Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Afternoon Roundup
Correct The Record Friday November 7, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:
Tweets:
Correct The Record @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton promoted U.S. development of clean energy projects for Caribbean nations #HRC365 http://correctrecord.org/hillary-clinton-fueling-americas-energy-future/ … [11/6/14, 3:52 p.m. EST]
Headlines:
FROM MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA: Media Matters for America: “CNN Falls Into Whitewater Trap”
“Just two days after the midterm elections concluded, CNN is helping to make ‘Whitewater’ lies part of the 2016 election.”
Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “How Democrats’ Defeats Help and Hurt Hillary Clinton”
“The midterm election Tuesday was a debacle for the Democratic Party, but for Hillary Clinton the results aren’t so clear-cut.”
“Clinton can argue that a Republican president and a Republican Congress would be a terrifying combination, and some of us might believe she’s right. But if the only alternative is four more years of bitterness and gridlock, lots of voters could chose to give the GOP the chance to do its worst.”
Huffington Post blog: Listen to Burns Strider Talk about the Midterms and Hillary Clinton
[Burns' portion begins at 16:58]
Correct The Record’s Burns Strider: “First of all, I was just tickled pink by Secretary Clinton out all over the country. If you look at it, she was in the south, she was out west; she was in the rust belt and in New England. She was all over the country standing up and speaking for Democrats and encouraging folks to come out and support progressives. There was no finger in the air, she was being a Democrat standing up for Democrats and I love that. That’s who she is and I think she was doing the right thing out there. Her desire and obvious interest in just doing what she believes is the right thing and helping build a national party was good. I think we’ll see that in the coming months.”
Politico: “'Dear Koch Brothers: We Aren't Going Anywhere'”
“There could also be additional incentive to keep up the Koch attacks for American Bridge and other Democrat-aligned groups preparing for a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Not only is she is expected to come under fire from the Koch political network, but she has long shown a fascination with the funders of the conservative movement — and sources say that interest extends to the Kochs.”
MSNBC: “RNC chair: I ‘hope we’re running against Hillary Clinton’”
“Republicans want to run against Hillary Clinton for president, the head of the party insisted Friday, laying out how the GOP is already planning to capitalize on their wins in 2014 to be ready to take on Clinton in 2016.”
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Paul: Clinton distancing from Obama won't work”
“Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Friday that are not ‘many, if any’ policies that Hillary Clinton and President Obama disagree on.”
Articles:
FROM MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA: Media Matters for America: “CNN Falls Into Whitewater Trap”
By Jeremy Holden & Ellie Sandmeyer
November 6, 2014, 5:00 p.m. EST
Just two days after the midterm elections concluded, CNN is helping to make "Whitewater" lies part of the 2016 election.
Doug Henwood, author of a Harper's magazine article headlined "Stop Hillary!," appeared on CNN along with Elise Viebeck, a reporter for The Hill, to discuss Hillary Clinton (whom Viebeck called "pathologically ambitious" and "extremely opportunistic"). After Viebeck claimed that "the past scandals that the Clintons have been involved with" could be used by Republicans in any future election, Henwood mentioned Whitewater, a real estate venture that failed in the 1970s and 1980s and was exhaustively investigated in the 1990s, as key to any campaign to discredit Clinton.
"Every time you do Whitewater, the media will kind of roll its eyes, like 'We've been there; this is old,'" host Chris Cuomo replied. "Not the media, but the media that wants to defend Hillary Clinton, or her defenders in general. You say, oh no, no, no. The facts there mattered. She kind of got a pass."
One key fact that mattered went unsaid by Cuomo or either of his guests: exhaustive investigations by Republican prosecutors and legislators concluded that there was no evidence that Bill or Hillary Clinton broke the law in connection to the Whitewater land deal.
Henwood's explanation for why Whitewater still mattered centered on his claim that Clinton "lied" about billing records and how much time she spent as a lawyer working for a bank connected to the deal. Again, the public record fully corroborates what Clinton has said about this.
Nevertheless, Cuomo encouraged his viewers to read Henwood's story in Harper's, calling it an interesting take on Clinton.
