District System for Electoral College? Not So Fast...

Right after the election, some Republicans pondered the district system for the electoral college. Politico reports:

Republican proposals in swing states to change how electoral votes are allocated have set off alarms that the party is trying to rig future presidential elections.

But the plans are going nowhere fast.

In the majority of states where such measures are being considered – Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Michigan, all states that voted for President Obama in 2012 but have Republican-controlled legislatures – proposals to split Electoral College votes proportionally have either been defeated or are strongly opposed by officials in those states.

The only remaining states are Pennsylvania, where an electoral vote change was unsuccessful in 2011, and Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker has expressed hesitance about any changes to the system.

“I just said I hadn’t ruled it out. I’m not embracing it because it’s a double-edged sword,”

Walker said in a recent interview with POLITICO. “What may look appealing right now depending on who your candidate was might, four or eight years from now, look like just the reverse. And the most important thing to me long term as a governor is what makes your voters be in play. One of our advantages as a swing state is that candidates come here … that’s good for voters. If we change that that would take that away and would largely make us irrelevant.”

In Virginia, a plan to allocate electoral votes by congressional district was defeated in the state Senate Tuesday after Gov. Bob McDonnell and other GOP lawmakers in the state came out against it.

TPM reports:

On a national level, newly re-elected RNC chair Reince Priebus has declared his support for splitting up the electoral vote in blue-leaning swing states, including his home state of Wisconsin. Former RNC chair Haley Barbour broke with him on Friday, however, telling MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that he did not back Priebus’ plan and did not believe it enjoyed widespread GOP support either. His nephew, influential RNC committeeman Henry Barbour, also dismissed the Priebus scheme as a “gimmick” to Yahoo News.

More Republican Reassessments

CNN reports on Haley Barbour's comments to RGA:

"The ground game is really important, and we have to be, I mean we've got to give our political organizational activity a very serious..." he said, taking a pause and looking for the right word. "Proctology exam. We need to look everywhere."

Speaking at a conference for the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas, Barbour said his party needs to not only adapt to demographic changes but also reform its messaging.
"We can catch up in four years doing this," he said. "This isn't rocket science, but it is hard work that we can't wait and start in 2016."

The party needs a "brutally honest assessment of everything we did," he added. "We need to take everything apart and look at all of it."

Like other Republicans in recent days, Barbour stressed the importance of being more inclusive to Latinos, African-Americans and other minorities. Barbour in particular chided the party for its tone on illegal immigration, saying many illegal workers contribute to the economy and comprise an important part of society.

Karl Rove also writes about doing better with the ground game and appealing to African Americans and Hispanics.  He makes other points as well:

One reason the GOP didn't do better with its pro-growth agenda was that Mr. Romney's character and record were undermined by early, relentless personal attacks that went largely unanswered. In a world of Twitter, YouTube and cable TV, the cliché that "if you're responding, you're losing" is dead. Republican campaigns need to get better at responding, setting the record straight, and bending the argument back toward their narrative.

...
 The GOP must reduce the destructiveness of the presidential primaries. In the first place, activists can withhold support from candidates who make reckless assaults on competitors, which happened too often this time. Also, the Republican National Committee should limit the number of debates and, by showing wisdom in picking debate moderators, limit the media's ability to depict the party as a fringe group.

Another idea: Holding the convention in late August made sense when candidates relied on public financing for the general election. That will never happen again. The Romney campaign had tens of millions it couldn't spend for months until he was officially nominated on Aug. 28. Future conventions should be held as early as late June.

At The Christian Science Monitor, Linda Feldmann notes a disagreement between Romney and Jindal:

Mitt Romney is complaining about “gifts” – but to Democrats, it’s Mr. Romney who’s the gift. And he keeps on giving.  

The Republicans’ failed presidential nominee has inflamed intraparty tension by blaming his loss on President Obama’s “gifts” to young voters and minorities – health coverage, contraceptive coverage in health insurance, forgiveness of interest on college loans – not any failings of his own as a candidate.

Mr. Romney made the comments Wednesday afternoon on a conference call with fundraisers and donors, a few of whom allowed reporters to listen in. Later in the day, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) of Louisiana, new chairman of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), became “visibly agitated” at a press conference when asked about Romney’s remarks, according to Politico. 

