GOP Already Practicing Finger Pointing for 2012 Blame Games.
Senate Forecast: What Has Gone Wrong for G.O.P. Candidates?
The trend in the presidential race has been difficult to discern lately. President Obama has very probably gained ground since the conventions, but it’s hard to say exactly how much, and how quickly his bounce is eroding.
There are no such ambiguities in the race for control of the Senate, however. Polls show key races shifting decisively toward the Democrats, with the Republican position deteriorating almost by the day.
Since we published our initial Senate forecast on Tuesday, Republicans have seen an additional decline in their standing in two major races.
Two polls of Virginia published on Wednesday gave the Democrat, the former Gov. Tim Kaine, leads of 4 and 7 percentage points over the Republican, the former Senator George Allen. The FiveThirtyEight forecast model now gives Mr. Kaine roughly a 75 percent chance of winning the seat on the strength of the new polls, up from about 60 percent in Tuesday’s forecast.
The other problematic state for Republicans is Wisconsin, where their candidate, the former Gov. Tommy Thompson, had once appeared to hold the advantage.
Mr. Thompson’s Democratic opponent, Representative Tammy Baldwin, had published an internal poll earlier this week showing her pulling into the lead. The FiveThirtyEight Senate and presidential forecasts do not use internal polls released directly by the campaigns, as they typically exaggerate their candidate’s standing.
However, in this case, public polls have now confirmed that the race seems to have shifted. A poll by The New York Times, CBS News and Quinnipiac University showed Mrs. Baldwin having drawn into a tie with Mr. Thompson, after trailing him by 6 percentage points last month.
A Marquette University poll, also published on Wednesday, showed a much sharper reversal, with Mrs. Baldwin going from a 9-point deficit to a 9-point lead. The Marquette poll appears to be a bit of an outlier - it also had Mr. Obama leading in the presidential race in Wisconsin by a 14-point margin, a somewhat implausible figure. Nonetheless, the model now has Mrs. Baldwin as the slight favorite, with about a 60 percent chance of winning.
It would be only a modest exaggeration to say that it’s been hard to find any strong Senate polls for Republicans in the past two or three weeks. Wednesday also brought bad news for Republicans in Massachusetts, where a fourth consecutive poll showed the Democrat Elizabeth Warren ahead of Senator Scott Brown; in Connecticut, where a poll gave the Democrat Chris Murphy a slight advantage over their candidate, Linda McMahon; and in Florida, where a Fox News poll gave the Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson a 14-point lead.
One exception has been in Maine, where two new polls on Wednesday showed a deterioration in the standing of the independent Angus King, who would probably caucus with the Democrats, at the expense of both the Republican, Secretary of State Charles Summers, and the Democrat, State Senator Cynthia Dill. The model now gives Mr. King an 84 percent chance of winning, Mr. Summers 11 percent, and Mrs. Dill 5 percent.
But this is small compensation for the decline over the past two weeks of the Republicans’ position in Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio, all of which have broken sharply to the Democrats.
The Democrats’ chances of controlling the Senate have increased to 79 percent in the forecast, up from 70 percent on Tuesday.
Had we run the model a month ago, based on polls through Aug. 19, the Democrats’ chances of maintaining Senate control would have been listed at just 39 percent.
The velocity of the change is unusual. Although Senate races in different parts of the country can sometimes move in the same direction, there was never quite this rapid a shift in our Senate forecasts in 2008 or 2010.
The forecast model is not doing anything particularly fancy; it’s just that an overwhelming number of Senate polls recently have shown the Democratic candidates’ standing improving.
Republicans could also have some reason to be concerned about Nevada, which has not been polled recently but where their candidate, the appointed Senator Dean Heller, maintains a slight advantage over the Democratic Representative Shelley Berkeley. Mr. Heller is a fairly strong candidate, but if there is some sort of national tide against Republicans, he could become the underdog in that race as well.
There’s one comforting thought for Republicans, however. It’s plausible that at least some of the Democrats’ gains reflect a boost from their convention, which could wear off. I have not studied whether conventions produce bounces in Congressional races and the model makes no assumptions about it, but it is a reasonable hypothesis.
