Presidential politics never takes a holiday, not even during the first 100 days of a presidency. Public Policy Polling has President Obama leading in the 2012 election, whether he faces Newt Gingrich (52 to 39 percent), Mike Huckabee (49 to 42 percent), Sarah Palin (53 to 41 percent) or Mitt Romney (50 to 39 percent).
John McCain’s former campaign chief has loosened his lips about what sank his man’s presidential candidacy. Appearing with Obama campaign manager David Plouffe in Delaware Thursday, McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt said the McCain campaign was “the strategic equivalent of throwing a football through a tire at 50 yards.”
He also said: “We were running a campaign under extra difficult circumstances — the state of the Republican party, the president’s unpopularity, the economy — a lot of issues that were not John McCain’s fault but were John McCain’s problem in this race. When Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall I knew pretty much right away that . . . from an electoral strategy perspective, the campaign was finished.”
On the subject on why McCain didn’t go with his first choice for a running mate, former Democratic running mate Joe Lieberman, Schmidt said: “It was communicated back to us very clearly from within the party that not only was Sen. Lieberman not acceptable, but any pro-choice nominee was not acceptable, (and) it would lead to a floor fight at the convention with an alternate nominee for vice president put into play.”
Friends and foes of Sarah Palin are cashing in on the public’s continued fascination with the Alaska governor and former GOP vice presidential candidate. Though the fundraising is not authorized by Palin, the groups are “minting money off the mere mention of her name,” Politico reported.
Meanwhile, Palin has had a rough return to Alaska politics, as Democratic and Republican state lawmakers complain that Palin is too focused on her national ambitions. “The source of the greatest tension this year between the Legislature and the executive has been certainly the appearance that the executive is prioritizing her national image, her national brand, over the day-to-day operations of state government and the interests of the state of Alaska,” Rep. Mike Hawker, Republican co-chairman of the House Finance Committee, told the New York Times.
It would be premature (and naive) to anticipate that the two major political parties will reform the presidential primary process in a way that gives more states a meaningful say in choosing the nominees. But at least there are signs of a willingness to try. The new Democratic Change Commission, which includes Kansas Democratic Party chairman Larry Gates, will seek to revamp the calendar so that favored states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada hold their events in February 2012, followed by other states starting in March. It also wants to reduce the number of superdelegates, whose convention votes became such a contentious issue last year. Meanwhile, a new GOP committee is reviewing the timing of Republican nominating events. As it is, “I think we’re headed for essentially a national primary that happens on one or two days, and that’s not good,” David Norcross, a Republican National Committee member from New Jersey, told the Hill newspaper.
It turns out that Kansas didn’t escape the 2008 blue tide after all: John McCain took the state’s electoral votes, of course. But according to a Swing State Project analysis, the 3rd Congressional District voted for Barack Obama over McCain 51 to 48 percent. That district, which consists of Johnson and Wyandotte counties and part of Douglas County, has long been represented by Democrat Dennis Moore in Congress, but went with George Bush in 2000 and 2004.
President-elect Barack Obama’s administration needs to do much better at monitoring war spending than the Bush administration did, according to a new study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary, a defense think tank. The CSBA estimates that the price tag for the direct costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could grow as high as $1.7 trillion by 2018. It blames the ballooning costs on the Bush administration’s unprecedented decision to finance the wars through off-budget, emergency spending. “The process has reduced the ability of Congress to exercise effective oversight,” the report said. “It has also tended to obscure the long-term costs and budgetary consequences of ongoing military operations.”
Republicans are fervently trying to smear President-elect Barack Obama with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s mess. But are their charges credible and productive? Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza calls it a “guilt-by-association tactic that represents a significant gamble for a party still looking to pick itself up off the electoral mat.” Sen. John McCain said Sunday, “With all due respect to the Republican National Committee, we should try to be working constructively together.” But according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, just 51 percent of Americans think Obama has said enough on the Blagojevich matter.
John Edwards’ $400 haircut is looking like a bargain. New finance reports show that the Republican National Committee spent almost $55,000 on a fashion stylist for vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The McCain campaign also paid Palin’s traveling hair stylist and makeup artist more than $110,000 for about two months of work, the New York Times reported. And even after the controversy about the RNC spending $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Palin and her family, the spending continued. McCain’s staffers appear to have spent about $23,000 on Palin at stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, according to new finance reports. The spending apparently has shocked even Palin. A former senior adviser for the campaign said in a statement that Palin “is absolutely appalled at the news and the amount of money reportedly spent on the vice presidential campaign.”
