GOP looks for a prescription to treat ‘Election Anxiety Disorder’

May 15, 2008

Yesterday afternoon, retiring Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), the former chairman of the NRCC, issued a 20-page memo on the Republican Party’s electoral woes. “The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than it was in 2006,” he wrote.

Davis’ point about the weakness of the GOP brand was muddled, however, by his complete inability to spell Barack Obama’s name correctly, and his use of the racially-charged phrase “tar baby” while talking about Obama and immigration.

It’s that kind of year for the Republican Party.

The GOP, of course, does have its new slogan, but by failing to Google the phrase before launching, Boehner & Co. have really just made their problems more embarrassing.

House Republicans may be heading off a cliff in November, but give them credit for perseverance. Even after the new slogan they floated — “The Change You Deserve” — was discovered to be trademarked ad copy for the antidepressant drug Effexor, GOP leaders decided to go with the rollout anyway.

“The Republican agenda, ‘The Change You Deserve,’ is directed at America’s families,” Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) announced at a televised news conference with House Republican leaders yesterday morning. “And you may be a little surprised at this agenda.”

Why, yes, we are. And Democrats are manic over the medicinal mantra.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called reporters into his office. “Democrats, not drugs, is what the American people need,” he said. He flashed the Effexor side effects on a large flat-screen television. “Nausea, up to 58 percent,” Hoyer said. “Actually it’s higher than that for Republicans.”

“Are depression symptoms keeping you from where you want to be?” Effexor’s maker, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, asks in its promotions. “Not feeling as good as you used to?”

My goodness, the jokes do write themselves, don’t they? The WaPo’s Dana Milbank takes the next step, and notes that congressional Republicans might need the medication whose slogan they stole, in light of a widespread case of “Election Anxiety Disorder.”

Will “The Change You Deserve” give Republicans the relief they need? Democrats thought it to be a prescription for ridicule. “John Boehner,” Hoyer said at his news briefing, flashing the Effexor brand on the screen, “says he has a new mantra . . . ‘Change You Deserve.’ Interesting where he got that.”

And Hoyer didn’t even mention the warning label, which states that patients should be watched to see if they are “becoming agitated, irritable, hostile, aggressive, impulsive, or restless.”

Republicans really couldn’t have made this any easier.

As for the coming months, the GOP is feeling more than a little panicky, and we’ve seen quite a few examples of finger-pointing and self-pity, but it appears that the NRCC believes it can keep making the same mistake over and over again, expecting a different result.

It looks like the GOP plans to continue its efforts to damage down-ticket Dems by tying them to Barack Obama — even though this strategy completely failed to defeat the Dem candidate who won a big upset victory in the Mississippi special election yesterday.

On a conference call with reporters today, NRCC chair Tom Cole confirmed that the party will continue using Obama to tar Dem House candidates, in much the way the GOP has historically used figures like Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi to do the same.

The NRCC and the local GOP candidate in Mississippi ran ads tying Travis Childers to Obama and even to Jeremiah Wright, but Childers won yesterday by a comfortable eight-point margin.

But Cole is undaunted by yesterday’s results, calling the anti-Obama strategy a “useful tool” for hitting Dems in conservative areas: “I think reminding people that we have a very liberal, and I think very inexperienced Democratic nominee, and that your opponent is likely to be supporting that individual, is interesting.”

It’s working like a charm guys; keep up the great work.

They spent 42% of their cash ($3 million) on hand to lose, handily, 3 special elections. May I suggest sending the other 58% to China or Burma? I mean, China could actually use that money to dig themselves out of the rubble, whereas the Republicans can’t.

  • People should cut Tom Cole some slack and let him have more room to strategerize about the coming congressional elections.

    Republican brand is so toxic right now that if it were dog food, they’d take it off the shelf. The problem is not that the dogs won’t eat the dog food, it is that the GOP needs to buy some new Dogs that will eat the dog food.