However, at least some of the shift appeared to predate the conventions. The model would have had Democrats’ chances of retaining the Senate improving to 50 percent from 39 percent over the course of the week beginning Aug. 19, before the Republican convention started.
I can think of two major theories to explain why the shift is occurring, one focused on Mitt Romney, and another on the overall positioning of the Republican brand.
Theory No. 1: Is Romney a Downballot Drag?
Polls show that Mr. Romney has middling personal favorability ratings but that many voters will choose him anyway because of the deteriorating economy.
Senate races, however, are less dictated by national economic conditions. Instead, they often turn more on the strengths and weaknesses of the individual candidates, and then by their stances on fiscal and social policy.
Mr. Romney has not dictated much in the way of detailed programs in these areas, and some of the policy stances that he has articulated are unpopular.
Mr. Romney has also been less able to campaign effectively against an unpopular Democratic initiative, the Democrats’ health care bill, because he passed a similar bill as governor of Massachusetts.
Finally, some voters who disapprove of Mr. Obama, but who also have lukewarm feelings toward Mr. Romney, might lean toward voting Democrat for Senate in effort to ensure divided government, especially since Republicans also have control of the House.
Theory No. 2: G.O.P. Conservatism Is Hurting
An alternative hypothesis is that the shift has to do with overall perceptions of the Republican platform.
Our research has shown that statistical measures of candidate ideology are a reasonably powerful predictor of the outcome of Senate races, with candidates who are rated as holding “extreme” views performing poorly.
But in practice, ideology is in large part perceptual for voters, and may depend on which issues seem most salient at any given time.
August, at which point the shift toward Democrats in Senate races appeared to begin, was dominated by two major news items: Mr. Romney’s selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate, who has very conservative views on fiscal policy, and by the comments about rape made by the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, Todd Akin, which may have reinforced the idea that Republicans hold very conservative positions on social issues.
These factors may have made it harder for Republicans to position themselves toward the ideological center. And in several states, including Missouri, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, Republicans nominated sub-optimally conservative candidates.
More moderate Republican candidates, like Mr. Brown of Massachusetts and Mrs. McMahon of Connecticut, have increasingly sought to distance themselves from the national Republican brand, and sometimes also from the Republican presidential ticket.
Some of these theories are speculative, to be sure. A large number of Senate races remain in play: of the several states in which there has been a shift against Republicans in the polls in recent weeks, perhaps only Florida seems completely lost.
But if the trend continues, the question may no longer be whether Republicans can win the Senate - but how vulnerable they are to losing the House.
Mitt Romney's Incredible Shrinking Coattails
Republican nominee Mitt Romney's turbulent few weeks underscore a new reality for embattled Congressional Republicans: They might be on their own in November.
The presidential race is far from over; fewer than 50 days remain before the election, and Democrats and Republicans still expect a competitive race. But as polls show President Barack Obama's lead strengthening in key states, GOP campaigns cannot count on a strong Romney performance to put them over the top. Republicans seeking re-election increasingly view their races in a vacuum, or at least they hope that's the case.
"I just don't think that any of our Members are tied to Romney at all," said a top House GOP aide who requested anonymity to speak freely. "They just don't connect the person to Romney, and that's good for us."
The stakes are especially high in the Senate, where Republicans must win a net of four seats to take control of the chamber if Obama wins re-election. But a trio of recent polls in three battleground states show Senate candidates often tied with Romney - and trailing Democratic opponents.
In Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) led state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) by 7 points in an NBC News/Marist poll out last week. That survey showed Obama holding the same margin over Romney in the Buckeye State.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) cited Mandel's own polling when asked how Romney's standing would affect the race.
"Josh's numbers are better," Portman said, citing improvement since the start of the race. "He's gone from 20 points down, to 10 points down, to 5 points down, to some polls showing him in a dead heat."
But in competitive Virginia, former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) led former Sen. George Allen (R) by 8 points in a Washington Post poll released Wednesday. Obama led Romney by that same margin in the survey.
In Wisconsin, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) and former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) were tied in a CBS News/Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Obama led Romney by 6 points in that survey.
"If it's a close election, that means we can do what we need to do," one top Senate Republican aide said. "If it's not a close election, that obviously won't be helpful."
