Chris Weigant: The Big Republican Pivot

[Algernon Moncrieff]

Complete article at link

The Republican Party's 2014 midterm election strategy was supposed to be simple, since it contained only one plank in the platform: the awfulness of Obamacare. This isn't mere supposition, as Republicans have been freely admitting this for over six months now. They were so sure of their strategy that they didn't even care if everyone knew what it was ahead of time. The midterms would be "all Obamacare, all the time" on the Republican side, and that would usher them into victory. They even convinced themselves to avoid tackling other issues (such as immigration) because doing so would be a distraction from the single-minded focus on Obamacare.

This week, however, the entire Republican Party seems to be in the midst of a gigantic political pivot. Attacking Obamacare seems to be on the wane, while dredging up old scandals seems to be more in vogue. Republicans seem to now be thinking that the midterms are going to be about Benghazi and the I.R.S. Their previous laser-like focus on Obamacare seems to be wavering, at the very least.

Think about it: why are House Republicans creating yet another Benghazi investigatory committee, and not some sort of new "investigate Obamacare's numbers" committee? They obviously think it isn't worth it to spend lots and lots of the political calendar hashing over Obamacare's numbers, while instead spending this time rehashing Benghazi one more time (in the hopes that some sort of scandal will eventually magically appear).

Maybe it's because investigating the Obamacare numbers would expose more positive things about the program than negative. House Republicans did just try to get some political dirt by putting a few health insurance company executives before a House committee this week -- which rather spectacularly backfired when the executives told the truth. The Republicans had ginned up some numbers which they said showed one-third of the people who had signed up for policies hadn't paid their premiums. The insurance company executives essentially said "no, that is not true -- it is more like ten to twenty percent, at most." As the data gets more and more complete as the year goes on, Republicans will likely not hold many more of these type of hearings which do nothing more than contradict their own partisan spin.

[Wellstone ruled]

1. here we are in the middle of May

and the Rethugs are still nailing down their 2014 election platform. This whole D.C. Rethug Comedy Club act is nothing more than a trial run for some type of October Surprise. The real story will go down by the July 1 timeline. Typically you want your base to be energized on your talking points by that time. Remember,campaign season starts the first of September. Lets see how this plays. Voter attention span is really short,that is why me thinks the Rethugs are going do something big time in the next few weeks. Ott to be very interesting.

When are they going to play the Impeach the Kenyan guy card?

[Algernon Moncrieff]

2. I think impeachment is an implied part of the Benghazi strategy

Repealing Obamacare is a talking point in every GOP primary campaign I've seen, but the laser focus seems to be off it. Candidates are now attacking overregulation/"Washington Overreach", Common Core, and good old deficit spending.

The GOP wants very much to hang a scandal on Barack Obama, even with the knowledge that impeachment is doomed to fail.