The first step should be replacing Cornyn with Toomey at the NRSC. That would help to solve some problems with GOTV, recruiting, and primaries.

… in Webster NY. We might just have saved Ann Marie Buerkle:

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/how_the_west_was_won_by_ann_ma.html

Time will tell, of course, if it was enough. But we worked hard for it.

As has Cornyn at the NRSC.

The fact that the these two organizations could not beat Democrats at fund raising in a wave election such as we’ve just gone through is alarming to me.

And I’ll also point to Steele sending RNC Money to Guam of all places. Morning Joe over at The Weekly Standard points to the fact that Guam has a large voting block of delegates who vote for the Chairman of the RNC….Given this combined with all the stories about Steele running for another term as chairman points to the fact that Steel was more focused on keeping his job as RNC Chair during this election than he was in maximizing the gains Republicans would see in the biggest wave election in America in over 3/4s of a century.

Dr. Rob Steele was a terrific candidate, should have won. Districting is a huge problem here. The good Dr. was ahead in the polls until the very very liberal city of Ann Arbor began reporting their results. That sealed the deal for Dingell. The republican party should have been all over this race. I am in the 15th district, cast my vote for the good Dr. Ann Arbor is 23.5 miles from my home. It is the city that is outside the district and yet takes it all the time. The UAW members this year voted unanimously for Dr. Steele.

I agree, with this economy, the unemployment at unacceptable levels, the dems should have lost bigger than they did.

I do, however, think that we could have done better than Angle and O’Donnell (and Huffman, and McMahon). Not with more liberal candidates, but with a better recruiting process, more viable ones. Sadly, it’s all a perception game with things like that.

And we should have won many more house districts. What the heck happened in North Carolina? I thought we’d gets at least two seats there. The top R’s need to start spending their money more wisely. No money at all to help Loughlin in Rhode Island? the man lost by five points. It was winnable.

Jesse Kelly in CD08 should have beaten Gabrielle Giffords and Ruth McClung had Raul the Marxist on the ropes. We should be able to win both next time around. All they needed was a little help.

They need to step down and let new conservative blood in. I don’t care if they don’t like the comment.

Starting with their empowerment to those like Crist, Scozzafava, and muliple RINOs, and continuting through – the most pitiful GOTV program in the history of man, they are the problem…..and they don’t get it one bit.

No wonder Barry and Nancy are not at all worried about the GOP.
Although the House is completely won, the GOP is still talking about Unicorns, rainbows, love, and reaches across the aisle. Even junior Camp Fire Girls are showing more fight than the GOP Congress. No wonder Nancy is deciding to stay right where she is.

And the GOP Senate has never let down their faith in Barry. The GOP Senate group’s only goal is to expand the new progressive “Pragmatist (RINO)” Caucus and expand and continue earmarks. They are concerned mostly with sending the NRSC chief lawyers to fight against the fair winners of the Republican primaries, if the candidate is Conservative. The NRSC then pushes for the election of the liberal Independent progressive write-In “pragmatist” candidates at all costs.

The GOTV program for the GOP was finally formulated about a week before the election and the focus was in la la land.

The GOP Senate are the ones who especially still dont get it. They aren’t even in the same Universe as the American people.

It’s time for change. Yesterday.

GOP leadership…..please step down.

seats because of third party conservative candidates who ran either as indies or liberterians. A total of 14 democrats won or apparently will win with less then 50% of the vote.

So those purists who think its better to vote for the most conservative candidate instead of the republican you can substract 14 seats. In some cases you have super solid guys like Jesse Kelly going down because a liberterian gets 10K plus votes.

I might I add the RNC has been a joke since Jan 2009.

Its been my impression, however, that at the state and local level the GOP has had enough funds to do GOTV. I don’t about Washington state but its volunteers not money that drives GOTV. How many people here are motivated by robocalls??

Now I got real people who called me this year and that mattered. In a congressional district 300 volunteers (which is nothing in a 700K population) making 500 calls can reach 150,000 households. That’s your GOTV right there. I don’t blame money for not enough wins. We had the money. There were 1000 people at the tea party express rally in AK for Miller. 1000 people times 100 phone calls is 100,000 personal contacts and Miller only got 68,000 votes.

You don’t need money for GOTV you need motivated people.

In CO 20,000 people attended the GOP caucus for Buck-. There was enough grassroots people to do that why do you need GOTV? Even 5000 people contacting 200 people gets you a million hits–

I don’t blame lack of money. The money was there-the people were there. Third party candidates hurt us plus our campaigns either got outworked or our candidates were weak.

Doesn’t under performing against the polls merely reflect bad polling?

That certainly doesn’t undermine the premise of this post. It’s very discouraging to think that all assets weren’t deployed.

More evidence to confirm the concerns about party leadership.

And they wonder why we want to eliminate the middle man when it comes to our contributions.

It wasn’t utilized… why? Was it a lack of volunteers and/or money? Whoever makes such decisions felt it wasn’t needed or would be better if ‘saved’ (no such thing) until the ’12 cycle?

On Saturday, November 6, I received a mailer from the national GOP reminding me to vote on November 2 to stop Pelosi’s agenda.

has been the best GOTV has been local people volunteering their time. When I see out of town or out state people coming in trying to get a campaign up and running I just roll my eyes. You see people getting paid-wearing crisp collars and fancy ties-trying to motivate local volunteers its just rolls off of me.

That being said the RNC was a disaster this year. Steele was not the spokesperson we needed plus he lost all confidence in the big and small fundraisers. I think it was a mailing scam this year. The RNC raised 120 million but spent 100 million in costs raising it.

We either need new leadership or a model.