Veteran reporters from the 90s see it differently.
"The most basic facts elude him," Gene Lyons observed in the Arkansas Times. Lyons, who wrote a book that originated as a Harper's article on the media's Whitewater failures, offers a devastating point-by-point rebuttal to Henwood before concluding, "a journalist who chooses to question a presidential candidate's character by dragging up 20-year-old controversies owes it to readers to know two or three things about them."
And CNN owes it to its viewers to challenge its guests over basic, verifiable facts.
In early October, Yahoo! News columnist Michael Isikoff revisited the Whitewater saga that made him famous, touting a book written by the first special prosecutor to look into the land deal before he was replaced by Ken Starr. Dredging up old news and breaking no new ground, Isikoff warned that Clinton foes would try to use Whitewater against her.
Joe Conason, who co-authored The Hunting of the President with Lyons, took Isikoff to task for ignoring the facts and offered compelling guidance to journalists who insist on discussing Whitewater. "If we must dredge up Whitewater," Conason wrote, "then let's be specific instead of vague." Conason urged journalists to "report all of the evidence."
Watch the CNN segment from the November 6 edition of New Day:
[VIDEO]
Wall Street Journal blog: Washington Wire: “How Democrats’ Defeats Help and Hurt Hillary Clinton”
By Peter Nicholas
November 7, 2014, 9:41 a.m. EST
The midterm election Tuesday was a debacle for the Democratic Party, but for Hillary Clinton the results aren’t so clear-cut.
Here are five ways the elections helped Mrs. Clinton, and five ways they hurt.
Why they helped:
(1) From the wreckage of the election, many Democrats are now looking to Mrs. Clinton to rebuild the party and remind the rank-and-file that a big prize is still within reach: retaining the White House. President Barack Obama remains the titular head of the party, but he’s badly wounded. His approval ratings have sagged to historic lows and he has lost his governing majority in Congress. In Mrs. Clinton, a demoralized party may see the possibility of better days ahead. Speaking the day after the election, Alan Kessler, a longtime Democratic fundraiser, said: “I will tell you now, today, on a very gloomy morning, that’s what people see as a glimmer of hope.”
(2) The election was less a repudiation of the Washington establishment than a rejection of Washington gridlock. After all, voters reelected the ultimate Washington insider: Kentucky Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who got to the Senate 30 years ago. That might bode well for Mrs. Clinton. She can position herself as an antidote to Washington dysfunction, playing up her experience as a former senator and top diplomat who knows how to reach consensus. Some of her supporters believe the target of voter anger was not Democratic policies or politicians, but Mr. Obama.
“The disenchantment we saw in the election is a disenchantment with Obama,” said Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a Clinton supporter and Democratic donor, and outspoken critic of Mr. Obama. “It’s not about his policies – raising the minimum wage or mainstream Democratic policies that Hillary supports. Voters are fed up with the arrogance and incompetence that Obama has demonstrated in office. Whatever the Republicans say about Hillary, they can’t say those two things about her.”
(3) The damage was so sweeping that Democrats may be more inclined to coalesce behind a Hillary Clinton candidacy. Democrats lost the House in 2010 and the Senate on Tuesday. Losing the White House in 2016 would be an unwelcome trifecta. Rather than endure a contested primary season in which Mrs. Clinton is forced to spend money and political capital securing the nomination, the party may be more inclined to unite behind her and give her a running start for the general election showdown with the GOP. Democrats went through a version of this in 2004, when the party rejected Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s insurgent campaign and instead tapped someone who seemed a safer bet: Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. “A party that doesn’t have the House and Senate becomes a lot more pragmatic about choosing a nominee, because it can’t possibly fathom the possibility of losing it all,” said Joe Trippi, who worked on Mr. Dean’s campaign.
(4) Now that Republicans control both the House and Senate, they’re under renewed pressure to show they can govern. Can they pull it off? Will they forge popular compromises with Mr. Obama that create jobs and jumpstart the economic recovery? Or will they use their power to launch investigations that prove embarrassing to Mr. Obama but strike many Americans as a sideshow? If the GOP overreaches, that could be a boon to Mrs. Clinton. She could make the point that the GOP has little to show for their majority status. “The Democrats are off the hook in large measure,” said Harold Ickes, a senior adviser in Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “It will depend now on what the Republicans come up with in Congress.”
