Learning from Louisiana
As we told you earlier, Democrats won a special election in a heavily Republican district in Louisiana over the weekend. We’ve offered our own thoughts on the impact this may have in NY-25 (I tend to believe it may mean that Republicans essentially give up on NY-25), now Rottenchester has some musings about what it means for NY-29:
… if I were the Kuhl campaign, I’d be wondering about running the NRCC playbook this fall. Saying a Democrat will raise taxes, that he’ll allow a horde of immigrants to cross the border, and trying to link him to supposedly toxic figures like Pelosi and Obama didn’t work in two recent elections. And Republican voters are electing Democrats who say they’ll end the war in Iraq and do something about healthcare. When you’re on the wrong side of too many issues, the usual distractions won’t work. Perhaps its time for Republicans to start talking about their positive agenda, if they have one.
Personally, I find Republican attempts to blame high oil prices on Nancy Pelosi laughable, not just from the standpoint of factual accuracy but also from the standpoint of reaching voters. Republicans have essentially controlled Washington for 7 seven years and now they’re whining about the one Democrat in the city with any real power? The contrast with his opponent Eric Massa, who has offered substantive plans for both Iraq and health care, could hardly be more stark.
What’s missing from your analysis, though, is: what else *can* they do? What else can Kuhl run on?
They’ll stick to what they know because they don’t have a lot of other options. Kuhl hasn’t spearheaded local development efforts that have brought us out of our perpetual recession, he doesn’t champion positions that are popular in his district (out of Iraq, health care reform, better governance, better environmental policies, smarter economic policies) but chooses to lock-step vote with the not-so-popular President, and he can’t fall back on family values or shared family warmth because of his own circumstances.
So all that’s left to him is demagoguing on immigrants and the three Gs. We’ll see how it turns out in November.
There’s probably nothing else they can do. But this won’t work.