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Posts tagged with gop

Net Negative (Is Sort of an Understatement) But so what? Graph via Andrew Rudalevige and the Monkey Cage (and Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group). UPDATE See also John Sides: At this point, I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney’s advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida – but it qualifies as circumstantial. The longer the campaign goes on, and the longer Mr. Romney’s advertising advantage persists, the more data we will accumulate to test these effects.

Net Negative (Is Sort of an Understatement)

But so what?

Graph via Andrew Rudalevige and the Monkey Cage (and Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group).

UPDATE See also John Sides:

At this point, I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney’s advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida – but it qualifies as circumstantial. The longer the campaign goes on, and the longer Mr. Romney’s advertising advantage persists, the more data we will accumulate to test these effects.

“  What has been said about Newt is pretty much true. He had to step down because Republicans, conservative Republicans, wouldn’t vote for him again as Speaker. Because he’s not really a conservative. I mean, he’ll tell you what you want to hear. He has an uncanny ability, sort of like Clinton, to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up. But when he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined.” — Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (so this could be true)

“  So I’ve had the experience of leadership. Now Speaker Gingrich has also been a leader. He was a leader for four years as speaker of the House. And at the end of four years it was proven he was a failed leader. And he had to resign in disgrace. I don’t know if you knew that. He actually resigned after four years in disgrace. He was investigated under an ethics panel and had to make a payment associated with that and then his fellow Republicans, 88 percent of Republicans, voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich. He has not had a record of successful leadership.” — Mitt Romney

“  Here’s why I find it impossible to be a Republican: any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join.” — Andrew Sullivan on the crowd’s response to the large number of executions that Rick Perry has presided over (via The Liberal Life).

(via wisconsinforward)

$30 for an Audience

Campaign fund-raisers are not “public meetings.” I would hope that the press wouldn’t even refer to them as “town-hall-style meetings.” Excluding opposition voices is beyond cynical.

But charging a fee to voters — even supporters — reflects badly on the nature of representation and it turns the constituent relationship on its head (via KD).


“  It’s his first time on the national stage, and it was a very unfortunate comment. You don’t accuse the chairman of the federal reserve of being a traitor to his country and being guilty of treason and suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas – that’s not, again, a presidential statement” — Karl Rove via the NYT Caucus blog

“  I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. … Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.” — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell

“  There is nothing conservative about never changing your mind, regardless of the facts. Nor is there much that is truly conservative about the strange coalition of anti-government radicals and social reactionaries that dominates the American right. Nor will that coalition do itself any political favors by excommunicating Burke and his pragmatic descendents.” — Jonathan Rauch

Not So Suicidal

Matt Yglesias on the cohesion of congressional Republicans on the Ryan budget plan and Medicare reform:

One of the unfortunate things about the political media’s commitment to “balanced” coverage is that not only do reporters generally feel impelled to always act as if the two parties are normatively symmetrical there also seems to be a reluctance to explore the systematic asymmetries between the parties in an even merely descriptive sense. As a result, we know less about the differences in these disciplinary dynamics, their sources, and their implications than we really ought to.

This is a nice point.

But I don’t think his specific question of why the GOP would take such a knowingly unpopular position is any great mystery. Pundits are trying to make forecasts for this Medicare vote by using the Democrats experience with ACA as an analogy (on this see Seth Masket and Steven Greene who calculate that a vote cast for the healthcare reform cost Democrats 6-8 points in the 2010 midterm elections). But that’s not a great comparison because ACA passed. Republicans knew that the Ryan plan would not pass. And it is going to be really hard to whip up foment in the electorate over a discordant vote on a bill that died in the Senate.

You don’t get loss aversion without some tangible change.


“  I am not going to argue the politics of doing this are good — they probably aren’t. Allowing the GOP primary to devolve into birther mania probably would be better, but the president felt strongly that this was bad for the country.” — an unnamed Whitehouse official to @pwire