(5) No one can say Mrs. Clinton didn’t do her part to boost the Democratic vote. She attended nearly four dozen fundraising events, rallies and get-out-the-vote drives. Along with her husband she was the main Democratic surrogate in closely contested Senate races that Mr. Obama avoided due to his low popularity. So, Mrs. Clinton campaigned repeatedly for Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky senate candidate who wound up losing big to Mr. McConnell. It’s doubtful Mrs. Clinton will face stiff competition for the Democratic nomination. But if it’s a fight, Mrs. Clinton built some good will with party leaders and activists by sticking her neck out for longshot candidates. “She and President Clinton’s efforts were certainly sought after. And their efforts to support Democratic candidates were deeply appreciated and well received,” said Mack McLarty, a former chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House.
Why the elections hurt Mrs. Clinton
(1) Election day loosed a Republican wave that showed the Democrats have problems. Republicans will control both U.S. Senate seats and all four House seats in Arkansas, the state that vaulted the Clintons onto the national stage. Democrats lost governor’s races in deep blue Maryland and Massachusetts. In their post-mortem, Democrats have talked about how the 2016 elections will produce a better turnout and more favorable electoral map for party candidates. Today, though, Mrs. Clinton stands atop a party that is damaged goods, some analysts say. “The Democratic brand is in trouble,” said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Third Way, a center-left think tank. “Her task, in addition to shaking people out of their apathy, is that she’s going to have to find a pretty new brand for the party.”
(2) Distancing herself from Mr. Obama may have more urgency than Mrs. Clinton believed. The election showed that for Democrats in tough races, Mr. Obama is toxic. Mrs. Clinton faces a tough balancing act. If she repudiates Mr. Obama, she appears disloyal and risks alienating core Democratic voters. Embracing him would surely antagonize independents. One way to navigate is to draw an implicit contrast with Mr. Obama. In ’08, voters rejected her argument that she was the more seasoned political figure, better equipped to operate in Washington. She can revive that point. Former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana said she can tell voters: “If you want someone who you’ve never heard of before, who is going to speak to you in poetry, maybe I’m not your cup of tea. But that’s not what the presidency is about. It’s about getting things done that will help you with your daily lives.”
(3) The elections deepened the GOP bench. Had governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio lost re-election, neither would be a serious potential Republican candidate in 2016. Both won. That gives the Republicans two more potential candidates who could draw sharp contrasts with Mrs. Clinton, casting themselves as Washington outsiders with executive experience.
(4) Mrs. Clinton largely avoided gaffes in the course of her midterm campaigning, but there was one that could stick. Speaking in Boston last month, she said, “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” She later said she misspoke and meant to say conservative tax policies hinder job growth. But Republicans quickly made it known the quote will figure into an attack ad some day.
(5) Overall, Mrs. Clinton didn’t do badly as a campaign surrogate in a tough year for Democrats. She campaigned for 26 individual candidates. The final tally: 12 won; 13 lost; and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) is in a runoff. But the public focus will inevitably be on the high-profile defeats: Ms. Grimes and Senate candidates Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Bruce Braley of Iowa.
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a potential GOP candidate in 2016, told The Wall Street Journal that those who ran as “Clinton Democrats” didn’t prove to be more “popular” than those who ran as “Obama Democrats.”
By Paul Waldman
November 7, 2014, 12:51 p.m. EST
Was the Republican takeover of Congress terrific news for Hillary Clinton, or terrible news for Hillary Clinton? At the moment, our nation’s brave pundit corps is divided on the question.
But one thing is clear: In 2016, the relationship between the president and Congress could have a larger effect on the outcome than in any race since Harry Truman pulled out a surprise victory in 1948 running against a “do-nothing Congress” controlled by Republicans.