In his first news conference since the campaign, on which he said he looks “back with pride and honor,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had admiring words Tuesday for President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet choices so far, especially Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s reported nod as secretary of homeland security. Then again, notes MSNBC’s First Read blog, that appointment would eliminate McCain’s top rival for a 2010 re-election bid to the Senate. Plus, Obama just engineered Senate Democrats’ forgiveness of McCain’s friend Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., didn’t make it to the Florida presidential primary, dropping out of the race for the GOP nomination months before. But he received one write-in vote in the general election in Duval County, Fla., according to the Florida Times-Union. Of course, other recipients of single write-in nods included Bill O’Reilly, James T. Kirk, Tommy Chong, Joe the Plumber, “Against All,” “They Both Suck ‘08″ and “Twice Cooked Pork $4.95.”
Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., issued a joint statement after their meeting Monday expressing their hope to work together on such challenges as the financial crisis, the energy economy and national security. Obama could use the help of McCain, who remains a star of the Senate. As he returns to the chamber for the lame-duck session, “I think his credibility and stature has grown,” Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told Associated Press, predicting his colleagues won’t think any less of McCain for having lost the election amid a financial crisis that began on a Republican administration’s watch. “I think everybody looks at that and says, ‘I’m not sure anybody could have made it through that.’”
Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza has come up with five myths about the election.
No. 1: The Republican Party suffered a death blow. (History says otherwise, because every president since 1934 except George W. Bush lost House seats in his first midterm election.)
No. 2: Black and young voters swept Barack Obama to victory. (”Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group,” Cillizza said.)
No. 3: Now that they control the White House and Congress, Democrats will usher in a new progressive era. (Not true, he said, because many of the freshman Democrats, especially in the House, are moderate to conservative.)
No. 4: A Republican candidate could have won the presidency this year. (Not likely, Cillizza said, thanks to President Bush’s record.)
No. 5: McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin. (Though Palin hurt McCain’s attempts to reach out to independents and Democrats, “it’s hard to imagine conservatives rallying to McCain - even to the relatively limited extent that they did - without Palin on the ticket.”)
“I could make the argument that all is not lost for the Republican Party - that Nov. 4’s across-the-board defeat wasn’t an unmitigated disaster,” columnist Eugene Robinson wrote. “But it would be a pretty dumb argument, and I doubt many readers would take it seriously. The truth is that the Grand Old Party is on a bridge to nowhere and may have great difficulty changing course.
“The essential problem is that changing course will require turning around and marching, if not sprinting, in the opposite direction. At least initially, this doesn’t look like something enough Republicans are willing to do.”
As 16 of the nation’s 21 GOP governors meet in Florida, they seem to be clear on the bleak status quo of the party nationally, if not on what to do about it. Said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (in photo): “We cannot compete, and prevail, as a majority governing party if we have a significant deficit, as we do, with women, where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African-American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances. Those are not factors that make up a formula for success going forward.” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said of voters: “They fired us with cause.” But Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour advised that things could be worse, as they were after Watergate: “I have looked down at the grave of the Republican Party, and this ain’t it.”
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin urged her fellow GOP governors to be reformers who “show the federal government the way.” She also said: “We are now the minority party, but let us not resolve to become the negative party, too eager to find fault or unwilling to help in this time of crisis and war. . . . Let us build our case with actions, not just with words.”
The Republican base loves Sarah Palin. Independents concluded she wasn’t ready. This flaw can be overcome with time and useful experience.
And there is really no deadline for her interest in national office. Palin is a strikingly young 44 years old. You’re going to hear a lot of buzz about her as a 2012 candidate, but I don’t think that she needs to run in four years. I don’t think that love from the Republican base is going to dissipate. She stepped up to the plate and hit the ball as far as she could this time around, and for about two weeks, she helped achieve the near-impossible: putting McCain ahead in a Democratic year.
- Jim Geraghty, National Review Online
Throughout the entirety of American history, only three losing vice presidential candidates have managed to ever come back and win their parties’ nomination. Many of the losing running mates have discovered that the country is not kind to a loser. Some of the failed candidates, such as Joe Lieberman, Edmund Muskie and John Edwards, made disappointing bids for the presidency in the next election. Others never again succeeded in capturing elective or appointive office.
Palin may be trying to lay the groundwork for 2012, but she should realize that building a campaign based on a losing vice presidential run is a weak place to start.
- Joshua Spivak, MarketWatch.com
Sarah Palin hurt John McCain with independent and moderate voters, but she is correct that the campaign’s bigger problems were the economic downturn and leadership failures by the GOP and President Bush. “I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo,” she said, “too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing.” As for her future plans, Palin said: “If there is an open door in ‘12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”
So much for Joe the Plumber’s loyalty to his chosen presidential nominee: “You know, it doesn’t matter if McCain or Obama won this election; either way, politicians in general don’t give a rip about us,” Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher said on a weekend visit to New York City. His love for Sarah Palin endures, though: “I don’t want to sound like a hippie, but she’s got this energy coming from her. It’s amazing.”