Even in Massachusetts, where Sen. Scott Brown (R) faces a tough re-election bid against Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren (D), the presidential race is a factor. Brown was one of the first Republicans to distance himself from Romney's recently revealed comments from a fundraiser.
"We're two different people, obviously, and people recognize that," Brown said Wednesday. "I know she'd like to run against Mitt Romney, but she's running against me."
To be clear, Republicans hold advantages in Senate races where the presidential campaign is not as much of a major factor: Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota. But victories in battleground states would offset any GOP losses in Maine and Massachusetts and could mean the difference between the majority and minority in the Senate.
It's a different story in the House. Republicans controlled the redistricting process in most key states last year, solidifying large gains they made in 2010. As a result, House candidates are not as vulnerable to Romney's potentially disappearing coattails.
"I think that it is possible there is a big cement truck that's just unloaded on downballot races," said Brad Todd, a veteran Republican consultant. "I think we may be seeing the Congressional races hardening much earlier than we ever have before. I'm seeing far less undecided in Congressional races than I ever have in September."
House Democrats pounded away at Republicans for Romney's comments this week. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraised off of Romney's political woes, warning potential donors that super PACs would transfer presidential race resources to the House.
House Republicans kept silent for the most part, waiting out the media firestorm.
"Everybody has to run their own campaign," said businessman Jason Plummer, a Republican nominee locked in a tough race for retiring Rep. Jerry Costello's (D-Ill.) seat, on a Wednesday conference call with reporters. "We're running a very aggressive race based on jobs."
On the flip side, House Democrats have dealt with a downballot back draft for months in some districts. Republican redraws forced Democrats such as Reps. Mark Critz (Pa.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.) and John Barrow (Ga.) to seek re-election in conservative districts. As a result, the trio has been running against the Obama administration since before the ink dried on the maps of their new districts.
Most projections show House Republicans on track to keep their majority in the next Congress. Redistricting shrunk the playing field to a few dozen seats. It's a change from the past three volatile cycles in Congress, when as many as 100 seats were in play.
But history shows it's more common for Congress to experience minimal change in a cycle when the president is up for re-election. In 2004, Republicans picked up a net of four Senate seats and three House seats. In 1996, Republicans picked up two Senate seats but lost nine House seats. In 1992, Republicans picked up 10 House seats and broke even in the Senate.
"Coattails generally happen [in a] regime-change election, when you're switching from one party to the other, not when presidents are re-elected," said former Rep. Tom Davis (Va.), an ex-National Republican Congressional Committee chairman.
The Coming War Within the Republican Party
GOP wise men are rushing forward with Romney post-mortems. Never a good sign.
After the presidential campaign ends, think tanks and universities will invite wise partisans to explain why their party lost and how to rebound. Some Republicans are already working on their talking points.
A pattern has emerged in my conversations with GOP campaign veterans over the last 10 days. Here is how these conversations usually go. First, these Republicans defend Romney. Then, they point out that it's hard to beat an incumbent president, sigh that the press is in the tank for Obama, and point out that the polls are a lot closer than the chattering class makes it seem (Please see Gallup: Obama’s bounce is gone). Romney might still pull it out, they say, if he can just connect with voters or tell a better story. But then the conversation inevitably turns to the “big talk” that's going to come after the election: What's the Republican Party going to look like in the future? If Romney loses, the party’s leaders must change their ways to be in sync with the modern electorate.
Caveat: If the opinions of political operatives and campaign partisans were always solid, Chris Christie would have run for president, Hillary Clinton would have traded jobs with Joe Biden, and the GOP would have had a brokered convention. So, this preliminary conversation about the fissures in the Republican Party might be just the idle chatter of people not intimately involved in the Romney game plan. But there comes a moment when these conversations break out into the open and then a campaign can’t ignore them. The locker-room chatter runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's harder for a candidate to win an election when, months ahead of time, his party's smart people are having a public discussion about the post-election period in which he has already lost.