For all the talk of Republicans now having an obligation to govern, you’d have to be pretty naïve to think that the next two years are going to feature much besides bitter conflict between President Obama and the opposition. After years of debt ceiling crises, a government shutdown, and general rising contempt on both sides, and likely more of the same for the next two years, the Democratic candidate (and we’ll presume for now it will be Clinton) will have to talk a great deal about how she’ll deal with a Congress likely to be controlled by the other party after 2016.
In recent presidential elections, candidates have gotten away with a good degree of vagueness on this question, arguing simply that they’d reach across the aisle and transcend partisanship, because that’s what the American people want. And it is what a majority of the American people want (at least in the abstract), so the candidates who said that were rewarded: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all promised to be, in Bush’s phrase, uniters and not dividers. All of them would genuinely have liked to be uniters, but it didn’t work out that way.
Now think about the context in which the 2016 race will take place. For much of the last six years, the most aggressive Republican moves, like the dozens of Affordable Care Act vetoes, occurred in the House, and then died in the Senate. President Obama has vetoed only two bills in his entire presidency, fewer than any president since Millard Fillmore. Since Republicans took over in 2010, it’s been a story of simmering resentment punctuated by occasional crises (and one shutdown).
But in the new Congress, bills to directly attack the Obama agenda and legacy won’t founder in the purgatory of the Senate docket. Depending on how aggressively Democrats use the filibuster, they will pass both houses, and end up being vetoed by President Obama — a much more high-profile event. The news out of Washington will be a steady stream of direct, angry, and loud confrontations between the White House and a unified GOP Congress.
Unlike Obama in 2008, Bush in 2000, or Bill Clinton in 1992, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be running with her own party controlling Capitol Hill. Those candidates could say they’d reach out to the other party, but they and voters knew that if their overtures were rejected, they could still get things accomplished. But faced with the most conservative and obstructionist congressional Republicans in memory, Clinton won’t be able to wish the question away with lofty talk of sitting down to join hands and find common ground.
Clinton may choose to just run against Capitol Hill Republicans: My opponent and the do-nothing Congress are holding the country back, so elect me. But the fact that the conflict between Barack Obama and these Republicans is likely to be even more intense than it has been until now means that the question of how the next president deals with Congress could define the 2016 race.
Clinton can argue that a Republican president and a Republican Congress would be a terrifying combination, and some of us might believe she’s right. But if the only alternative is four more years of bitterness and gridlock, lots of voters could chose to give the GOP the chance to do its worst. If Clinton doesn’t already have a persuasive description of how she will govern if faced with a legislature controlled by Tea Partiers and Republicans afraid of Tea Partiers, who will fight her on every single thing she wants to do, Clinton sure ought to come up with one soon.
Huffington Post blog: Listen to Burns Strider Talk about the Midterms and Hillary Clinton
[Burns' portion begins at 16:58]
By Paul Brandeis Raushenbush
November 6, 2014, 9:36 a.m. EST
Welcome to this week’s ALL TOGETHER, the podcast dedicated to exploring how religious ideas and spiritual practice inform and shape our personal lives, our communities and our world. The show is hosted by Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, the Executive Editor of HuffPost Religion.
This weeks All Together investigates The Faith Factor In The 2014 Midterm Elections.
What a difference two years can make. In 2012, President Obama won every faith group in America aside from White Christians. The looks to be true for 2014, and yet White Evangelical voters appeared to have tipped the scale towards the GOP in important Senate and Governor races across the country.
What made the difference? Were voters convinced by the threat to religious freedom rhetoric? Did gay marriage factor in? What about the Jewish vote? And the growing nones? Or should politicians worry about the 'faith vote' at all?
To help me think through these questions I have assembled some veteran faith and politics academics, pollsters and political operators including Burns Strider, Hillary Clinton's Senior Advisor in 2008, Joshua Dubois, Head of President Obama's 2008 Campaign and the White House Faith and Community Partnerships, Mark Silk, Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, and Robert Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute
Politico: “'Dear Koch Brothers: We Aren't Going Anywhere'”
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Tarini Parti
November 7, 2014, 5:11 a.m. EST
Democrats are doubling down on their attacks against the Koch brothers.