“No, I think that’s absolutely wrong,” said Governor Jindal, a rising Republican star who is Indian-American, speaking at an RGA meeting in Las Vegas. “Two points on that: One, we have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote.”

“And, secondly,” Jindal continued, “we need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education. … So, I absolutely reject that notion, that description. I think that’s absolutely wrong.”

Time, Chance, and Mitt Romney

Tonight, Mitt Romney accepts the GOP nomination. One school of thought is that his nomination was more or less inevitable because Republicans pick the "next in line."  But although Romney had major advantages going into the race, there was nothing inevitable about his victory.

For one thing, Mike Huckabee won more delegates in 2008 than Romney, so he had as good a claim to the "next in line" title.  But he decided not to run.  Had Mitch Daniels or Haley Barbour gotten into the race, either could have raised serious money. Similarly, if Jon Huntsman had declined to serve in the Obama administration, he would have been much more credible to Republican primary voters and he would have had more opportunity to build his organization and warchest. By the time he actually ran, however, most Republicans knew little about him, and the rest thought he was tainted by the Obama connection.

Any of these three could have taken a big chunk of the traditional/establishment vote that went to Romney, thus making him more vulnerable to a credible challenge from the right.

That challenge could have come from Rick Perry -- if had started earlier and worked harder.  But Byron York nailed it back in October:

For Romney, debate preparation involves taking all the things he has already thought through and finding the most effective way to present them in one-minute answers. For Perry, debate preparation is trying to learn new stuff about national issues that he should have been thinking about a long time ago.

It's often pointed out that since Perry entered the Republican race late, on Aug. 13, he had little time to build a campaign organization and hone a campaign pitch. That's true, but the fact is, if Perry wanted to be president, he should have been thinking seriously about the substance of national issues -- not just money-raising and state chairmen -- years before he declared his candidacy.

Even before his famous "oops" moment, his campaign was heading south.

Bachmann, Cain, and Gingrich had moments in the sun, but none of them ever had a real chance of nomination.  Santorum, on the other hand, might have made life tougher for Romney if just a couple of things had gone differently.  If the Iowa GOP had produced an accurate vote count on caucus night, the story would have been "Santorum edges Romney in stunning upset."  If Santorum hadn't disrespected JFK, he might have carried the Catholic vote in the Michigan primary, which could have been enough for him to score yet another stunning upset.

In other words, "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." -- which is the Bible's way of saying "You didn't build that."

Haley Barbour for Crossroads

Haley Barbour is doing a web video for American Crossroads:

American Crossroads Raises and Spends Big

Danny Yadron writes at The Wall Street Journal:

The conservative campaign groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have doubled their fund-raising goals for the 2012 elections, now hoping to spend at least $240 million influencing the races to control Congress and the White House. The big-money push will be partly fueled by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former RNC chairman and prolific fund-raiser who decided earlier this year that he didn’t have the “fire in the belly” for a presidential campaign of his own. He has said he will remain neutral in the Republican primaries.

Peter H. Stone writes at iWatch News:

“We see a pathway to at least doubling our earlier projected goal,” Steven Law, the president of Crossroads, told iWatch News . “Everyone is going to stretch as far as they can here because we all feel this is the most important election we have ever been involved with.”

To help achieve its new goal, the two groups have been talking to some prominent GOP figures, notably Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The former Republican National Committee chairman has agreed to lend his Midas like rolodex to the Crossroads efforts.

“Gov. Barbour’s involvement with us gives us the capacity to focus on the presidential race, the Senate and the House at the same time,” Law said.

Barbour, who leaves his Mississippi post in January, chaired the Republican Governors Association last year when it raised a record $117 million for the fall elections.

Jonathan Salant writes at Bloomberg:

American Crossroads, which has spent $255,360 on behalf of Republican nominee Mark Amodei for the Nevada congressional seat vacated by Dean Heller when he became a U.S. senator, received $2 million last month from Texas home builder Bob Perry and $300,000 from Kenneth Griffin, chief executive of Citadel Investment Group LLC in Chicago. Perry donated $7 million to Rove’s group, while Griffin and his wife, Anne, each gave $250,000 last year.

