Is Giuliani a national candidate or a regional one?

December 26, 2006 – 12:03 pm

A couple of weeks ago, there was a theory floating around, perhaps started by Jonathan Martin at NRO and a couple of others, that Rudy Giuliani might not contest Iowa or New Hampshire. Now, since then, we have heard that Rudy is, indeed, staffing up in Iowa and New Hampshire. But does that make him a real candidate who could compete nationwide?

Here’s another theory. I’m not going to stand by it, but it is an option. Perhaps Rudy can’t break out of the Northeast plus West Coast. If Rudy is on the ballot in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, he almost certainly wins those primaries. New York and Connecticut are varieties of winner-take-all. That is, if you get the most votes, you get all the delegates (NY had 102 and CT 30 in 2004). Throw in Pennsylvania (75 delegates) and Maryland (39), whose soon-to-be-former Governor seems to like Rudy. The upshot is that Rudy, even in the worst case, could probably come into the convention with 200 or more delegates.

Now that’s not enough to win. But those votes come out of someone’s hide. Could he deny someone (say McCain?) enough votes to win the nomination outright? Then he could cut a deal (say, with Romney) to be Vice President. And as a candidate for Vice President, his suspected baggage can’t really damage him, or the ticket, much. And it sets him up to be President, if he has just a little bit more patience.

For this strategy to work, Giuliani would be a third candidate who would deprive the first-tier candidate of a majority, while the second-tier candidate fights on and comes a relatively close second. Sounds plausible in this environment.

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McCain Announces Finance Slots; Tries to Steal Giuliani’s Thunder

December 19, 2006 – 2:14 pm

Rudy Giuliani has a fundraiser tonight. What does John McCain do? Same thing he did at the RGA meeting. He tries to steal the news/blog cycle by announcing his NY Finance Committee. This morning, before the announcement, McCain got people talking about his fundraising machine ("nearly 7 of 10 Bush 2004 donors are Straight Talk American donors") in the Arizona Republic this morning. All the gossip today is about John McCain’s fundraising. The news stories tomorrow will be about Giuliani’s big New York fundraiser and McCain’s great NY finance list.

As I’ve said earlier, the McCain campaign is simply following the "bracketing" strategy that the Bush campaign used so effectively against Kerry in 2004. Wherever Kerry went, Bush or someone got there one day ahead, to steal the headlines.

This is very clever. But it also demonstrates a much more well-oiled campaign than, for example, the Romney guys, who for 2 or 3 weeks now have totally lost control of the image of their guy. (One Redstate writer even said, regarding Romney’s candidacy, that the word "clown came to mind.") They’ve been planning, and now they are executing. They do their announcements when they need to. And they ruin other people’s. That’s very sophisticated. And it is very organized. And they are doing it in December 2006 for a 2008 election. Not bad.

And it is clear that this is what McCain is doing. As Weaver was quoted to the New York Times:

Asked whether it was a coincidence that Mr. McCain was issuing his list the same day that Mr. Giuliani was holding his lay-down-your-marker fund-raiser, Mr. Weaver responded, “There are no coincidences in life, but I would guess this would be one.” He laughed.

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The Calendar, Compression, and who it favors

December 14, 2006 – 9:59 am

Jerome Armstrong, at myDD, and Kos have started to write on the primary calendar. They have both argued that, to some extent, it favors John McCain. Two points should be made.

First, it won’t be as compressed as it looks. There is strong evidence that New Hampshire will move up to January 7 on the principal that:

  1. The only primary or caucus that can proceed it is Iowa.
  2. They will 7 or may days in front of any other contest.
  3. They will skip Iowa if they have to
  4. They will be on a Tuesday

My understanding is that this is the public position of Bill Gardner, NH’s Secretary of State. And all that has to happen in NH to fix the day is Bill has to write a letter. That day would be Jan 7. And I don’t think that Bill Gardner cares what Howard Dean would do. The showdown at the DNC when the Credentials Committee strips New Hampshire of its delegates because of a 90% position in the electorate of NH would be amusing, to say the least. My understanding is that this is all conventional wisdom now in New Hampshire.

