There is nothing like a coordinated message to demonstrate the effectiveness of a well-oiled political machine.
From today’s Washington Post:
But Obama’s strategists also note that special House elections have repeatedly swung their way, and that could make a much more material difference keeping control of the House. On Tuesday, hours before the polls closed, administration officials were observing how close the Pennsylvania House race appeared. “If this is a Republican landslide year, then why is it too close to call hours before the polls close? If they can’t win one race, how will they handle 100 of them?” one senior official said.
Right on cue, a noted Republican moderate chimes in. We’ve noted former Virginia Representative Tom Davis’s general propensity to be an asshat previously (here | here) so we shouldn’t be surprised by this:
Tom Davis, a former Republican House member and top party campaign strategist, saw the win by Democrat Mark Critz, a former aide to Mr. Murtha, over Republican Tim Burns as a serious blow to the Republican claim to be within reach of the 40 seats needed to recapture the House.
“If you can’t win a seat that is trending Republican in a year like this, then where is the wave?” asked Mr. Davis, who said Republicans will need to examine what went wrong. “It would be a huge upset not to win this seat.”
This type of behavior is so typical of Republican moderates. They vote against us when they are in office. They badmouth us when they are out of office. And when you beat them in the primaries they either endorse the Democrat or run as an independent.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
I'm not getting my hopes up just yet
suzieQ (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 4:43PM EST (link)The fight is still uphill. The dems have won every House seat in the last seven special elections. We are only 5 months away from November. Even Michael Steele has said he doesn’t expect the GOP to retake the House majority this year. I’m just hoping to win each battle one at a time. If we only get just one conservative elected, then that is one more conservative fighting against the Obama socialist agenda.
“Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive in the face of world competition.” – Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich Co-Sponsored a Global Warming Bill Calling for ‘International Agreement on Population Growth’
“I would have signed the assault weapon ban that came to his desk. I said I would have supported that and signed a similar bill in our state.” – Mitt Romney 2008
Gun Owners Of America on Mitt Romney
One thing the Repub have going is obamacrats are not registered 2(two) to 1(one) in the rest of the United States. adios obama crats..NT
bobojake (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 4:51PM EST (link)This requires deep thinking
SirGladiator (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 5:18PM EST (link)Im certainly not a fan of Tom Davis, but I don’t see how he’s wrong in stating that losing that special election is bad for Republicans, its pretty bad, we didn’t just lose we lost badly (last I saw it was 8 points). It was supposed to be too close to call, and we lost by a considerable margin. There’s nothing to be gained in pretending that something didn’t go wrong, we need to figure out what it was and fix it in time for November.
Now, of course its true that it was a 2-1 Democrat district, but it also voted for McCain. There is a better excuse, if you really want an excuse, why we lost last night, and that is because special elections typicly have much lower turnout, but the Democrats had a HUGE turnout-driver in the form of a nationally watched Senate Primary. All the Democrats in PA-12 had a reason to come out to vote, the Specter-Sestak race. There wasn’t much of a GOP Senate Primary race, so turnout edge definitely went to the Dems last night, its an advantage they won’t have in November. So if you’re looking for something to make you feel better, there it is.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look long and hard, and put some real effort into figuring out where we went wrong, because even with all of the difficulties this was a winnable race, and we lost it. Whatever we did, or didn’t do, that caused this defeat is something we don’t want to repeat in November. Folks like Tom Davis are at least supposed to be good for figuring stuff like that out, so let’s hope he, and other top GOP and Conservative strategists, can figure out a way to improve our campaign tactics between now and November.
I definitely agree!
suzieQ (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 5:25PM EST (link)The final tally put Critz ahead by 14.5 points. Something went wrong, and even if it was voter turnout that still needs to be fixed by November.
“Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive in the face of world competition.” – Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich Co-Sponsored a Global Warming Bill Calling for ‘International Agreement on Population Growth’
“I would have signed the assault weapon ban that came to his desk. I said I would have supported that and signed a similar bill in our state.” – Mitt Romney 2008
Gun Owners Of America on Mitt Romney
Davis has a point
Kayla Wednesday, May 19th at 6:15PM EST (link)Why did we lose a seat in a district McCain won in 2008? And why did more Dems turn out in KY than Repubs. We need to fix this, not kill the messenger.
Did a Republican happen to win the seat in 2008?
Darin_H (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 10:51PM EST (link)While John McCain was busy taking the district at the national level, they sent Murtha back to Pig out more with 58% of the vote.
A visionary coward says that anger can be power, as long as there’s a victim on TV – Flat Top, Goo Goo Dolls
It's Like The People Posting Here Don't Even Bother To Read Other Threads (nt)
IJB Wednesday, May 19th at 6:22PM EST (link)Huh?
Neil Stevens (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 6:28PM EST (link)Who is this directed at?
RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules
Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.
“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
Most of the Previous Commenters In This Thread...
IJB Wednesday, May 19th at 6:36PM EST (link)I’m getting a little sick of trying to explode the “We should have won PA-12 easily” meme, and, on my end, I’m not going to keep repeating myself.
If the people here would have read the previous election threads, they would have seen that they’re wrong with this “We should have won PA-12″ nonsense – it’s been explained why that’s not the case over and over again during the past 24 hours (or more)…
Aha
Neil Stevens (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 6:40PM EST (link)Well next time you may want to reply to this to somebody, because when you do it that way it looks lke you’re complaining to streiff!
RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules
Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.
“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
Ah! I'd Never Compain About Streiff!!!
IJB Wednesday, May 19th at 6:41PM EST (link)He’s my fave military/foreign policy diarist here!!
I'm glad
Neil Stevens (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 6:50PM EST (link)I was actually pretty unhappy to see streiff getting complained at when he gave us three posts today.
Glad to see it was a misunderstanding.
RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules
Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.
“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
I'm not saying that we should have won.
suzieQ (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 6:41PM EST (link)But we lost by 14.5 points. There is something wrong there. Conventional wisdom says this will be a good year for the GOP in the House. But we have lost the last seven special elections in the House. If there is a wave of conservatism coming, I wish it would hurry up and get here. And I know there are a ton of registered dems in PA-12. There are also a ton in Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Oregon, Washington, and other blue areas. We cannot take back the majority without winning in blue states.
“Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive in the face of world competition.” – Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich Co-Sponsored a Global Warming Bill Calling for ‘International Agreement on Population Growth’
“I would have signed the assault weapon ban that came to his desk. I said I would have supported that and signed a similar bill in our state.” – Mitt Romney 2008
Gun Owners Of America on Mitt Romney
we're outregistered 2:1
streiff (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 6:49PM EST (link)is the problem. It is union-heavy district is the problem.
“What keeps me here is the reek of beer, the ladies and the craic”
Where Are You Getting a 14.5% Margin From?...
IJB Wednesday, May 19th at 6:50PM EST (link)The final vote was 45% for Burns and 52.5% for Critz – that’s a 7.5% margin.
Considering the district and the specifics of this special election, I’d say that’s actually not bad.
The people who keep pointing to things like the PPP poll have to realize is that *this wasn’t a general election* (which I’m thinking was the problem with most of the polls done in this race: they polled everyone, rather than just the partisan voters likely to show up to a primary) – independent, non-partisan voters made up only something like 4% or 6% of the total electorate in PA-12: of course we lost with those numbers! The reason we won in places like MA is because, 1) Indies made up a significant percentage of the electorate, and 2 they broke heavily for us. #1 didn’t happen for us in PA-12 yesterday.
The good news is that Indies are likely to make up a significantly larger percentage of the vote in PA-12 in November – but they had no reason to show up yesterday just for a special election on a closed-primary election day, and they didn’t.
As to the rest of your point, you’re not really right – we *don’t* need to win “Blue” states to win back the majority: we only need to win back Red and Purple districts that we’ve lost over the past 2 cycles. PA-12 actually falls outside those parameters – winning it would have been icing on the cake, but was hardly necessary to win back the House.
