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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Charlatans

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 7th, 2012 at 01:45 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The GOP spent a ton of money through a bunch of organizations, including Super PACs, that was flat out wasted. The Newt Gingrich Super PAC was just a sign of things to come it seems.

The excuse that is going to be used is that had these groups not spent the money, the GOP would have suffered major losses.

For the past several months, even before the massive barrage of spending started, the GOP led or was even in the generic congressional ballot. There was never a real danger that the GOP would lose the House despite Democratic bluster. The RGA, with little help from the major Super PACs, expanded the Republican gubernatorial margin to the historic level of 30.

But the GOP damaged itself badly in the Senate. It was not just Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin as much as the GOP might like to point fingers at them. Scott Brown, Tommy Thompson, etc., etc., etc.

Senate Republicans have consistently patted themselves on the back in their social club, found hard in primaries against conservatives, and nominated some seriously crappy candidates. Will the Senate GOP actually clean up its act? It has left many of the base uninspired and unwilling to help. Because of it, the GOP turned to rich donors who tend to look down their noses at the base. They set up outside groups.

The outside groups need to have a serious accounting. For months they touted their get out the vote efforts, ground game, ad operations, polling operations, voter contact, etc. and they really were full of b.s. for the most part. From national tea party groups that have mostly been infighting to some of the major 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) groups, much was donated and much was squandered with little to no oversight.

One of the most effective groups was American Majority Action, which actually contacted live human beings and didn’t just count doors at which no one answered. And what did they get in return? Another outside group filmed American Majority Action’s work, then produced a video claiming it was their own work. There must be a reckoning. [correction: I got my groups confused. Madison Project, one of the other highly effective groups out there this time, was the group that had its work filmed by another group looking to take credit. My apologies.]

There must be a reckoning for how the GOP does business with groups that fundraise off the names of politicians and use all the money for overhead that includes luxurious travel and hotels.

Additionally, the Romney team objectively failed to put on a decent ground game and the supposedly supplemental ground game from outside groups was ephemeral. In 2008, one of the smartest things Barack Obama did was keep his staff in Chicago and use his team, not the Democrats’ usual hucksters.

As long as the GOP keeps relying on the usual hucksters, charlatans, and con artists it’ll keep getting the same results.

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COMMENTS

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  • septembergurl

    We should have a kind of clearing house or committee or something that would call these fakes out after their failed campaigns. We did it a bit after 2008, calling out McCain operatives. There were some really bad characters operating here. I am sure they’ll be back in 2014 an republicans will be beating down their doors to hire them.

    Also: polls. Seriously — the state polls were right and the national polls were wrong????

  • craiginiowa

    I think that conservatives make the same mistake that the McGovern supporter did in the 70s. We isolate ourselves so we think everyone agrees with us. I was shocked Monday night when Obama had 20,000 people show up for a rally in Iowa.

    I’m still waiting to see one add that explains WHY Obama care is bad. How hard is it to
    show someone saying that they survived prostate cancer in the US with a 95% survival rate vs england with a 50% rate.

    I was shocked that no one in the party made a prolife commercial with women who more tramatized by their abortion, then the rape. Those women are out there.

    I wish there was some sort of evaluation of the different Tea Party and Conservative Groups. I think that it would be nice, if I could get a 2nd opinion of the different groups, before I pick one to get involved in.

  • becky5

    You make some good points, especially with respect to the crony capitalism within the Republican party. We all know the left uses ridicule as its weapon, and we can never be the party of cutting government spending until they stop all the cronyism and corporate welfare. Those Wall St. bailouts were an absolute disaster for us. Once they gave the green light to bailout Wall St. they could never make the case for cutting a single dollar from any social program without looking like heartless hypocrites. Even though the people that will be hurt the worst when we go over the cliff are the poor, the Dems will make it look like Republicans only care about the rich.

    If you want to see something that will make you sick, go look at how many ex-GOP politicians are now lobbyists. Billy Tauzin (former GOP House member from LA) was the head lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry in 2010. He was the one who made a deal with Obama that the industry would support Obamacare as long as Obama agreed not to negotiate lower drug prices. So these companies ponied up millions of dollars in ads supporting Obamacare (the hospitals and insurance companies were also on board), and they shoved it down our throats. Take a look at the list of unions and companies exempt from Obamacare — its the very same groups who pushed the hardest for it, the unions and the insurance companies. It’s revolting. http://cciio.cms.gov/resources/files/approved_applications_for_waiver.html

  • gscandlen

    From the ObamaCare wars I learned (relearned, actually) this lesson — business has no principles. It will do whatever it thinks it needs to to survive and profit. If that includes cutting a deal to become managers of the welfare state, so be it. The Republican consultants are the same way. They will go where the money is — say anything, do anything to get a share of that money. The super PACs had oodles of money to invest in politicians. The same people wouldn’t put a dime into think tanks or grass roots groups that can advance a principled agenda.

  • littlehouse18

    Thank you so much for your service sir. Please at least know that we here are forever grateful.

  • http://deadite.wordpress.com deadite

    A nuclear attack from Iran will be an EMP. It will kill off the unprepared, as water and resources become scarce after all our electronics have been fried, That truly will be zombieland. So, prepare for it now and your kids will survive. Otherwise, they will be eaten or enslaved.

  • Amarcavage

    I’m most interested in Erick’s passing comment about the Romney ground game. Is it true that Republican voters stayed home, or were there just more Democratic voters? In other words, don’t the Dems just now have a much bigger pool of sympathetic voters to mine (minorities, single women, the youth) than we do? I’d like to understand more about how the Romney ground game failed.

    Speaking of charlatans, though, the entire Republican establishment, including many of the main voices on this site, bought into the narrative that the pollsters got the voter representation model wrong. Even the sober George Will was predicting 320 EVs for Romney. This miscalculation seems to have led to precious resources being diverted from FL and VA, thought to be in the bag, in a futile attempt to expand the map during the final two weeks of the campaign. There should be some accountability and humility for those getting this completely wrong.

  • zollistar

    Thank you for your service. Thank you! Thank you!

  • streiff

    not a great evolutionary strategy given your commenting history

  • Bill S

    Sorry, no. Rules don’t change because we lost.

  • Bill S

    He used an abbreviation because he understands the rules. The commenter to which you refer did not. I edited the comment. Don’t like it? Go elsewhere. This is a PG site.

  • txteach

    These outside groups need to funnel their $$$ to educate the public – not through the “cheap” YouTube stuff but high quality 30 second bites on commercial tv – something akin to the networks PSAs – ["The More You Know" / "CBS Cares"]. Start with simple themes and build on them on the cable chanels – This is a long term proposition but you have to go to where these people are – sitting in front of their televisions. They will never listen to a campagin speech or read a newspaper but if they hear it often enough, something will sink in. Yes, the ground game needs to move out and involve those who don’t think like we do – we have to hit them where their pocketbook is and help them understand where the money goes and where it comes from and the consequences of bad economic policy. If an 8th grader can understand it (put correctly) so can anyone else. It just take lots of repetition and a little glitz & glam. It would certainly not do any worse than wasting their dollars on the negative ads.

  • remalimo

    Carolt: Your can have Rick Perry now if you want. We are through with him in TX. In many instances he and the leg. increased the fees by 150% and passed leg. that provides for Franchise Tax based on the gross income of a company. The Fran. Tax is on Gross >$1Mil. So if you loose $ Comp. still pay a tax. There are many other things that our TX State Officials are trying to makeup the $6B short fall.

  • perdido

    That’s a VERY good idea, txteach. In fact, that is the exact thing that we need to do and I will be pushing this agenda at every tea party meet and blog I visit.