So what would Iowa do? Move up too. Not to December 31st or 24th, for obvious reasons. So…. The 17th? The 10th? Of December? 12 months away? Yup.

So my prediction is:

  1. Dec 17th for IA
  2. Jan 7th for NH
  3. Jan 28th for SC
  4. Feb 5th for everyone else

With a strong chance that Michigan tries to move up to the 28th.

Now on to the question of who this favors. If there’s 3 weeks between Iowa and New Hampshire and 3 weeks between New Hampshire and South Carolina (and no one else moves up) then an insurgent winner in IA could have a chance in NH and SC. But the wall on February 5th is hard to climb. It costs a lot to compete in Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, and New Jersey. Name ID will have to be purchased. And people on the ground now (or almost now) will matter. That puts a premium on money and organization now. That’s why poor insurgents like Sam Brownback and Newt Gingrich will shape the debate but it is still a 2 or 3 person race.

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Which GOP candidate is going to start attacking Bush?

December 9, 2006 – 8:36 am

The new Zogby poll has Bush’s approval at 30%, with only 60% of GOPers liking him. Is attacking Bush going to become a viable strategy in this primary? Clearly, people are already making points on spending, immigration, and other issues with which the base is unsatisfied with Bush. Where else is this going to go?

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What’s your winning coalition?

December 8, 2006 – 9:21 am

Last night, I had a wonderful conversation with some friends about what happened in the last election. One person’s position was that the Dems found a new coalition with some new votes (more youth) and some GOP votes (more of the suburbs). And the question that we were left with by the end of the evening was, What is the GOP’s majority coalition?

So I wake up and start reading articles and I find this one from Bloomberg which compares Romney and McCain:

While McCain, 70, has a maverick streak that appeals to independents and the kind of Democrats who used to support President Ronald Reagan, Romney, 59, aims to reconstitute President George W. Bush’s coalition. He wants to attract evangelical Christians with his support for a gay-marriage ban, and will try to lure economic conservatives with plans to overhaul health care and the tax system.

My hunch is that one of the lessons of the 2006 election is that the 1980-2006 and 1994-2006 coalitions don’t work any more and that we need new ones. I’d like to see a discussion inside the party about what that coalition is and what messages it will take to win. It is interesting that an article that is very pro-Romney makes the point that he is, in some cases, the candidate of yesterday. The only new thing that he brings to the table is his healthcare proposal, which may not fly well amongst Republicans who despise Medicare Part D as a new entitlement.

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Newt tries to ask, “Am I our next Reagan?”

December 4, 2006 – 8:17 am

After winning the Virginia Conservative Convention Straw Poll, Newt Gingrich did a fundraiser for the organization. Robert Bluey of the Human Events reported the event. At the event, Newt went on the attack against Bush:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich last night offered a grim outlook for the final two years of the Bush Administration, saying at best it would resemble President Gerald Ford’s administration and at worst President Jimmy Carter’s.

Those are choice examples for that crowd because the inevitable question is, "Who is our Ronald Reagan?". This question means different things to different people. I spent the weekend with a bunch of College Republican activists. For them, Reagan could communicate and inject hope. For the Romney backers in the crowd, "our new Reagan" was just that, even if he purports to be a moderate. For Human Events, Reagan was a conservative warrior. But everyone wants a Reagan. (interestingly, WaPo had an interesting comparison piece in which Bush is compared to Hoover. I think that there are important points about this comparison)

Of course, the real point is that Newt wants to run, but knows that he can neither raise the money nor buy into the staff. He would have to co-opt the conservative groups (who haven’t been purchased to wooed by Romney). BlogPI details some of the difficulties with this strategy. It probably depends on Newt performing well in straw polls over the next year, especially Ames. For example, Newt won the November GOP Bloggers Straw Poll (with Giuliani and Romney a close 2nd and 3rd)

Imagine if Newt comes in first at Ames or second behind someone unacceptable to the Conservative Movement. All of a sudden, he has a rationale for a candidacy. There are three catches:

  1. Romney or Brownback cannot capture the conservative base. I don’t believe that either one is possible. But if either one gets big enough or stays too small, the base gets fractured.
  2. McCain can’t capture enough to make it impossible. Once people buy into a candidate, it becomes very hard to get them to unbuy. And for these people, Newt will have to demonstrate that he is electable to get them to switch. We are not convinced about Newt’s electability at all. Indeed, a significant strategic goal is to duck the electability question entirely.
  3. How does Newt raise $100m between September and February to compete on February 5th? Newt would have to put together a finance team and that would look like a real campaign. This is where compression of the calendar kills Newt.