Democrats have set up their own outside groups to counter the Republicans, including one led by Bill Burton, a former aide to President Barack Obama. The groups said they had raised more than $10 million through June 30.

American Crossroads Gains Barbour, Criticizes Obama's Jobs Record

The Daily Caller reports:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will be joining Karl Rove this election cycle to raise funds for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the groups announced Thursday.

Barbour, rumored to be privately advising Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry, will be serving in a volunteer capacity, as will Rove. (RELATED: Perry says Rove has been ‘over the top for a long time’)

The groups also announced that they have exceeded their fundraising goals and will more than double their previous combined fundraising goal of $120 million for 2012.

“Both Governor Barbour and Karl Rove are prodigious fundraisers and brilliant strategists, and we are honored to have them both engaged with us,” said Steven Law, who serves as president of the two Crossroads groups

At Time, Mark Halperin observes:

This development could have a bigger impact on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election than Obama's Thursday speech. This means Barbour won't endorse a candidate for president in the nomination fight -- but he will be powerfully positioned to help defeat the incumbent.

CNN reports:

American Crossroads, the independent GOP group founded by Karl Rove and led by former Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, released an ominous new online video Thursday ahead of President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated jobs speech.

The video - “Job Loss Calendar” - accuses the president of implementing burdensome regulations and taxes that have hampered private sector job creation since he took office in January 2009.

“After more than 30 months of record unemployment, the question arises: How many jobs have Obama’s policies destroyed?” a gravelly-voiced narrator asks.

The three-minute video claims that a series of administration efforts have stalled job creation, including health care reform, a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Boeing and a Justice Department lawsuit blocking a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.

“With nearly 14 million Americans out of work, the best jobs policy might be to start repealing his own policies,” the video concludes.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio called on the president “to get out of the way” and stop over-regulating private business.

Romney Rollout

The Romney campaign is probably unhappy with this report from Politico's Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns:

No conversation about the former Massachusetts governor begins with a listing of his strengths as a candidate. Instead, Romney is the rare national politician defined largely by his shortcomings. The most prominent among them— his role in enacting a sweeping Massachusetts health care law exactly five years ago—was already being dissected by his Republican and Democratic opponents on Monday just moments after he announced he’s forming a presidential exploratory committee.

They go on to list five challenges:

• Questions about his authenticity;
• GOP opposition to his health-care law;
• His Mormon faith;
• His job-cutting corporate record;
• His flip-flops on issues.

Yesterday, he announced his exploratory committee:

Conn Carroll reports at The Washington Examiner:

Team Romney chose an odd day to make the announcement to begin with. Five years ago today Romney signed the Massachusetts health care law that President Obama claims as a model for Obamacare. Choosing yesterday for his launch assured that virtually every article covering his announcement would mention the health care law that is deeply unpopular with GOP primary voters.

Perhaps Romney merely wanted to drown out a bad story with a good one, but as far as insiders are concerned his official entrance into the race was quickly overshadowed by news that Pawlenty had landed former Republican Governor’s Association executive director Nick Ayers as his campaign manager. At only 28 years old, Ayers already has an impressive electoral track record, helping the GOP gain a net seven governorships during his RGA tenure.

The Ayers hire is also a sign that MS Gov. Haley Barbour will not end up running.

Social Issues Redux

At The New York Times, Jeff Zeleny reports:

Here in Iowa, whose caucuses next winter will open the campaign, social and religious conservatives are pressing the likely candidates on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion rather than on jobs, the budget deficit and other economic concerns that leaders of both parties expect to dominate the general election.

The development provides opportunities for candidates like Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who have a following among social conservatives. But it could make Iowa even more difficult territory for, among others, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has yet to visit the state this year.

More broadly, some Republicans say, it could muddle the party’s message as it seeks to defeat President Obama.

“We look like Camp Christian out here,” said Doug Gross, a Republican activist and former nominee for governor. “If Iowa becomes some extraneous right-wing outpost, you have to question whether it is going to be a good place to vet your presidential candidates.”

