Painting the Electoral Map Red

March 14th, 2008 at 02:06pm Mark Noonan

I’ve seen polling which indicates this isn’t a pipe dream - and, anyways, I’ve always felt that when we write off the blue States we’re just foolishly taking several large pieces off the political chessboard. Why not fight it out everywhere? From Politico:

EXETER, N.H. — Every candidate tells his audience that its votes are crucial to his success, and John McCain was no different here Wednesday.

“I intend to be back and back and back, because I love it here,” McCain said at the end of a town hall meeting held to thank the state that launched and then relaunched his presidential hopes. “But also, a little straight talk, because I need to win New Hampshire to win the presidency.”

That may be stretching it some, since the state’s four electoral votes are not critical to his chances, but McCain’s camp is serious about playing to win here. And it’s not just the Granite State — which John F. Kerry won in 2004 and which turned out its two Republican congressmen in 2006 — that the campaign thinks the Arizona senator can seize.

Conversations with McCain backers and other Republican operatives, most of whom insisted on anonymity, reflect a party intent on altering the red state/blue state paradigm…

…Though still very early in the planning stages, McCain aides have begun eyeing between 20 and 25 states that could be competitive, a list that includes some places that are anything but rock-ribbed conservative. Next month, they’ll make this case symbolically by sending the candidate on a different-kind-of-Republican tour into places where party members typically don’t tread.

It certainly never hurts to try - leave it to HillBama to play old-fashioned, fake-change-you-can’t-possibly-believe-in politics; we’ll go out and try to shake things up and move America forward.

Shortly after the 2006 debacle, I was part of a conference call with a senior House GOPer who gave us the run-down on what happened in 2006. I hate to say it, but the man showed a complete lack of political understanding. Oh, sure - he understood fundraising and polling, but he didn’t understand that, at most, you can only get what you fight for; and he made clear that in 2006, the House GOP was only fighting to limit losses. They probably did, in a certain sense - they probably shored up a few GOPers who may have lost otherwise. Left unsaid was what might have happened had the GOP ignored the paradigm that the 6th year of a Presidency means sure-loss - we still might have lost the House and Senate, but we at least would have had a lot more fun if we had gone down into the trenches.

Please understand that this next bit is not intended to be a hit on my fellow GOPers, but I want to illustrate a case.

In 2006, Rep. John Boehner spent nearly $3 million on his re-election effort. He won 65% of the vote; Rep. Roy Blunt spent more than $3 million on his re-election effort. He won 67% of the vote; Rep. Adam Putnam spent nearly $1 million on his re-election effort. He won 69% of the vote; Sen. Trent Lott spent more than $3 million on his re-election effort. He won 64% of the vote; Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison spent more than $6.5 million on her re-election effort. She won 62% of the vote. The commonality of these fine GOPers (and I really do admire them as good Republicans), is that they (a) spent bags of money, (b) were re-elected by thumping majorities in an anti-GOP year and (c) are parts of the GOP Congressional leadership. Uh, leaders - you should be leading. You might want to look into the prospect of directing some of your fundraising towards other GOPers who are financially strapped as they try to defend weak seats or take seats from vulnerable Democrats. Perhaps these fine people could have won by 10 rather than 20 percentage points and kicked, collectively, about five or six million dollars over to GOPers who were challenging Democrats like Jack Murtha, or GOPers who were defending seats like Norton’s in Kentucky? And, yes, I know they couldn’t just write a check for a million dollars - but if Donor A says, “hey, I’ve got $2,000 available”, the proper response from a GOP leader in a safe seat would be, “great, give me $1,000; but you can donate the other $1,000 to this other guy challenging a really creepy liberal”.

John McCain and team seem to understand this need to fight it out on offense - don’t just defend what you’ve got, but also take a stab at what the other guy has got. In 2004, there was a precursor of this sort of thing in the way Bush/Cheney expended some efforts in New Jersey and Hawaii…forlorn hopes, to be sure, but they did give the Democrats a scare and proved a small part of that total effort which sent Kerry back to annoy the people of Massachusetts. Starting early and with the Democrats busy mauling each other, McCain has an even better chance to do this - and I hope the Congressional leadership starts to pay attention and realise that its better to fight everywhere and all the time.

Tags: John McCain

Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Republicans

Similar Posts

• Blue To Red: McCain Targets California’s 55 Electoral Votes
• Obama’s Problem With the Democratic Vote
• Battling for Michigan
• Two For One and All for Power
• Electoral Math, 101