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What do big state calendar changes mean for NH?

November 27, 2006 – 2:26 pm

I recently wrote about the changes that big states changing their primary date will have in terms of increasing the amount of money required and thereby creating a higher barrier to entry. But there’s are several strategy points here.

First, the schedule for all practices purposes would be IA followed by big states. This would mean that IA would set the tone and establish the field. If NH is only 1 week before CA or FL, then most of the people in CA or FL will already have made up their minds by Wednesday or Thursday before their elections. Therefore NH won’t matter.

In terms of GOP politics, Mitt Romney — who I predict will win IA after spending 1 week there — will benefit from the schedule. But NH, which McCain will win, will want a role and Bill Gardner may yet change the schedule. Again, a similar dynamic may apply on the Democrat side, although I think that Hillary’s money advantage still becomes prohibitive.
Therefore, here’s a prediction: If CA and FL move up their primaries, then NH will move ahead of IA. You read it here first.

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The staff primary: Only McCain and Romney competing?

September 22, 2006 – 9:45 am

Our sense has been that there are three serious candidates right now — Giuliani, McCain, and Romney — and a couple more who hope to go somewhere — Huckabee, Gingrich, and others. However, right now, only McCain and Romney seem to be actively competing in this. In The Fix’s recent announcement of a big hire in IA for McCain, Cilizza makes this point:

As we’ve written previously on The Fix, New York Gov. George Pataki has impressed operatives in Iowa (and even signed on a few), but his team at the moment is no match for those of McCain and Romney.

Remember that the major fight right now among aspiring presidential candidates is for staff talent — specifically in key early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The more talent McCain and Romney are able to scoop up before the midterm elections, the more difficult it will be for any other Republican candidate to seriously compete with the two frontrunners in Iowa and beyond.

This is probably what Chuck Grassley meant when he said that Giuliani was not yet in campaign mode in IA. Now, GiulianiBlog has responded quite strongly to this whole line of argumentation. He argues, in essence, that all you need is issues, bio, and personality and organization doesn’t matter.

I think that’s a little strong. Operatives matter. Building a turnout operation matters. And having people vouch for you matters. That’s very clear.

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Frist using 2008 volunteers in 2006

August 31, 2006 – 10:07 am

Bill Frist tried to take a little credit for tracking down the missing holding Senator. Note how he praises his volunteers:

Led by sites like PorkBusters, TPM Muckraker, and GOP Progress, online activists across the political spectrum have worked to clear away the obstruction against this bill through hard work and the process of elimination. While the count is still climbing, they have publicly received a response from 89 Senators regarding the secret hold - and I’m proud to say that members of my online grassroots organization, the iFrist Volunteers, have made a major contribution to this effort in calling Senators and securing their promise they have not held up the bill, nor will they hold up the bill. The growing success of this effort perfectly demonstrates the value of the database that S. 2590 would create … because it proves that Americans with a passion for citizen journalism and empowered by technology can cooperate across party lines to make a real difference.

This is a big deal. He is trying to use his volunteer organization now to help his future candidacy. (Does anyone take that candidacy seriously??) Now why is this useful?

Hotlineblog said that it is a way to “train” volunteers for 2008. I think that it is as much about using the tool to identify and reward volunteers (and maybe turn them into campaign staff). They address this more directly in their comparison of MyGOP to the DNC’s PartyBuilder:

Most important is to check out how each party gathers information about the user. The RNC has different logins for different features, such as the blog, personal homepage and volunteer recruitment center. It’s a model for different levels of engagement and getting lots of names without shoving committment into a user’s face — and typically getting a larger drop-off rate in return. The DNC takes a different approach. By singing up with Party Builder, the DNC gets basic information in the login and then collects information through the user’s profile, signed petitions, signed letters to the editor and their network/group memberships. So why do we care? These users are the party’s next loyal supporter and volunteer. And how much information the parties have on these folk will determine the strength of their online activism in ‘06 and ‘08, which is conveniently transferable to field staffs across the country.

