside. The United
States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield
this extraordinary and dangerous new power -- and to pressure them to surrender
it as rapidly as feasible.
Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past
decade. There's a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more
militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the
culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC's evening line-up -- and soon,
it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.
Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle
opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to
silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via
the misleadingly named "fairness doctrine"; others may seek to police the
activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is
tax-deductible and what is not.
The best bulwark for a nonpolitical finance system and a national culture of
open debate will be the strongest possible Republican caucus in the Senate. And
it is precisely that strength that is being cannibalized now by the flailing
end of the McCain-Palin campaign.
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What should Republicans be doing differently? Two things:
1. Every available dollar that can be shifted to a senatorial campaign must be
shifted to a senatorial campaign. Right now, we are investing heavily in
Pennsylvania in hopes of corralling those fabled "Hillary Democrats" for
McCain. But McCain's hopes in Pennsylvania are delusive: The state went for
Kerry in 2004, Gore in 2000 and Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and McCain lags Obama
by a dozen points in recent polls. But even if we were somehow to take the
state, that victory would not compensate for the likely loss of Colorado, New
Mexico, Nevada and other states tipped to the Democrats by demographic changes
and the mortgage crisis. The "win Pennsylvania and win the nation" strategy may
have looked plausible in August and September, when McCain trailed Obama by
just a few digits. Now it looks far-fetched.
But it is not far-fetched to hope that we can hold 45 or 46 of our current 49
Senate seats. In 1993, then-Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.)
stopped Hillary-care with only 43 seats. But if we are reduced to just 40 or 41
senators, as could easily happen, Republicans and conservatives would find
themselves powerless to stop anything -- and more conservative Democrats would
lose bargaining power with the Obama White House.
2. We need a message change that frankly acknowledges that the Democrats are
probably going to win the White House -- and that warns of the dangers of
one-party, left-wing government. There's a lot of poll evidence that voters
prefer divided government. By some estimates, perhaps as many as 8 percent of
voters consciously cast strategic votes in favor of division. These are the
voters we need to be talking to now.
I'm not suggesting that the RNC throw up its hands. But down-ballot Republicans
need to give up on the happy talk about how McCain has Obama just where he
wants him, take off their game faces and say something like this:
"We're almost certainly looking at a Democratic White House. I can work with a
Democratic president to help this state. But we need balance in Washington.
"The government now owns a big stake in the nation's banking system. Trillions
of dollars are now under direct government control. It's not wise to put that
money under one-party control. It's just too tempting. You need a second set of
eyes on that cash. You need oversight and accountability.
Otherwise, you're going to wake up two years from now and find out that a
Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House have been
funneling a ton of that money to their friends and allies. It'll be a big
scandal -- but it will be too late. The money will be gone. Divided government
is the best precaution you can have."
It's the only argument we have left. And, as the old Washington saying goes, it
has the additional merit of being true.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
David Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the
author, most recently, of "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again." He
served in 2001-02 as a speechwriter and special assistant to President Bush.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302081.html?sub=AR
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