Oops - sorry about that
suzieQ (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 6:58PM EST (link)I just checked the politico map. It showed 71.5% for Critz and 51% for Burns. But I think that was in reference to the primary.
“Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive in the face of world competition.” – Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich Co-Sponsored a Global Warming Bill Calling for ‘International Agreement on Population Growth’
“I would have signed the assault weapon ban that came to his desk. I said I would have supported that and signed a similar bill in our state.” – Mitt Romney 2008
Gun Owners Of America on Mitt Romney
Points
proudgop (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 9:06PM EST (link)Last night I was bummed and I still think the NRCC should of never spent 1 million on the race. I can understand why though; a win here would of been huge but I understand why we didn’t win We aren’t going to win districts where the majority of registered voters are Dems. Heck, Mass wasn’t even that and thats why Brown won.
There are points we can take
1. The Dems still can get out the vote and labor played huge part. We need to get out the vote and appeal to Independents this district just didn’t have the demos that will help us.
2. The RNC needs to start spending money to grow a structure because there is none in parts like this. We see movements in AR, WV, KY, and these parts of PA and yet we have no statewide office holders and every local official is a Democrat. Why? The Republicans need to start building a base you don’t let the cycle continue because my daddy and grandpa vote Dem so do I.
3. We still need a message. We cannot simply be the party of NO! We need to still give voters a reason to vote Republican. Been hearing about a contract with American II and yet here it is June and still none. We need a better message
I whole heartedly agree with your point #3.
drohan00 (Diary) Thursday, May 20th at 3:03AM EST (link)As conservatives and Republicans, we need to tell the voters what we are positively for, not just what we oppose. What will we do for the country in control of one or the other house of Congress?
I spend a lot of time on this site and am resolutely certain that we will have a message for voters. Freedom is grand in principle, but we need to translate that into specifics. The NRA will help in regard to guns, the other groups will help as well, but we need to be more specific, not as opaque to the voters. By ‘we’ I mean our elected officials.
We need to talk about the government takeover of GM. We need to demonstrate how the Democrats are spending money in unprecedented ways, and what we will do to contain it. Now is the time to begin working on the specifics. The Independents I talk to are willing to listen, and are very angry at Obama and the Democrats, however they continue to point out our perfidy in the past. Routinely I hear Independents say to me that the Republicans are not ready to govern, until they have a program for doing so. So I think Independents will come to our side heavily if we give them the reason to do so. We need to work on that reasoning. I fully understand the negative case on Obama. I buy it often, but we also need to come full circle, in order to save our nation from Liberal domination.
I only have one problem with your take on Davis...He's no moderate
AceInTX (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 8:45PM EST (link)Tom Davis is a LIBERAL Republican. He’s chairman of the RMSP. Everything this man says and does is geared to driving the Republican Party leftward so every event is twisted in his world view to show the folly of conservative politics and every loss by a Republican is proof in his eyes that we need to act like Democrats.
Davis is the kind of Vermin and Scum I’ve spent the better part of 2 years exposing….He’s that special kind of RINO that isn’t just with us some times and at sometimes not…He’s always against us….if you listen to the man’s interviews he sounds more like a Democrat than most Democrats…
He’s in a special category like Charlie Bass and John Danforth…they are always at war with the conservative majority of the party and this is just more of the same from a disgusting pig of a man!
With friends like Davis, we don't need any...
RedBeard Wednesday, May 19th at 9:57PM EST (link)…you know the rest.
Standard-bearer for grouchy curmudgeonry since, oh, 1975 or so.
Davis is a putz
Doc Holliday (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 10:06PM EST (link)and his wife is a far left gun grabber.
Molon Labe!
I have very little use for the man
Danielle Davis (ocleverone) (Diary) Wednesday, May 19th at 10:08PM EST (link)Other to serve as an example of what a Republican should NOT be.
To me, “consensus” seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects … There are still people in my party who believe in “consensus” politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors … I mean it. — Margaret Thatcher