As Zeleny also reported, different approaches were on display at the state's Conservative Principles Conference:

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi urged Republicans to keep a tight focus on the policies of the Obama administration, the state of the economy and the size of government.

“It is absolutely critical that we elect a new president,” Mr. Barbour said. “I think the best way — perhaps the only way — is for us to make sure the 2012 campaign is focused on policy. The American people agree with us on policy.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who took the stage after Mr. Barbour, offered a different view, ranking values above the economy and national security in his three-point list of what the next presidential campaign should be about.

“Some people may say we should stay away from values, stay away from social issues,” Mr. Gingrich said. “I’m here to tell you that if you don’t start with values, if you don’t start by saying who we are as Americans, the rest of it doesn’t matter.”

Mr. Gingrich drew applause when he suggested that students “in every class in K-12 and in every tax-paid college” should learn the words of the Founding Fathers that “we are endowed by our creator.”

T-Paw and Haley

At The Washington Post, Chris Cillizza notes some top-notch Barbour hires but adds a caution:

That Barbour is excelling at the inside game is not terribly surprising, given that he has spent decades cultivating relationships among elected officials and high-level operatives. Essentially everyone in GOP circles knows and like Barbour.

To win the presidential nomination, however, Barbour has to not only prove himself among insiders, which he is well on his way to doing, but also among average voters who know nothing of the inside game. Barbour has struggled far more in that latter category, finding himself caught in a series of negative headlines regarding race.

Staying on message — a message that early signs indicate will focus on his understanding of how to turn the economy around — is critical for Barbour. Without that, visits to early states and victories in the fight for staff talent will be quickly forgotten.

Barbour Money

At Politico, Andy Barr and Zachary Abrahamson make a key point about Haley Barbour's political fundraising:

His main fundraising tool is a political action committee registered in Georgia – which has no limits on individual or corporate donations. The PAC is chaired by Henry Barbour, Haley’s nephew and a top-level Republican powerbroker in his own right — he was the key behind-the-scenes player in getting Reince Priebus elected RNC chairman.

In just the last year, 147 people and corporations have given a total of $523,174.52 to Barbour’s Georgia PAC — an average of more than $3,550.

Nine donors – two individuals and seven corporations — have given Barbour $295,000 over the last year through the Georgia PAC. If the PAC were federal, and covered by FEC guidelines, the most nine donors could have given Barbour over the last year is $45,000, as individual contributions are capped at the national level

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Barbour uses the flush PAC to make contributions to candidates and pay pollsters and consultants – some of whom the governor has known for 30 years.

Money for the PAC goes out almost as fast as it comes in. After raising $540,000 last year, the Georgia PAC ended the year with $33,000.

Barbour’s Georgia PAC is only part of his operation. He also operates a federal PAC, as well as a second state PAC in Mississippi.

More on Georgia campaign finance law here.

Haley Barbour

Andrew Ferguson writes in The Weekly Standard of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a potential presidential candidate:

Since he first entered national Republican politics, as a young lawyer from Yazoo City, Mississippi, Barbour has been one of the most popular figures in the party. “If you don’t like Haley Barbour,” [former RNC chair Ed] Gillespie said, “you’ve got something wrong with you.” Amiable and humorous and tirelessly upbeat, his persona is large and unusual enough to pass for colorful in today’s politics. There’s the voice, for one thing: an accent so rich and unapologetic—nine comes out nan—that a Yankee used to the gentler roundings of more acculturated Southerners might think he’s getting his leg pulled. The Barbour style of pronunciation involves a fatal collision of sibilants, as if he’d left the dentist’s office before the Novocain could wear off. He doesn’t so much walk as saunter. Though not tall, and not as heavy as his legend suggests—what poundage there is looks tightly packed—he’s physically imposing, not to say intimidating, with impressively large hands and head, and short thick arms that swing freely when he walks. You don’t have to be a Midwestern weenie to imagine him as the Southern sheriff in Deliverance, squinting at Jon Voight through aviator sunglasses and suggesting he might want to get his pale Yankee ass out of town.

The guy who played the sheriff in the movie was the novel's author, James Dickey -- an award-winning poet and very acculturated professor at the University of South Carolina.

Just sayin'....