Playbook 2012_ The Right Fights Back (Politico Inside Election 2012) - Mike Allen [30]
It may be that Obama will have to win the hard way—by superior political mechanics, by finding new voters and turning out old ones. For now, Obama has no slogan; the bumper sticker just says “Obama 2012.” The only other route is to go hard negative against the Republican nominee. Obama may personally recoil at this approach. But his operatives won’t.
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Karl Rove kept on meeting with the big money boys—independent PACs, which can raise unlimited funds—every month. The get-togethers were still called “the Weaver Terrace meetings,” even though Rove had sold his house in Washington and moved back to Austin, Texas. The participants—one of two representatives from nineteen groups—compete at cooking, eating, and raising money to elect Republicans. (Rove claims his barbecue “cannot be beat.” He makes venison sausages from deer he has shot.)
In early November, Rove was confident about his money machine, American Crossroads. “I know we’re going to get to $240 million and beyond,” he said. “No ifs, ands, or buts.” Rove says the money will be used to “take the Senate, keep the House. In the Senate, we could put as many as seven or eight seats in play.”
As for the presidential race, he recalled that in 2008, between June and November, Obama and the Democratic National Committee had outspent McCain and the RNC by $850 million to $550 million. “My gut tells me that the Democrats will have an advantage this time around, but it will not be as big as it was last time.” Rove was doubtful that the Obama campaign would raise the billion dollars it was said to be after. Overall, he said, “We’re in better shape than we were, but not in as good shape as some seem to think we are.” The conversation ended, for now. “I’m going to go fishing,” said Rove.
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“How did we come back?” asked Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as he reviewed the Republicans recovery from its low state in 2008. “They let us come back,” Graham said. “Obama made a mistake early on. He turned the agenda over to [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the more liberal people in the House.” The “good news for Republicans,” said Graham, speaking to us in early November, is that “conservatism sells.” The country is right of center. “In terms of policy, we’re in good shape.” But he warned, “demographics, not so much.”
Younger voters are liberal on social issues and the environment, Graham notes, and Hispanics—the nation’s fastest growing population—don’t like the GOP’s harsh stands on immigration. Hard right stands may win voters in GOP primaries in the short term, but they risk hurting Republican ambitions in the long run. “We’ve got a problem with young people,” said Graham. “We lost two to one in the last election. As they get older, they’ll get more conservative, but you don’t want to have that generation, eighteen to thirty-five, imprinted in the sense that they are used to voting for Democrats. We’re going backward with Hispanics, not forward. Immigration does loom large out there, the way we talk about it.”
Politics, says Graham, “is a business. Where will the market be ten years from now? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what’s going on in America, and twenty years from now we’re going to be less like we are today, and we’re going to have a younger generation coming into power, in the economy and throughout society, that has a different view than my generation about some issues like the environment. And the good news again is that conservatism is not our problem. Our problem is being able to communicate it and to not turn