Category: Politics

National Review is reporting that Dino Rossi has conceded, and Murray was declared the winner. A real squeaker of an election, but I thought this comment at NRO pretty much captured it:

Rossi never gave the electorate a compelling reason to vote for him rather than Murray. He didn’t embrace the tea party, he didn’t exude energy and passion. He went negative throughout the campaign, and his attack ads complained about Murray’s attacks. Moreover, the Democrats just had to polish off their third edition of the how-to-defeat-Dino manual, which took about five minutes. There were even stories about how it was going to be such a sacrifice for the comfortable Rossi family to go to DC. I wanted someone who was chomping at the bit and foaming at the mouth to get to DC to knock some heads, not somebody who says, “sigh, well I really need to do this for the sake of the country, I guess, but I’d rather stay home.” The only county in Washington State that matters for statewide office is King County. If you can’t get in the high 40s in King County, don’t run, period. We have to find a Republican who is willing to go into that lion’s den and change some minds.

That sounds about right to me, though I can’t say I know Washington that well. It’s always seemed to me to be a bit like Pennsylvania, only with King County being a good bit more dominant in state politics than Philadelphia County. One things for sure, you have a squeaker of a loss once, I’m open to the idea of running a candidate again. Lose twice that way you’re probably not viable. The GOP in Washington State would seem to need to rethink its strategy. I think the GOP needs to rethink its strategy for every blue state.

My idea would be to run sane libertarians in blue states, people who are fiscally responsible but socially liberal. But will the GOP listen? Probably not.

It’s hard to argue the GOP didn’t fall down a bit in the Senate races. In the races the GOP did win, the margins were closer than many of the House races, and in the ones they lost they lost pretty substantially. Jim Geraghty argues that it might have to do with the quality of candidates, a sentiment echoed by Michael Barone in the Washington Examiner. I tend to think this is a correct analysis, largely driven by the fact that the structure of the Tea Party movement. When it comes to Congressional Districts, most seem to have only one or two Tea Party groups, who presumably don’t find it too difficult to coordinate on local races, like a House race. The Tea Party movement at the local level have some defined structure, and look more like traditional political civic groups. But take that out to a statewide race and the Tea Party starts to look more like a mob than an organization. As our Founding Fathers were aware, mobs seldom make prudent choices.

Choices like Angle and O’Donnell, are examples of this, though there are many more. None of these candidates to me looked like winners. The big unknown question was how far could Tea Party enthusiasm take lackluster candidates in state wide races. The answer would appear to be not very far. This isn’t surprising considering Tea Party supporters only make up about 30% of the population. It doesn’t change the fundamental dynamic that you still have to build a coalition to win.

Choosing the right candidate is difficult when you’re an organic movement, made up of people who normally don’t participate in the political process. Organic movements are going to gravitate towards candidates based on ideological compatibility, rather than their ability to actually run a statewide campaign and win. When assessing the viability of a candidate’s political potential for federal office, I’m only looking at a couple of factors in order of importance:

1. His or her ability to raise money.
2. His or her ability to manage a campaign, or hire the right people to do it (see above)
3. His or her ability to connect with ordinary Americans who are not ideological in their political preferences.
4. His or her values in comparison to the voters they will be going before.

For a state level or local race, fundraising can drop in importance, depending on the district. A candidate that’s willing to go knock on thousands of doors, and has a way with people, can overcome a fundraising deficit in a local race. There are plenty of politicians in state and local offices who are dogged campaigners, but can’t raise money worth a damn when they try to move to a higher level office. That’s one reason, as much as I love Sam Rohrer, I didn’t think his candidacy had a chance. Look at any race, and how or why they lose comes down to one or more of these issues. When I’m looking at a candidate in a primary race, I’m only looking for someone who’s ideology roughly matches up with my own. I’m more interested in someone that can win in the district they are running in. Depending on the district, this is either going to mean high ideological compatibility, or having to pick a few issues of importance and compromising on the rest. In Delaware, Nevada, and many other places, Tea Party backers needed more of the latter and less of the former. I think the organic nature of the Tea Party movement is going to mean they get it wrong in state wide races just about as often as they get it right. How one could improve candidate selection, without destroying the grassroots nature of the movement,  is an interesting question.