I would rather see “Redstate candidate link” with links to conservative candidates. I said several times this year that a million small donors contributing $100 would not only match the RNC for the year but fund out 100 conservative GOP candidates. A certain GOP candidate could have $1 million without the 1st PAC contribution without a 1st local fundraiser or DC fundraiser or 1st contribution from a GOP congressman.

We need a new model–this massive direct mail operation of the RNC -RCCC-NRSC is an Edsel.

Did Sharon Angle lose in Nevada because of the third candidate in the race, the one with ‘Tea Party’ next to his name? There’s yur trouble.

This is why I will never give a penny to the RNC, only to candidates. Until we get a solid conservative in there, get rid of Steele, and do not replace him with Norm Coleman, who I like personally and who should still be in the Senate, we have no reason to give to the RNC. They are to blame for the defeats of Rossi, Buck, and Angle. If they and the Delaware had not spent so much money and time attacking Christine O’Donnell during her primary with Mike Castle, when she was actually leading Coons in the polls, she may have won as well.

We lost NV and CO due to the GOTV efforts by liberal groups.

The Dems don’t have a 72 Hour GOTV effort because the liberal groups don that.

I think conservative groups should stop depending on the RNC, NRCC, NRSC, RGA, etc., and develop their their grass root efforts on the local effort.

He made really bad decisions…and his non-support of Tea Party candidates point me to an establishment RINO…he helped grow government instead of curtailing it…not so much in the last congressional session but prior to that.

We need new blood in leadership positions…ones that will stand on our mandate of no compromises…the democrats only appear to compromise in committee, but once they get the bill on the floor they battered the bills refusing any compromise in amendments. It’s a bait and switch game.

Compromises got us in this mess…compromise is not going to get us out of it.

…might be good in the long(2012) run.
We got the House and picked up 6 Senate seats. Obama’s agenda is dead.
But even with a GOP House and Senate, nothing would have gotten done–like complete repeal of ObamaCare–during the next two years.
Things CAN be done only after Obama is voted out. That task would have been much more difficult with a big, fat, unified GOP Congress for Obama to shoot at.
The economy will not get much better over the next 2 years, and as long as the Dems have 2 of the 3 legs of DC power, they’ll continue to get most of the blame.

dollars to play around with plus there was another 10 million in outside ads that hammered Reid.

Did Angle really need RNC money for GOTV?

She could have hired 1000 people at $500 for 5 weeks and swamped Washoe & Clark county with door to door GOTV. Come to think of it there were 4,000 tea party members in NV who could have swamped washoe and Clark county door to door.

Money is sweet but all the marketing in the world did not sell “New Coke” and some candidates in some races in some states can’t get it done.

One of the more interesting election post-mortem panel discussions was the one held by the American Enterprise Institute and available in the CSPAN archives.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/10/21/HP/A/39748/AEI+Discussion+on+2010+Midterm+Elections.aspx

One of the panelists (probably Baronne) pointed out that the Republican tide in the House stopped at the Democrat districts (as measured by presidential voting). In other words, the Republicans recaptured the Republican disctricts and many swing disticts, but were stopped at the Democrat districts. This analysis suggests that American election results are systemically determined by underlying demographics and that additional gains in the House were probably not there to be had. Blue is blue and no GOTV effort is likely to change the outcome in, for example, Barney Frank’s district.

Several pundits have pointed out the signficant fact that we have largely returned to a 2004 poitical map. The anger at the George Bush policies (mostly driven by Iraq) resulted in an aberration with many swing districts and independents tilting Democrat. The election last week undid those gains and returned to a more textbook political map with urban, white gentry, and university districts voting Democrat and suburban/rural/heartland districts going Republican.

The problem for the Dems is that they got wiped out across the South and Midwest and Florida.

you’ve basically mentioned all the Red districts still held by Democrats. I would add 3: Altmire and Holden in PA and Owens in NY

I would start with the 14 democrats who won with less then 50% in 2010.

Then how about the 11 democrats who won with 51%
Then the 20 democrats who won with 52-53-54% in 2010.

Find better candidates-find more resources maybe redistricting might help a bit and there is base of targets of about 45 seats.

You do not have to go very far to find 50 GOP targets without even talking about redistricting.

the way of doing the necessary grunt work now. For one thing, any redistricting could be tied up in the courts well past 2012.
Your suggestion for going after the low-hanging fruit is valid. Why climb to the top of the tree when there are ripe apples within reach from the ground? If the Dims were shocked by this year’s results, imagine if they were to lose another 45 seats! One can only dream!
Let’s talk it up more. It is just this kind of goal that can keep people motivated for the ensuing two years.
But, beware! We have to keep this new House’s feet to the fire. We cannot let up on them, or we could end up losing all we gained this time around. The people want us to keep our promises. That is why the voted so strongly with us this time. If we let them down again, we will never get them back again.

It’s no longer just a 72-hour focus. With early voting, especially in Ohio, the Dems/unions spent an entire month turning out their voters and getting people to the early voting centers. If we wait until the last 72 hours, we’ll still be behind

It is time to realize that gifts to the party propagate mediocrity. Give directly to candidates that you know, trust, and believe in – and give generously. The party has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to vet and advance solid conservative candidates. They must take those that they deem electable. Thus, we end up with safe candidates, life safe sex, it makes you feel safe but you get the disease and die anyway.

Michael Steele has been tested and found lacking.

Our money has been going to individual CONSERVATIVE candidates all over the country and to Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund – spending MUCH more than ever given to the national party, but we believe by so doing, we HAVE made a difference!

Boots on the ground by CONSERVATIVE supporters has proven to be the answer to the malaise that had been permeating our party. Hopefully the leaders in Washington will realize the effectiveness of those of us who are speaking out AGAINST an out-of-control government! Excessive government interference in our lives should NO LONGER BE TOLERATED!!!!