Redstate

Romney/Pace 2008

If anyone, this is still Delay/Hastert's "fault." But really it's the generally adoption of the benefits of power. The trashing of personal responsibility and the assumption that voters don't care when you abuse power to spend taxpayer money to bribe your constituents.

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[nt]

I learned in the military when you assume leadership duties, you better get a grasp of what you have before you. If you do not, you will fail.

Yes, Tom Cole was handed a losing hand and it is not his fault. However, I fault our leadership, including Tom Cole for not recognizing that past Republican problems could not be ignored.

The Congressional Leadership, including Tom Cole, still appointed "the problem" to Appropriations, and denied Shadegg the seat. That was a bright beacon announcing that nothing had changed.

The Congressional Leadership still does not see the corrupt "Cardinals" of Appropriations epitomize the problem and they only added to it instead of trying to fix it.

I blame Republican Leadership totally, and Tom Cole did not speak up and dissent to business as usual. However, if he did speak up and dissent, he would not have been placed into a leadership position either. How sad is that?

Wubbies World, MSgt, USAF (Retired):
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(""The only reason that some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.")

I could be wrong, but I don't know of a single Republican that was voted out because of earmarks.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

Republicans have lost a lot of ground on "who do you trust to balance the budget" and "who do you trust to be fiscally responsible" type of questions. The impression of a bunch of Congress making bridges to nowhere under R leadership is big part of why there is no trust. It's not opposition based on earmarks per se. It's that as long as pork barrel corruption is going on, there is no trust that Congress will make the hard decisions to not waste money. It leads to very low approval ratings for Rs in Congress. It's a generally view of corruption driven by the unstoppable earmarking.

This is like the Ds in 1994 saying "it couldn't be because we were out of touch, people don't vote on that." Well not exactly, but people think worse of you and it's easier to jump ship then.

I think Talent, Dewine, and Burns lost in part because Rs became reviled due to their pork barreling corruption.

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....lost because Claire McCaskill tied him to Bush and Iraq at every turn. She lied about Talent and oil companies/gas prices, and Talent really ran a bad campaign too. On top of that, there was unprecedented efforts on the part of Moveon.org and ACORN to get McCaskill elected. The stem-cell issue was demagogued too, with Michael J Fox cutting ads attacking Jim Talent.

I don't know about Burns and Dewine, although both of those guys were tainted by Abramoff, plus Tester ran as a pro-gun culturally conservative in Montana.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

Earmarks and overspending are a significant part of the reason Republicans are no longer trusted to balance the budget, but equally responsible is the myth that tax cuts for the wealthy have starved the government of revenue.

First off, they ran Jenkins who is not well liked in general.

Secondly, they spent a lot of time talking about Obama/Wright which is just dumb.

People want you to talk about what YOU are going to do.

Yeah...You're right...it's just the cycle...Republicans have a 24% approval rating out of an electorate that is 48% Republican...but it's just the cycle. We should blame anyone in leadership for driving us off a cliff...it's just the cycle!

CFR, Amnesty, Spending, Corruption,
Earmarks, Socialized Medicine:
”Your Silence Is Your Consent!”

Ahhh...I meant shouldn't blame anyone in leadership

CFR, Amnesty, Spending, Corruption,
Earmarks, Socialized Medicine:
”Your Silence Is Your Consent!”

....is basically to raise money, and recruit good candidates to win races. He's not really a "message guy" as I understand it. I think that job comes from the top, i.e. Boehner, the Study Committee, and the Republican Conference.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

If he's not the message guy he should be on the message guy's rear end to come up with one because he can't raise money without it!

CFR, Amnesty, Spending, Corruption,
Earmarks, Socialized Medicine:
”Your Silence Is Your Consent!”

What does the Republican party see as the major problems facing America, and how does it plan to address them?

I can more-or-less answer this for the Democratic party, as much as I dislike the answers. They have a platform that's more than a piece of paper. But do we?

I grant it's easier for the Democratic party, in that plans for no government action are harder to sell as positive plans. Nonetheless, Republicans badly need to improve our brand identity.

I think you guys sometimes miss the point about Tom Cole. I grant you that the GOP has numerous problems, quite apart from anything Cole is responsible for, or has done, as NRCC Chair. There is the message problem, the branding problem, the retirement problems, etc. But that is not where my criticisms of Cole lie.

To reiterate my earlier posting - I think Tom Cole has done a poor job as NRCC chairman. (BTW, in 2007 I actually thought he was the best choice for this position, considering his extensive political background.)
Why? Because:
1) He stopped choosing sides in the primaries. In non-incumbent races (and sometimes in these too), where there is a dud and a stud - great quote, Michael - the NRCC should choose the stud, either publicly, or by steering money to him/her. This is what Schumer (who is the best political head, right now) has done to great success in the Senate. Cole should have backed Lauzen, considering his prior knowledge (through NRCC polls) of Oberweis's high negatives, and Oberweis's general incompetance. And he should have opposed Jenkins too.
2) He has done a poor job raising money. What genius, I ask you, decides that the year after an anti-Republican wave, when the GOP is down in the dumps and desperate for any ray of hope, is the best time for the NRCC to ditch its old successful money making apparatus in favor of a new apparatus that is untested and which Cole himself acknowledges that it will take time - i.e. multiple elections - to prove itself? (This was a quote of his in the Hill newspaper.)
3) He has done a poor job at recruiting candidates. Now, I realize that Cole is not solely at fault for the generally bad recruiting going on for House races. But, I can certainly say that he has not improved on the situation. The perfect example - Ohio. Cole screwed up the Ohio recruiting so bad that John Boehner had to jump in. Boehner was the man responsible for convincing state Sen. Steve Stivers to jump into a race that Stivers had already said no to (to Cole). Boehner also had a hand in producing good candidates in the other OH districts. This is one of the reasons Boehner had his dust up with Cole.
4) He has poor staff. Who a person surrounds himself with speaks to the quality of that person (remember this, Barack). And Cole has not done a particularly good job of surrounding himself with talent at the NRCC. I am in DC, and I have frequent contact with NRCC folk. While they are nice people, they don't strike me as the movers and shakers we need to take back the House. This is in contrast to previous years. Once again, Cole's staff hiring was reputedly another issue between him and Boehner in their recent dust up.

The fact that Cole has done a poor job is obvious to others. The Politico states: "Desperate to unify his splintered party before the next election, House Republican Leader John A. Boehner has organized a small group of GOP colleagues to advise the National Republican Congressional Committee. The group was a joint venture with Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, the party's campaign chief who has sparred with Boehner last year over operations and personnel at the troubled committee. The group of 11 Republican House members will meet regularly to plot campaign strategy, chart fundraising and coordinate member efforts as the fall elections approach." Although the Politico missed the main point here, I didn't - if Cole were doing an acceptable job, Boehner wouldn't have set up this group of advisors/overseers for the NRCC.

Basically, the problem is that Tom Cole, upon finding himself in a hole not of his own making, has been feverishly digging it larger since his appointment as NRCC Chair. It is time for him to stop digging. And if he can't, or won't, than Rep. Boehner, and the other GOP House leadership, really need to take away his shovel.

CFR, Amnesty, Spending, Corruption,
Earmarks, Socialized Medicine:
”Your Silence Is Your Consent!”