Prompted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrats spent millions of dollars spotlighting Republican ties to the billionaire conservative megadonors Charles and David Koch. But despite Republicans — and some Democrats — publicly decrying the strategy after Tuesday’s GOP wave as an ineffective waste of money, Reid told allies on election night that he planned to continue hammering the brothers, according to an operative close to him.
And big-money liberal groups ranging from the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm and House super PAC to the outfits run by billionaire Tom Steyer and conservative-turned-liberal enforcer David Brock all signaled that they intended to pursue anti-Koch spending and oppo tactics headed into the 2016 election.
Brock’s American Bridge outfit on Thursday began circulating a memo to senior Democratic congressional aides and big money groups making the case for redoubling the effort to make the Kochs into boogeymen.
Titled “Dear Koch Brothers: We Aren’t Going Anywhere,” the memo, obtained by POLITICO from a source who received it, contends that the GOP takeover of the Senate makes it more important — and potentially more effective — to call attention to the Kochs’ influence in the GOP.
“This will be easier now that they are in power,” Brock wrote. Citing polling showing that the Kochs — who were relatively little known at the beginning of the midterms — became more disliked as attacks from his group and its allies escalated, Brock said, “Our efforts will continue, because the alternative — staying quiet as these secretive billionaires pour hundreds of millions into politics to further their own bottom line — is impossible. … We’re going to dig deeper into their business in states that are key to 2016 — at the presidential, Senate and gubernatorial levels.”
The Kochs in recent years have emerged as a leading force in American politics thanks to a network of affluent donors the brothers convened to fund a series of nonprofit advocacy groups. Now overseen by an umbrella outfit called Freedom Partners, the network, spearheaded by the aggressive group Americans for Prosperity, spent around $290 million during the midterms, playing a pivotal role in softening up vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators such as North Carolina’s Kay Hagan and Colorado’s Mark Udall with tough ads linking them to the unpopular President Barack Obama.
As the network’s spending soared, so too did liberal scrutiny of the brothers, with Reid assailing them on the Senate floor as “un-American” oil barons who are trying “to buy our democracy.” His repeated premeditated attacks on the Kochs emboldened Brock’s group and eventually others to pick up the beat. And Reid suggested to allies Tuesday night that his intended target may have been Republican politicians as opposed to voters. His thinking, according to an operative close to him is that, despite Democratic big money gains in 2014, the party will never be able to keep pace with the Kochs and other conservative donors, so making them toxic to Republican politicians is the best hope for tamping down the unlimited cash race.
Some liberals involved in the Koch attacks argue that the strategy may have helped win one Senate race — Democrat Gary Peters victory over Republican Terri Lynn Land in Michigan — and kept others close.
There could also be additional incentive to keep up the Koch attacks for American Bridge and other Democrat-aligned groups preparing for a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Not only is she is expected to come under fire from the Koch political network, but she has long shown a fascination with the funders of the conservative movement — and sources say that interest extends to the Kochs.
Yet continuing the anti-Koch crusade is sure to irk some Democratic politicians and consultants, who grumbled — mostly privately — that money spent on the strategy was a waste of valuable resources.
“It’s utterly ineffective. Elections have to be about voters and what candidates will do for them,” said Thomas Mills, a North Carolina-based Democratic strategist who has worked on Senate campaigns. “And this strategy is more about the candidates. It says, ‘Look at me! Help me — they are spending money against me.’ There’s no connection between that and voters.”
Mills, who called the strategists behind the strategy “fools,” had a front row seat to one of the highest profile examples of it — the costly ad campaigns to tar the state’s GOP Senate nominee, Thom Tillis, as a pawn of the brothers. Koch-backed groups had in fact spent millions attacking Tillis’ opponent, Hagan. While she accused the Kochs of trying to “buy this seat,” there’s not much evidence that her attacks or those of her big-money allies worked, and Tillis prevailed narrowly on Tuesday.
The Democratic focus on the billionaire industrialists simply didn’t resonate, asserted Rob Collins, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “It was a dumb debate; it was stupid,” he told reporters Thursday. “It didn’t move a voter.”
