Rove Ready To Turn His Big Guns On The House

Rove may act like a clown on Fox from time to time but he's no fool, and he knows that Romney's chances of capturing the White House are, at best, slim. There's been a lot of talk lately about how he's thinking of shifting money away from the presidential race and towards capturing the Senate and holding the House. Romney's recent woes appear to be impacting Senate races in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, where progressives Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin have pulled ahead of their conservative opponents, Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson. Three brand new polls are showing Elizabeth Warren vaulting ahead of Brown and two new polls in Wisconsin are showing similar results for Tammy. (This might be a good time for progressives to double down on these two crucial races.) And the GOP missteps on the Farm Bill are benefiting Heidi Heitkamp's campaign in North Dakota and even helping Blue Dog Joe Donnelly in Indiana, each of whom faces unpopular, very extremist and weak opponents, respectively, Rick Berg and Richard Mourdock. The same bill might even save Jon Tester's ass in Montana. Maybe even Claire McCaskill's as well.

Lack of a farm bill has “become a very salient issue in a lot of key battleground races, and it’s highlighted the intransigence and ineffectiveness of House Republicans like Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg and put their misplaced priorities front and center,” said Matt Canter, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In Senate campaigns, particularly in rural states, candidates can localize their races around issues such as agriculture, Canter said. That enables Democrats like Heitkamp and Tester to woo voters who might vote Republican in the presidential race, he said.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may easily win North Dakota and Montana, “but that’s not providing a lot of solace to Rick Berg and Danny Rehberg right now,” Canter said.

So Rove and his operation are starting to focus on each of these races. Same goes for the House. Congress' approval by voters is at an all-time low for an election year and a plurality of voters place most of the blame squarely with the Republican leadership and the Tea Party. How lucky are senior Republicans and the GOP House leadership that incompetent DCCC Chairman Steve Israel decided to not contest any Republican seats held by GOP leaders, not even in cases where Obama won their districts (like Paul Ryan's, Buck McKeon's, Peter King's, Darrell Issa's, Fred Upton's, Dave Camp's, Mike Rogers', etc)? And the DCCC made certain Boehner wouldn't even have a challenger at all and has been diligently sabotaging Eric Cantor's opponent, Wayne Powell. The best thing that ever happened to the Republican House majority was the appointment of "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel to head the DCCC, probably the worst political blunder of Nancy Pelosi's entire career (who defends her decision by reminding people Israel is "reptilian").

Meanwhile, Rove is already taking aim at House seats. His first is the Suffolk County, NY seat held by Tim Bishop, a moderate caught up in a scandal. Because the DCCC is and has always been-- first and foremost-- an incumbent protection scam, Israel will spent buckets of money on this race, making even fewer resources available for challengers... exactly what Rove intends.

“Crossroads looks to spend in the tens of millions of dollars to keep the Republican majority in the U.S. House and promote a conservative agenda utilizing a variety of platforms-- research, polling, phone calls, direct mail and television advertising,” said Crossroads spokesman Nate Hodson.

...Crossroads has indicated before that it would invest at some point in House races, and Democrats have speculated for weeks that Republicans could hedge against a difficult presidential race by directing more resources to the House.

The DCCC's lack of interest in races with progressive challengers-- with just a handful of exceptions (one handful, not two), Israel is committing all the DCCC's resources to trying to restock the Democratic House caucus with reactionary Blue Dogs, pro-business New Dems and various unaffiliated ConservaDems like anti-Choice fanatic Steve Pestka in Michigan. This gives some opportunities for last minute sneak attacks in districts Israel, Sessions (the somewhat savvier GOP version of Israel) and Rove are ignoring... and where smaller amounts of money will go a lot further, like in NC-10 (Patsy Keever vs Patrick McHenry), PA-16 (Aryanna Strader vs Joe Pitts), NY-23 (Nate Shinagawa vs Tom Reed), MI-08 (Lance Enderle vs Mike Rogers), WV-01 (Sue Thorn vs David McKinley) and so on. That's why Blue America has it's own PAC and an Independent Expenditure committee. Help us defeat a monster.