In addition to my reporting, there are now some public signs. David Brooks offered a withering critique of Romney in a column today that ends with what feels like a post-election analysis seven weeks before the election. "He’s a kind, decent man who says stupid things because he is pretending to be something he is not-some sort of cartoonish government-hater. But it scarcely matters. He’s running a depressingly inept presidential campaign." In a piece for Politico today, the former GOP chairman Haley Barbour already sounds like he's offering post-game analysis. “In the future, and not distant future, Republicans have to come to grips with the right policy on immigration," says Barbour. Bill Kristol also appears to be in the mood to offer final words on this campaign: "Has there been a presidential race in modern times featuring two candidates who have done so little over their lifetimes for our country, and who have so little substance to say about the future of our country?" (He is apparently not yet buying the Romney campaign’s move to specificity).
Why on earth would any self-respecting Republican rush to make definitive claims about Romney when a president with a weak record can still be turned out of office? Presumably the people making these claims care about the future of the conservative movement. There is a first-mover's advantage to getting your theory out fast so that your ideas can help shape the post-election debate. If you want your theory to become conventional wisdom, act now! But anyone who wants to stand up and make a bold claim has to engage in a balancing act: You want to be quick enough to have the stage to yourself, but not too quick so that it looks like you are being opportunistic. It’s like criticizing a sitting president too early during a foreign-policy crisis: criticizing your own party should start at the election’s edge.
You might be saying, these columnists don't speak for me. You might call them Washington conservatives and point out, as several people not stricken with Potomac Fever have said to me, that this tentative heading for the exits is symptomatic of the timidity that has caused confusion in the party. That feeling is honest and part of the debate. It’s likely to make you want to speak up to claim your view of where the conservative movement should go next before these insiders get too many free minutes at the microphone. That is how the debate gets started. Meanwhile, the race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama is forgotten, which isn’t good news for Gov. Romney.
The rough contours of this conversation about the party’s future center on whether the party’s tone on immigration and the role of government have gotten out of sync with the electorate. Grassroots activists will argue that Romney was a compromise candidate who could never articulate the anti-government case for freedom and that’s why he’s having a hard time. (That is the argument Rick Santorum made during the primaries.) Others will argue that the Tea Party pushed Romney-as it will every candidate-into ever-more absolutist positions on immigration and the role of government.
The majority of the country believes the government does too much. So there the Republicans should have the winning argument. But not when its candidate frames 47 percent of the electorate as moochers and victims. When the party of lower taxes is arguing that taxes should be increased on some people, it might be a moment to call a timeout and get everyone to agree on the playbook. Is this Mitt Romney’s fault or did the party make him do it? Perhaps the discussion should move to the auditorium.
Immigration is the topic that comes up most often in these conversations about a hypothetical post-election debate. That’s because there is a direct relationship between the party’s ideas and vision and the demographic changes Republicans will face in a country that is getting less white. Some people, like strategist Mike Murphy, have been arguing this point for a while. “Republicans, including Romney, hurt themselves among Hispanic votes in the primary this year,” Barbour told Politico, arguing that not only did the issue hurt Romney in states like Nevada and Florida, but it gave the president an issue he could exploit. A veteran of George W. Bush’s campaigns argued to me recently that the Republican Party will have to go back to the campaign of 2000 to find the last time it spoke with an optimistic voice to Hispanics voters.
There is already a meta-debate about the nature of the conservative debate itself. Brooks’ article has now sparked a fight over whether a conservative is allowed to call himself a conservative when he is in disagreement with the Republican candidate for president. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Warren compiles a list of conservatives who disagree with Romney’s remarks about the supposed 47 percent who favor Obama, and Erick Erickson pushes back with his own list showing that conservatives agree with him (though many of the listed pieces simply say Romney’s “47 percent” remark won’t hurt him, which is different than agreeing with Romney).* The National Review’s Michael Walsh backhands Brooks and the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher weighs in defending Brooks. These are not specific debates about the future of the party, but the speed with which these voices came forward and then chose a camp is a sign of the unresolved tensions inside the GOP. And that is what gives energy to those conversations about the future of the party.
Any successful campaign weathers the moment when the wise people pipe up to say the candidate is doing it wrong. That was the signature trait of the Obama 2008 campaign. But there is also a pattern to decline. Negative chatter from your own party builds and leads to finger-pointing, which leads to early verdicts, which leads to a debate about the future long before Election Day. The Romney campaign has already experienced the first two stages of this cycle. It’s one more reason why he has to show that his campaign is alive and kicking. It’s the only way to dispel the post-mortems.