He added: “All she wants to do is do right by America and secure our values. Barack Obama wants to fundamentally change our democracy, and that is worrisome.”
It’s apparently never too early to talk presidential politics. The Web site Politico reports that Mike Huckabee soon will revisit Iowa and South Carolina to promote his new book. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, will address a conservative Christian crowd and tour flood damage in Iowa this month. Said anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist: “Jindal will be president. I don’t know the year.” Meanwhile, columnist Robert Novak is talking up Newt Gingrich (in photo): “What is certain is that Gingrich has the desire and the will. He has a deep-seated ambition. He had not even settled into the House speaker’s chair in 1995 when he confessed to me his presidential desires for 1996. That was not to be, but he never abandoned the personal dream and is ready to pursue it now.”
“The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 — caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Brothers, according to the police report) — although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4.” — columnist Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post
“He consistently ran the wrong message. People aren’t afraid of the ice caps melting when their 401(k)s are melting.” — pollster Frank Luntz
“McCain bet his entire candidacy on the surge in Iraq. He was right, and Democrats were wrong. By any measure, he should have benefited, and Democrats should have suffered, when the surge worked. Instead, as Americans achieved greater success in Iraq — and as U.S. deaths fell to 13 last month, equaling the lowest total in a very long time — the war in Iraq simply fell off many voters’ radar screens. McCain’s resoluteness and good sense went largely unrewarded.” — Byron York, National Review
“As for the Republicans, the lesson of their defeat is the most fundamental in politics. When the party in power fails to deliver either peace or prosperity, voters typically send it packing.” — Wall Street Journal editorial
“Did you see the concession speech last night? John McCain was generous. He was gracious. He was statesman-like. And I was thinking well, he should have tried that earlier.” — David Letterman
Not only did the Christmas commercials roll out after Tuesday’s election, the 2012 speculation did, too. Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News and NPR writes: “I’d put money on a Barack Obama-Bobby Jindal (in photo) match in 2012. If Obama is the Democrats’ Reagan, then the Louisiana reform governor has the potential to be both the Republicans’ Bill Clinton - in that he could revive a defeated and demoralized party - and its Barack Obama, in that he is young, brilliant and widely appealing. Besides, there simply aren’t any other Republicans left standing today who could unite the GOP’s shards after this epic smashing.”
After beginning the campaign of 2008 by seeking the GOP nomination for the biggest job of all, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., was the only member of the Kansas delegation not on the ballot Tuesday. In the end, Brownback had this to say about the historic election: “To go from Rosa Parks and Linda Brown to President-elect Barack Obama in one generation proves that anything is possible in America. I congratulate President-elect Obama and his family. We should all savor and celebrate this moment in history. I am also thankful to John McCain, whom I supported, as an American hero who even in defeat put his country first and sought to heal our division.”
“There is absolutely no diva in me,” Sarah Palin told reporters the morning after the election. But some of John McCain’s aides beg to differ, judging from the array of stories, all based on unnamed sources, about the GOP vice presidential nominee’s wild 2½-month ride as McCain’s running mate. Among the painful new anecdotes: That Palin and McCain rarely spoke during the campaign. That she pushed (in vain) to deliver her own concession speech Tuesday. And that one of the last straws for the McCain camp was the revelation that she had taken a call from a prankster posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy. But such finger-pointing can’t obscure the fact that the years-long McCain campaign owns Tuesday’s loss.
The whole world was watching Tuesday night, and now it’s weighing in. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour sees a “tsunami of goodwill” accompanying Barack Obama’s victory, observing that the Times of London said Obama “had revitalized U.S. politics. In Germany, Der Spiegel called Obama’s rise ‘astonishing,’ while the Times of India called Obama an ‘advocate of strong partnership with India.’ Al-Jazeera said Obama had ‘surfed to power on a wave of voter discontent generated by the failures of President George Bush and the Republican Party’ and added that he faces ‘unique challenges.’ It continued that his country was ‘sick of war.’”
“While Barack may have been raised in some exotic places, he was raised by Kansas women.” - Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, at the Democrats’ election watch party in Topeka
A few words about John McCain’s concession speech Tuesday night: classy, touching, pitch-perfect, and just what you’d expect from the honorable senator (if not the angry candidate he sometimes appeared to be). McCain’s closing words bear repeating: “I wish godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.”