    So give Tom Cole a break; he’s doing a heck of a job. And chances are that Bush will promote him to head the RNC.

  • “NRCC chair Tom Cole confirmed that the party will continue using Obama to tar Dem House candidates”
    He meant “Tar and feather”

  • “My goodness, the jokes do write themselves, don’t they? ”

    At least this time, with incompetence causing harm only to themselves, the rest of the nation can laugh rather than groan under the weight of more harmful policies. But to tell you the truth, with the way things are going for the Republican party, I am feeling far less depressed than I have in years passed, in fact things are looking quite optimistic. This prescription is making me feel better all the time.

  • The GOP keeps trying to tie these white Christian males to Obama, but it appears that the racist, fear-mongering tactics only work when the actual candidate is black and a “secret Muslim.”

    The most common fears (of the idiotic variety) that I hear are “he’ll put more minorities than white people in positions of power” and “Muslims are bad.” Clearly these white southern boys can be trusted to support other white guys to a respectable degree and bring “traditional” Christian values to the government. Apparently, it’s cool if these candidates have a black friend (it means they’re not racist, or something!), it’s just that these voters don’t want said black friend running the country…

    Encouraging… yet still somewhat depressing…

  • Will the makers of Effexor sue the GOP for trade mark infringement? One might think that the negative consequences of association with the party might be cause of fairly large damages.

  • “Are depression symptoms keeping you from where you want to be?” Effexor’s maker, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, asks in its promotions. “Not feeling as good as you used to?”

    Well, I have been depressed as described, but I know come November 5 I am going to feel better than I have in 44 years.

    And Hoyer didn’t even mention the warning label, which states that patients should be watched to see if they are “becoming agitated, irritable, hostile, aggressive, impulsive, or restless.”

    Which pretty much describes any Gooper drooler, if you drop by any site in Right Blogistan and take a look.

  • The ironies abound.

    Here is a party congenitally incapable of changing direction. To them, changing direction — even in the face of new information — is a sign of weakness (see Iraq, failure of).

    Instead of actually making substantive changes to their policies, their plan is to simply roll out a new slogan that hints at their supposed capacity for change. Yet when the slogan is revealed for the joke it is, do they pull the slogan and retool? Of course not! To change direction, to admit that the slogan is a failure, would be to show weakness. Yet another failure that cannot be admitted.

    So what they’re really saying is: “The complete inability to change — even on something as trivial as a marketing slogan — that’s the CHANGE YOU DESERVE.”

    I don’t think their scared about November as much as I think they are in a metaphysical quandry. All this talk about change from the party that is built on its opposition to change? They’re just trying to keep their heads from exploding.

  • Unfortunately for us, they know the cure for them lies in Rove math. Look for a lot of mischief on election day and “surprising” wins for the Rethugs in so-called tight races. We live in a banana republic now (lower case) and the dumb Dems have done nothing to address election reform.

  • Poor little Tommhy Cole, complaining on NPR how those darn Democrats are running candidates who “sound like Republicans” – pro-gun, pro-life….

    He’s even willing to admit that Bush is the anvil around their neck.

  • Slightly OT, the embattled former Democratic Ohio AG Mark Dann officially resigned. Democrats proved they can clean their own house when bad apples are exposed. For Republicans, Fossela, Vitter and Craig are still in Congress. Booting them out would would be a start on the road to the change we need.

  • From Politico:

    For the past 18 months, ever since the 2006 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he is not really all that sick: a bit under the weather; actually feel better than I sound; should be up and about any day; thanks for asking.

    Suddenly — belatedly — all pretense is gone.

    The Republican defeat in Tuesday’s special election in Mississippi, in a deeply conservative district where, in an average year, Democrats cannot even compete, was a clear sign that the GOP has the political equivalent of cancer that has spread throughout the body. Many House GOP operatives are privately predicting that the party could easily lose up to 20 seats this fall.