The trend in the presidential race has been difficult to discern lately. President Obama has very probably gained ground since the conventions, but it’s hard to say exactly how much, and how quickly his bounce is eroding.
There are no such ambiguities in the race for control of the Senate, however. Polls show key races shifting decisively toward the Democrats, with the Republican position deteriorating almost by the day.
Since we published our initial Senate forecast on Tuesday, Republicans have seen an additional decline in their standing in two major races.
Two polls of Virginia published on Wednesday gave the Democrat, the former Gov. Tim Kaine, leads of 4 and 7 percentage points over the Republican, the former Senator George Allen. The FiveThirtyEight forecast model now gives Mr. Kaine roughly a 75 percent chance of winning the seat on the strength of the new polls, up from about 60 percent in Tuesday’s forecast.
The other problematic state for Republicans is Wisconsin, where their candidate, the former Gov. Tommy Thompson, had once appeared to hold the advantage.
Mr. Thompson’s Democratic opponent, Representative Tammy Baldwin, had published an internal poll earlier this week showing her pulling into the lead. The FiveThirtyEight Senate and presidential forecasts do not use internal polls released directly by the campaigns, as they typically exaggerate their candidate’s standing.
However, in this case, public polls have now confirmed that the race seems to have shifted. A poll by The New York Times, CBS News and Quinnipiac University showed Mrs. Baldwin having drawn into a tie with Mr. Thompson, after trailing him by 6 percentage points last month.
A Marquette University poll, also published on Wednesday, showed a much sharper reversal, with Mrs. Baldwin going from a 9-point deficit to a 9-point lead. The Marquette poll appears to be a bit of an outlier - it also had Mr. Obama leading in the presidential race in Wisconsin by a 14-point margin, a somewhat implausible figure. Nonetheless, the model now has Mrs. Baldwin as the slight favorite, with about a 60 percent chance of winning.
It would be only a modest exaggeration to say that it’s been hard to find any strong Senate polls for Republicans in the past two or three weeks. Wednesday also brought bad news for Republicans in Massachusetts, where a fourth consecutive poll showed the Democrat Elizabeth Warren ahead of Senator Scott Brown; in Connecticut, where a poll gave the Democrat Chris Murphy a slight advantage over their candidate, Linda McMahon; and in Florida, where a Fox News poll gave the Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson a 14-point lead.
One exception has been in Maine, where two new polls on Wednesday showed a deterioration in the standing of the independent Angus King, who would probably caucus with the Democrats, at the expense of both the Republican, Secretary of State Charles Summers, and the Democrat, State Senator Cynthia Dill. The model now gives Mr. King an 84 percent chance of winning, Mr. Summers 11 percent, and Mrs. Dill 5 percent.
But this is small compensation for the decline over the past two weeks of the Republicans’ position in Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio, all of which have broken sharply to the Democrats.
The Democrats’ chances of controlling the Senate have increased to 79 percent in the forecast, up from 70 percent on Tuesday.
Had we run the model a month ago, based on polls through Aug. 19, the Democrats’ chances of maintaining Senate control would have been listed at just 39 percent.
The velocity of the change is unusual. Although Senate races in different parts of the country can sometimes move in the same direction, there was never quite this rapid a shift in our Senate forecasts in 2008 or 2010.
The forecast model is not doing anything particularly fancy; it’s just that an overwhelming number of Senate polls recently have shown the Democratic candidates’ standing improving.
Republicans could also have some reason to be concerned about Nevada, which has not been polled recently but where their candidate, the appointed Senator Dean Heller, maintains a slight advantage over the Democratic Representative Shelley Berkeley. Mr. Heller is a fairly strong candidate, but if there is some sort of national tide against Republicans, he could become the underdog in that race as well.
There’s one comforting thought for Republicans, however. It’s plausible that at least some of the Democrats’ gains reflect a boost from their convention, which could wear off. I have not studied whether conventions produce bounces in Congressional races and the model makes no assumptions about it, but it is a reasonable hypothesis.
However, at least some of the shift appeared to predate the conventions. The model would have had Democrats’ chances of retaining the Senate improving to 50 percent from 39 percent over the course of the week beginning Aug. 19, before the Republican convention started.