In fact, some Republicans believe the strategy may have backfired, including in the House race in which Democrats leaned most heavily on it — Rep. Nick Rahall’s unsuccessful reelection bid in West Virginia.
“The Democratic strategy in this race was completely off the mark,” said Andy Seré, campaign strategist for Evan Jenkins, the Republican state senator who defeated Rahall on Tuesday. “Evan Jenkins has been in the state Legislature for 18 years. By the very nature of that, you’ve got a million votes to work with. They didn’t use a single vote that Jenkins made on TV.”
Seré said the ads hurt Jenkins’ image among Democrats who support President Barack Obama, but those weren’t the voters they were targeting anyway. “What the Koch strategy inadvertently did is it polarized the race pretty quickly,” he said. “That was helpful, because we hadn’t done a lot of advertising yet, but we became pretty well-known and liked among Republicans and independents.”
Yet House Majority PAC, which spent about $2.2 million on the race and repeatedly tied Jenkins to the Kochs, has no plans to back down from targeting the brothers. The super PAC used the strategy in at least five other races to protect Democratic incumbents in 2014.
“I know Republicans are out there saying, ‘Oh, they wasted time and money on it,’” said Ali Lapp, executive director of House Majority PAC. “But they are saying that because they don’t want to make the Koch brothers uncomfortable with the attention. If the Koch brothers keep throwing millions at our candidates, I think we’re going to make sure people know where the money is coming from and what their agenda is.”
Steyer, the retired San Francisco hedge fund billionaire, sees the Kochs as a way to turn voters against Republicans who oppose his key issue — fighting climate change.
Steyer donated at least $67 million to a super PAC he created to elevate the issue, which lost most of the races in which it played. One notable exception was in Michigan, where it spent heavily on ads connecting the piles of petroleum coke contaminating the Detroit River area to the Koch brothers and Land.
Those ads worked, said Steyer’s political adviser Chris Lehane.
“As Michigan demonstrated, in an ecology where voters justifiably feel like they are not getting a fair shake, connecting the dots between a polluter a science-denier candidate and the specific harms being felt by a community is a powerful message,” Lehane said.
Brock’s group, which provided research on the Kochs’ connection to Land that was featured in ads against Land, said in its memo that “the Kochs were toxic to Terri Lynn Land.” The memo concedes “the anti-Koch campaign isn’t a silver bullet — no one ever said it was — but we know it has the potential to move races even if it’s only at the margins, which can make the difference between who holds the Senate or wins the White House.”
But James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners, said that overall the election results showed voters care more about policies than people who aren’t even on the ballot. “Rather than focusing on the issues concerning the American people, Harry Reid’s strategy was to attack job creators who spoke out against Reid and Obama’s failed liberal policies,” he said. “Voters said enough is enough — they’re more interested in solutions.”
Democrats who want to double down on the Koch strategy argue that 2014 is not a good measure for judging the effectiveness of the strategy.
If there was a mistake in targeting the Kochs this cycle, said Geoff Garin, a top Democratic pollster and chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential run, it was that Democrats did not go all out on the ads tying the billionaire brothers to Republican candidates.
“With the benefit of hindsight, if anything we took the foot off the gas pedal too quickly and moved on to other frames even though the Koch frame was proving to be an important one for voters,” Garin said. “If there’s any regret, it’s not that we did too much of the Koch ads, it’s that we did too little and didn’t do it for deeper into the campaign.”
It was the anti-Koch messaging that kept red-states Democrats competitive for months, said Justin Barasky, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, adding that it fired up the donor base and made it easier for them to attack the Republican candidates’ record. “Anytime you have a wave like this,” he said, “it masks a lot of what really went on.”
MSNBC: “RNC chair: I ‘hope we’re running against Hillary Clinton’”
By Alex Seitz-Wald
November 7, 2014, 12:13 p.m. EST
Republicans want to run against Hillary Clinton for president, the head of the party insisted Friday, laying out how the GOP is already planning to capitalize on their wins in 2014 to be ready to take on Clinton in 2016.
