Tag Archives: campaign

Judging Presidential Campaigns

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

No campaign for President is a straight line upward. Some campaigns are a flat line; some are a straight line down, but no Republican in a contested cycle has ever run the table.

Didn’t happen in 2012, either.

There is a theory in politics that the proper time to judge a campaign isn’t when everything is going well. The time to judge a campaign is how they recover from a stumble.

Ok. That’s not really a widely held theory, but I say it all the time and I think it’s true.

Last week Mitt Romney got skunked in South Carolina by Newt Gingrich. Over the course of five days and two debates Gingrich returned a punt, a fumble, and an interception, scored on a safety and pinned Obama deep in his own territory – everything an opposing candidate could have done within the football metaphors of Superbowl week. Continue reading →

Polls, Pundits, and Prognostications

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I understand that national polls traditionally haven’t meant much, because voters in California and Missouri are not going to their local fire stations and high school cafeterias two weeks from tomorrow to vote in the Iowa caucuses.

But, with the advent of social media and the enormous attention being paid to the debates, the ebb and flow of support for one or another of the GOP candidates in national polls can’t help but have an effect on voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and the other early states.

SIDEBAR

We’ve long since memorized the primaries that will be held in January. It’s time to begin committing to memory February’s contests:

Feb 4 Nevada (Caucus)
Feb 4-11 Maine (Caucus)
Feb 7 Colorado (Caucus)
Feb 7 Minnesota (Caucus)
Feb 28 Arizona (Primary)
Feb 28 Michigan (Primary)

END SIDEBAR

The biggest effect good national poll numbers is on fundraising. Donors in New York and California don’t typically decide on which campaign to support solely based on how they’re doing in Iowa or South Carolina, but in large part how they’re doing in polls reported by Gallup and the Associated Press. Continue reading →

Negative Ads

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

We are at the point in the Presidential election cycle when the campaigns – and their allies – begin to run negative ads.

Everyone hates negative ads. Candidate after candidate vows he or she will “never go negative.” Supporters – especially donors – vow to leave the campaign if negative ads are even discussed, much less produced and put on TV.

Yet … yet … negative ads are a part of almost every campaign.

Mentor and friend Ed Rollins was a pretty fair Golden Gloves boxer when he was young. He has approached campaigns like he would a fight: You have to be prepared to throw a punch, take a punch, and throw a counter-punch. If you didn’t have the stomach for that, become a CPA, not a candidate for public office.

One of the first consultants I worked for was named Paul Newman. True.

Paul warned candidates that there would probably come a time when he would recommend the campaign – as he put it – “turn mother’s picture to the wall” and flay the skin off the opponent. Continue reading →

Referendum on Obama: One-Term President

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The political geniuses around President Barack Obama have a problem: they do not – DO NOT – want this election to be a referendum on the President.

And, for good reason. According to the three-day Gallup tracking poll, Obama’s job approval is back down to 41 percent. Two months ago his approval bottomed at 38 percent, but he has not been at 50 percent job approval since May.

Gallup goes on to compare Obama’s dismal performance rating with his predecessors. In December of their third year in office here’s where they were:

— Eisenhower (1955) 75%
— Nixon (1971) 50%
— Carter (1979) 53%
— Reagan (1983) 54%
— HW Bush (1991) 51%
— Clinton (1995) 51%
— W Bush (2003) 58%

No elected President in the past half-century has entered his re-election year underwater in approval. Let’s look at how the Obama campaign has chosen to shore up these numbers. Continue reading →

On Upton: Left Not Right; Right is Wrong

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Energy and Commerce Committee chairman and Super Committee member Fred Upton of Michigan must be doing something right. He’s being criticized by both right and left wings of America’s political ideology.

The Left Wing, particularly environmental organizations, believes Chairman Upton poses a threat to the radicalized environmental agenda that emerged following the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Upton has aimed the Committee’s big guns on the regulatory excesses of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is attempting to implement the new agenda without bothering to run things past the Congress.

Continue reading →

Questioning the Capacity to Lead

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

On November 6 next year – 52 weeks from tomorrow – those of us who haven’t availed ourselves of early voting, absentee voting, mail-in voting or some other form of not standing in line on election day will, in fact, be stepping into a voting booth to vote for President and Congress and for about a third of the population, for U.S. Senator.

For those of us who do this for a living, we will spend the next 12 months trying to tease out who is ahead, who’s behind and why. This process is easier when we are into the finals; when we know who the Republican candidate will be to run against President Obama.

While the popular press thinks the muddled GOP results are good for Obama, I think they are wrong. We’ll get back to that later.

The most recent poll was the ABC News/Washington Post poll which shows Romney about two percentage points ahead of Cain (25-23). That poll was, as we say, “in the field” from last Monday through last Wednesday meaning the Cain story had broken and was on everyone’s lips in between sips of coffee. Continue reading →

Cainsian Politics

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I haven’t got a clue what happened or didn’t happen while Herman Cain was CEO of the National Restaurant Association. There appear to be fewer than a dozen people – the two women and their lawyers, the general counsel and whoever produced the paperwork at the association, the people who wrote and signed the checks, and Herman Cain – who do know, and as of this writing none of them are talking. So, let’s put aside what, if anything, Cain did wrong.

But, I do know a lot about Combat Campaign Communications.

There is a saying in Washington: It’s not the crime; it’s the cover up. Even if there is no crime, shifting explanations make it look like the accused is putting up a smokescreen. The media will always gravitate to the conclusion that where there’s smoke …

The first mistake the Cain campaign made was responding to the original story on the Politico.com website at shortly after 9 PM Sunday. The Twitter-verse exploded within seconds. The Associated Press referred to the Politico story about 45 minutes later.

Rule: There is no Constitutional requirement for a campaign to respond to a reporter’s request, plea, demand, or appeal for a comment.

“But, I’m on DEADLINE!” ≠ a subpoena from a U.S. Attorney. Continue reading →

Jobs Plan Balderdash

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Some years ago, a politician in West Virginia hired a very savvy political professional to write strategic plan for him to run for Congress. The professional burned the midnight oil and produced a comprehensive, 60-page roadmap to Capitol Hill. 

She presented it and waited while the prospective candidate began reading:  “OBJECTIVE: TO WIN ELECTION TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS.”

The candidate lookup up from manuscript and said he had a problem with the first line. He really had no interest in serving in Congress, he wanted to set himself up to run for governor and thought running for Congress would be a good stepping stone.

I was reminded of that story September 7,when President Barack Obama appeared before joint session of Congress and demanded–seventeen times, no less—that the legislators pass his latest job-creation program. Why?

President Obama’s speech was a hoax. His objective that night was not congressional approval of his jobs agenda. He was really setting the stage for his re-election in 2012.  Continue reading →