I can think of two major theories to explain why the shift is occurring, one focused on Mitt Romney, and another on the overall positioning of the Republican brand.
Theory No. 1: Is Romney a Downballot Drag?
Polls show that Mr. Romney has middling personal favorability ratings but that many voters will choose him anyway because of the deteriorating economy.
Senate races, however, are less dictated by national economic conditions. Instead, they often turn more on the strengths and weaknesses of the individual candidates, and then by their stances on fiscal and social policy.
Mr. Romney has not dictated much in the way of detailed programs in these areas, and some of the policy stances that he has articulated are unpopular.
Mr. Romney has also been less able to campaign effectively against an unpopular Democratic initiative, the Democrats’ health care bill, because he passed a similar bill as governor of Massachusetts.
Finally, some voters who disapprove of Mr. Obama, but who also have lukewarm feelings toward Mr. Romney, might lean toward voting Democrat for Senate in effort to ensure divided government, especially since Republicans also have control of the House.
Theory No. 2: G.O.P. Conservatism Is Hurting
An alternative hypothesis is that the shift has to do with overall perceptions of the Republican platform.
Our research has shown that statistical measures of candidate ideology are a reasonably powerful predictor of the outcome of Senate races, with candidates who are rated as holding “extreme” views performing poorly.
But in practice, ideology is in large part perceptual for voters, and may depend on which issues seem most salient at any given time.
August, at which point the shift toward Democrats in Senate races appeared to begin, was dominated by two major news items: Mr. Romney’s selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate, who has very conservative views on fiscal policy, and by the comments about rape made by the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, Todd Akin, which may have reinforced the idea that Republicans hold very conservative positions on social issues.
These factors may have made it harder for Republicans to position themselves toward the ideological center. And in several states, including Missouri, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, Republicans nominated sub-optimally conservative candidates.
More moderate Republican candidates, like Mr. Brown of Massachusetts and Mrs. McMahon of Connecticut, have increasingly sought to distance themselves from the national Republican brand, and sometimes also from the Republican presidential ticket.
Some of these theories are speculative, to be sure. A large number of Senate races remain in play: of the several states in which there has been a shift against Republicans in the polls in recent weeks, perhaps only Florida seems completely lost.
But if the trend continues, the question may no longer be whether Republicans can win the Senate - but how vulnerable they are to losing the House.
Mitt Romney's Incredible Shrinking Coattails
Republican nominee Mitt Romney's turbulent few weeks underscore a new reality for embattled Congressional Republicans: They might be on their own in November.
The presidential race is far from over; fewer than 50 days remain before the election, and Democrats and Republicans still expect a competitive race. But as polls show President Barack Obama's lead strengthening in key states, GOP campaigns cannot count on a strong Romney performance to put them over the top. Republicans seeking re-election increasingly view their races in a vacuum, or at least they hope that's the case.
"I just don't think that any of our Members are tied to Romney at all," said a top House GOP aide who requested anonymity to speak freely. "They just don't connect the person to Romney, and that's good for us."
The stakes are especially high in the Senate, where Republicans must win a net of four seats to take control of the chamber if Obama wins re-election. But a trio of recent polls in three battleground states show Senate candidates often tied with Romney - and trailing Democratic opponents.
In Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) led state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) by 7 points in an NBC News/Marist poll out last week. That survey showed Obama holding the same margin over Romney in the Buckeye State.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) cited Mandel's own polling when asked how Romney's standing would affect the race.
"Josh's numbers are better," Portman said, citing improvement since the start of the race. "He's gone from 20 points down, to 10 points down, to 5 points down, to some polls showing him in a dead heat."
But in competitive Virginia, former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) led former Sen. George Allen (R) by 8 points in a Washington Post poll released Wednesday. Obama led Romney by that same margin in the survey.
In Wisconsin, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) and former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) were tied in a CBS News/Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Obama led Romney by 6 points in that survey.
"If it's a close election, that means we can do what we need to do," one top Senate Republican aide said. "If it's not a close election, that obviously won't be helpful."