Speaking at a breakfast with reporters hosted by the The Christian Science Monitor in Washington, D.C., Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Republicans are keeping staff in key presidential swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Virginia, and explained how the GOP plans to avoid the “circus” of the 2012 nominating process.
The RNC is overhauling its rules to shorten the primary and caucus calendar, and reducing the number of debates, which numbered a whopping 23 in the 2012 cycle. “We’re taking it from a six month slice and dice fest to about weeks,” Priebus said. “We’re going to contain the process so we don’t end up with rogue debates that provide the temptation for candidates to break the rules.”
They’re also improving their voter mobilization efforts, which has traditionally been a strength for Democrats, he said, explaining that 2016’s “ground game” will have to be at least three times larger than in 2014. “I think we’ve got to be about perfect to win a national turnout vote in this country. I think Democrats can be good and win, we’ve got to be great,” he added.
Are Republicans worried about running against Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee? “I sure as heck hope we’re running against Hillary Clinton,” Priebus said.
Clinton allies have been trying to spin Tuesday night’s Democratic drubbing as a secret victory for Clinton, who will now have a clear villain to run against in the GOP-controlled Congress.
Nonsense, Priebus responded Friday. “If your job was to unify the party and raise a ton of money and get a ton of volunteers on the ground, I promise you, you would want no other opponent to run against than Hillary Clinton,” he said. Priebus also said voters rejected the Clintons when they rejected candidates endorsed by the Clintons.
Of course, that is exactly what a Republican leader would say, since it’s his job to project confidence and rally donors and activists. If the RNC were really so eager to take on Clinton, for instance, one might wonder why they bothered sending a staffer dressed as a squirrel to stalk the former secretary of state this summer.
Priebus said Tuesday’s wins were obviously very good for Republicans, but declined to say the party now had a mandate to govern. “I would call that a pretty sweeping victory, but whether it’s a mandate or not, that’s a different question,” he said.
Voters in Wisconsin, for instance, “accepted” conservative Republican ideas, Priebus said. “Perhaps embraced might be a little over the top.”
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Paul: Clinton distancing from Obama won't work”
By Peter Sullivan
November 7, 2014, 11:35 a.m. EST
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Friday that are not "many, if any" policies that Hillary Clinton and President Obama disagree on.
The comments could be a preview of a line of attack in the 2016 presidential race, if Paul faces Clinton.
"I think she is going to try to say 'Oh, I’m different than President Obama, he’s very unpopular, but I have different policies," Paul said on Fox News. "Well, she was part of his administration, and I really don’t know of many, if any, policies they disagree on."
It is an open question how far Clinton will try to distance herself from Obama. The main instance so far was an interview with The Atlantic in August, where she criticized Obama's Syria policy and "Don't do stupid stuff" mantra, but then walked back the comments after a backlash.
Paul has been trying to tie Clinton, who campaigned heavily for Democrats in the midterms, to the losses on election night, branding Democrats who lost "Hillary's losers."
"She is seen as the leader of their party and the potential leader in their nominating process," Paul said in the interview Friday.
"I think it’s a mistake to let someone—I’m not talking about whether I’m running—but to let someone run unopposed. And I think in the past we haven’t gone after the opposing party’s nominee to say who they are and what they represent."
As for whether he is running, Paul said, "I am thinking maybe, and we’re going to keep looking at it for the next six months or so."
He emphasized his efforts to attract African-Americans and mostly Democratic supporters to the Republican Party.
"We did a lot better on election night, but we still struggled in Michigan, we’re struggling in Pennsylvania, we’re struggling in California and New York," Paul said. "We have to change the demographic of who we attract and I think you only do that by bringing fresh, new ideas."
He pointed to the Republican gubernatorial winner on Tuesday in Illinois, Bruce Rauner, as winning with an emphasis on school choice, noting ideas like that could help Republicans in cities.
"I would dramatically lower the taxes in Detroit, a billion dollars, and that would be the stimulus for Detroit, and I don’t think Democrats really have anything to counteract that with, or really have shown much concern for those who live in Detroit," Paul said.