(just to make it clear, the RNC gets this information, just differently) And that is why iFrist is so interesting. He is both getting mileage out of his volunteer base now, keeping them engaged (got a volunteer, give them something to do!), and figuring out which ones deliver and need to be promoted within the campaign. That’s very smart.

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Motivating Conservatives, Security, and the 2008 Presidential Race

August 29, 2006 – 9:56 am

RightwingNews has (yet) another summary of the case againset Giuliani for the conservative GOP primary electorate.

While we agree that there are many things that are damning in the eyes of the electorate, we think that, to some extent, people are asking the wrong questions. I think that Chuck Larson gets it right in his discussion of McCain on Fox yesterday:

But from my perspective, the most important issue, whether it’s 2006 or 2008, is going to be national security and the global War on Terror. And Sen. McCain recognizes that we must win this war for our own nation’s security.

Now Larson is one of the leaders of moral conservatives in Iowa, but in the 3 reasons he gives for supporting McCain, his first is fiscal, his second in moral issues, but he thinks that McCain’s primary advantage is the war and security. This jives with what the RNC is telling people about motivating the base in 2006:

Ranking at the top of what will motivate Republicans in 2006 is dealing with the foreign threats to our national security and supporting the President’s leadership in the War on Terror. … A huge 87% of the Base expresses extremely strong feelings about one or more of these issues. …

For these three global War on Terror message areas, 93% of the Republican Base holds
extremely strong feelings about one or more of them.

Cultural Values. … An impressive 86% of the Base has extremely strong feelings about issues dealing with cultural issues – second in coverage to only the global War on Terror.

In other words, the big issues are security and moral issues. Fiscal issues, immigration, taxes, etc. all come far lower in the priorities. (interestingly, the RNC memo does not mention immigration at all. There could be a number of explanations for that. One of the simplest is that it is an issue that the leadership is divided on or might make voters angry. Another is that people probably won’t vote on it)
What we really think that means is that candidates have to pass a litmus test for conservatives (is he with us on abortion and other issues?) and then security and other issues will differentiate the candidates. Moral issues get people into consideration, not pick the candidate. We think that the recent Hotline/Diego poll makes this clear. GOPers #1 issues are terrorism and Iraq. Dems are Iraq (against) and jobs.

Therefore, we think that GOP primary voters are going to be asking “Which acceptable conservative do we want to lead the war on terror?” What does this mean for 08?

  1. If caucusgoers and primary voters are informed about Giuliani, he is going to struggle a lot. Giuliani has been doing great in the polls recently. However, the recent Iowa poll noted that 2/3rds of Iowa caucus voters will not support someone who doesn’t share their position on abortion. Will that hold? And who will tell the story on Giuliani? Clearly that is what RightWingNews is trying to do. And why don’t people ask if they are familar with Giuliani’s position on abortion, gay marriage, etc.? That would really tell us about his level of support.
  2. Romney’s greatest problem is that he has no record on the War on Terror or foreign policy. None. Even if people like him on gay marriage or healthcare or management, I predict that they will have a lot of trouble seeing him as Commander in Chief. Sure he can run the country, but can he lead it? Northeast liberals elect Republicans because they can manage and their legislatures can slap them down if they try to do something too far off the reservation.
  3. Newt Gingrich passes both tests. But will GOP voters think he is electable?
  4. McCain is the winner in this framing. He is probably acceptable to most conservatives (and he is finding people who will say “trust us, he’s fine”) on moral issues and he is a clear leader on the War (and I don’t mean Iraq).
  5. Everyone else is an also ran. Although people who vote for the most morally conservative candidate will have a choice between Huckabee or Brownback. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Therefore, until Romney gets a national security reputation of some sort or polls indicate that Giuliani can overcome his issues with social conservatives, McCain really is the front runner… And Newt Gingrich is the powerful challenger.

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