Even in Massachusetts, where Sen. Scott Brown (R) faces a tough re-election bid against Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren (D), the presidential race is a factor. Brown was one of the first Republicans to distance himself from Romney's recently revealed comments from a fundraiser.
"We're two different people, obviously, and people recognize that," Brown said Wednesday. "I know she'd like to run against Mitt Romney, but she's running against me."
To be clear, Republicans hold advantages in Senate races where the presidential campaign is not as much of a major factor: Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota. But victories in battleground states would offset any GOP losses in Maine and Massachusetts and could mean the difference between the majority and minority in the Senate.
It's a different story in the House. Republicans controlled the redistricting process in most key states last year, solidifying large gains they made in 2010. As a result, House candidates are not as vulnerable to Romney's potentially disappearing coattails.
"I think that it is possible there is a big cement truck that's just unloaded on downballot races," said Brad Todd, a veteran Republican consultant. "I think we may be seeing the Congressional races hardening much earlier than we ever have before. I'm seeing far less undecided in Congressional races than I ever have in September."
House Democrats pounded away at Republicans for Romney's comments this week. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraised off of Romney's political woes, warning potential donors that super PACs would transfer presidential race resources to the House.
House Republicans kept silent for the most part, waiting out the media firestorm.
"Everybody has to run their own campaign," said businessman Jason Plummer, a Republican nominee locked in a tough race for retiring Rep. Jerry Costello's (D-Ill.) seat, on a Wednesday conference call with reporters. "We're running a very aggressive race based on jobs."
On the flip side, House Democrats have dealt with a downballot back draft for months in some districts. Republican redraws forced Democrats such as Reps. Mark Critz (Pa.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.) and John Barrow (Ga.) to seek re-election in conservative districts. As a result, the trio has been running against the Obama administration since before the ink dried on the maps of their new districts.
Most projections show House Republicans on track to keep their majority in the next Congress. Redistricting shrunk the playing field to a few dozen seats. It's a change from the past three volatile cycles in Congress, when as many as 100 seats were in play.
But history shows it's more common for Congress to experience minimal change in a cycle when the president is up for re-election. In 2004, Republicans picked up a net of four Senate seats and three House seats. In 1996, Republicans picked up two Senate seats but lost nine House seats. In 1992, Republicans picked up 10 House seats and broke even in the Senate.
"Coattails generally happen [in a] regime-change election, when you're switching from one party to the other, not when presidents are re-elected," said former Rep. Tom Davis (Va.), an ex-National Republican Congressional Committee chairman.
The Coming War Within the Republican Party
GOP wise men are rushing forward with Romney post-mortems. Never a good sign.
After the presidential campaign ends, think tanks and universities will invite wise partisans to explain why their party lost and how to rebound. Some Republicans are already working on their talking points.
A pattern has emerged in my conversations with GOP campaign veterans over the last 10 days. Here is how these conversations usually go. First, these Republicans defend Romney. Then, they point out that it's hard to beat an incumbent president, sigh that the press is in the tank for Obama, and point out that the polls are a lot closer than the chattering class makes it seem (Please see Gallup: Obama’s bounce is gone). Romney might still pull it out, they say, if he can just connect with voters or tell a better story. But then the conversation inevitably turns to the “big talk” that's going to come after the election: What's the Republican Party going to look like in the future? If Romney loses, the party’s leaders must change their ways to be in sync with the modern electorate.
Caveat: If the opinions of political operatives and campaign partisans were always solid, Chris Christie would have run for president, Hillary Clinton would have traded jobs with Joe Biden, and the GOP would have had a brokered convention. So, this preliminary conversation about the fissures in the Republican Party might be just the idle chatter of people not intimately involved in the Romney game plan. But there comes a moment when these conversations break out into the open and then a campaign can’t ignore them. The locker-room chatter runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's harder for a candidate to win an election when, months ahead of time, his party's smart people are having a public discussion about the post-election period in which he has already lost.