    Combined with the 30 seats that the GOP lost in 2006, that would leave the party facing a 70-vote deficit against Democrats in the House — a state of powerlessness reminiscent of Republicans’ long wilderness years in the 1960s and ’70s.

    Things are not particularly more hopeful on the Senate side, where most analysts say Democrats have a strong chance of adding five or more seats to their current majority.

    Obama in the White House, a filibuster-proof Senate, a veto-proof House….

    A new New Deal!!

  • The Republicans in Congress are in a poker game where they have no hand and no draw. I just find it amazing that people do not seem to realize that their strategy for change is bad because there is not good strategy. Anything that the Republicans do will lose more votes than it gains. The real question is what will happen to the Republican after the Democrats get 60 seats in the Senate and the Republican are irrelevant?

  • The Republicans in Congress are in a poker game where they have no hand and no draw.

    superdestroyer, that is a sadly accurate analogy. sad, because all the Republicans have left is an empty bluff — and yet the Democratic leadership in Congress folds everytime the Republicans show a little bravado.

  • i’m hopelessly confused. i was under the impression that the house gop feels they’re in trouble because they came disconnected from the base. so what’s it gonna be?? change or going back to old ways?
    this makes for an interesting dynamic for the fall elections. congressional republicans will work on getting the base to stay with them while mccain’s campaign will be trying to appeal to independents rather than the base.

  • Wide-spread depression among the Rethugs is the least they deserve. What is astounding is their inability to recognize no one is drinking their kool-aid anymore. Addicted to spin, propaganda, and fear-mongering as they are, they really seem to think a new ad campaign is all they need to keep control. Given that half the Congress are born-agains perhaps this makes sense. Nothing ever changes in that world no matter how irrational, illogical, superstitious, preposterous or outdated it is. They’ve been trained never to use the brains they were born with, and what better example than their new ad campaign, not to mention the past eight years.

    However, real election fraud – Rethug style – and post-Labor Day surprises can make a big difference.

  • “Republican brand is so toxic right now that if it were dog food, they’d take it off the shelf.”

    dog food, not so much. i think dog shit would be a more appropriate comparison.

  • It’s heartwarming to see that the election will be a bipartisan effort. As downticket Democrats work to ride Obama’s coattails, the Republican machine will help them along. Maybe someone should suggest that they also link downticket Democrats to JFK and MLK.

  • Tom’s citation from Politico, suggesting a pickup of 5 seats in the senate, would only give Dems a 55/45 majority—certainly not “filibuster-proof”—because Darth Joe will jump the aisle and join his fellow warmongers no later than December 31st of this year, in order to protect the War Without End On Everybody Party.

    But as for a “prescription” for the GOP’s anxiety attacks, might I suggest a heavy dose of curare? It’s quiet; there’s no horrific disfigurement, and Dems won’t have to mop up all that toxic neocon blood from the halls of Congress.

  • Didn’t anybody notice the 3 by-elections? 5 Senatorial pick-ups and 20 Democratic House seats is absurd, the Democratic pick up will be a lot more than that. (I remember in 2006 people were saying that the Democrats might win a bare majority in the House but there was no way they’d win control of the Senate. And the Reublicans are much more disliked now than then.)

    My prediction? Democrats will have 58 or 59 Senate seats, plus Bernie Sanders and Lieberman — whose opportunism might make him vote with them more. In the House, how does a 300-135 split sound?

    Remember, McCain has no up-side. He’ll only get more unpopular as time goes on, so he won’t help down-ticket candidates. And people just don’t like Republicans. They are going the way of the Federalists — to be replaced by a new center-right party. (That’s where the idea of an independent run by Hillary will wind up, more likely in 2016 than in 2012 if Obama lives up to expectations and becomes unbeatable in 2012.)

  • Obama in the White House, a filibuster-proof Senate, a veto-proof House….

    A new New Deal!!

    Can you say “singler payer”? I knew you could.

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