In addition to my reporting, there are now some public signs. David Brooks offered a withering critique of Romney in a column today that ends with what feels like a post-election analysis seven weeks before the election. "He’s a kind, decent man who says stupid things because he is pretending to be something he is not-some sort of cartoonish government-hater. But it scarcely matters. He’s running a depressingly inept presidential campaign." In a piece for Politico today, the former GOP chairman Haley Barbour already sounds like he's offering post-game analysis. “In the future, and not distant future, Republicans have to come to grips with the right policy on immigration," says Barbour. Bill Kristol also appears to be in the mood to offer final words on this campaign: "Has there been a presidential race in modern times featuring two candidates who have done so little over their lifetimes for our country, and who have so little substance to say about the future of our country?" (He is apparently not yet buying the Romney campaign’s move to specificity).
Why on earth would any self-respecting Republican rush to make definitive claims about Romney when a president with a weak record can still be turned out of office? Presumably the people making these claims care about the future of the conservative movement. There is a first-mover's advantage to getting your theory out fast so that your ideas can help shape the post-election debate. If you want your theory to become conventional wisdom, act now! But anyone who wants to stand up and make a bold claim has to engage in a balancing act: You want to be quick enough to have the stage to yourself, but not too quick so that it looks like you are being opportunistic. It’s like criticizing a sitting president too early during a foreign-policy crisis: criticizing your own party should start at the election’s edge.
You might be saying, these columnists don't speak for me. You might call them Washington conservatives and point out, as several people not stricken with Potomac Fever have said to me, that this tentative heading for the exits is symptomatic of the timidity that has caused confusion in the party. That feeling is honest and part of the debate. It’s likely to make you want to speak up to claim your view of where the conservative movement should go next before these insiders get too many free minutes at the microphone. That is how the debate gets started. Meanwhile, the race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama is forgotten, which isn’t good news for Gov. Romney.
The rough contours of this conversation about the party’s future center on whether the party’s tone on immigration and the role of government have gotten out of sync with the electorate. Grassroots activists will argue that Romney was a compromise candidate who could never articulate the anti-government case for freedom and that’s why he’s having a hard time. (That is the argument Rick Santorum made during the primaries.) Others will argue that the Tea Party pushed Romney-as it will every candidate-into ever-more absolutist positions on immigration and the role of government.
The majority of the country believes the government does too much. So there the Republicans should have the winning argument. But not when its candidate frames 47 percent of the electorate as moochers and victims. When the party of lower taxes is arguing that taxes should be increased on some people, it might be a moment to call a timeout and get everyone to agree on the playbook. Is this Mitt Romney’s fault or did the party make him do it? Perhaps the discussion should move to the auditorium.
Immigration is the topic that comes up most often in these conversations about a hypothetical post-election debate. That’s because there is a direct relationship between the party’s ideas and vision and the demographic changes Republicans will face in a country that is getting less white. Some people, like strategist Mike Murphy, have been arguing this point for a while. “Republicans, including Romney, hurt themselves among Hispanic votes in the primary this year,” Barbour told Politico, arguing that not only did the issue hurt Romney in states like Nevada and Florida, but it gave the president an issue he could exploit. A veteran of George W. Bush’s campaigns argued to me recently that the Republican Party will have to go back to the campaign of 2000 to find the last time it spoke with an optimistic voice to Hispanics voters.
There is already a meta-debate about the nature of the conservative debate itself. Brooks’ article has now sparked a fight over whether a conservative is allowed to call himself a conservative when he is in disagreement with the Republican candidate for president. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Warren compiles a list of conservatives who disagree with Romney’s remarks about the supposed 47 percent who favor Obama, and Erick Erickson pushes back with his own list showing that conservatives agree with him (though many of the listed pieces simply say Romney’s “47 percent” remark won’t hurt him, which is different than agreeing with Romney).* The National Review’s Michael Walsh backhands Brooks and the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher weighs in defending Brooks. These are not specific debates about the future of the party, but the speed with which these voices came forward and then chose a camp is a sign of the unresolved tensions inside the GOP. And that is what gives energy to those conversations about the future of the party.
Any successful campaign weathers the moment when the wise people pipe up to say the candidate is doing it wrong. That was the signature trait of the Obama 2008 campaign. But there is also a pattern to decline. Negative chatter from your own party builds and leads to finger-pointing, which leads to early verdicts, which leads to a debate about the future long before Election Day. The Romney campaign has already experienced the first two stages of this cycle. It’s one more reason why he has to show that his campaign is alive and kicking. It’s the only way to dispel the post-mortems.