{"id":5824,"date":"2005-11-14T09:10:04","date_gmt":"2005-11-14T14:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5824"},"modified":"2005-11-14T09:10:04","modified_gmt":"2005-11-14T14:10:04","slug":"republicans-embrace-the-blame-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/republicans-embrace-the-blame-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans embrace the blame game"},"content":{"rendered":"

To hear the White House tell it, last week’s Dem election victories had absolutely nothing to do with the president. As Scott McClellan told<\/a> reporters, “I don’t think any thorough analysis of the election results will show that the elections were decided on anything other than local and state issues and the candidates and their agendas.”<\/p>\n

As it turns out, however, Dems aren’t the only ones tying the election results to the White House; the Republicans who lost are doing the same thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Douglas R. Forrester, a Republican, lost by a wide margin to Senator Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, and the chief reason, Mr. Forrester now says, is President Bush’s unpopularity.<\/p>\n

In an interview published yesterday in The Star-Ledger of Newark, the state’s largest newspaper, Mr. Forrester said his campaign had done “all the right things we were supposed to do.” Still, he said, he could not overcome a spate of bad news for Mr. Bush, like the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n

As a result, he said, “it was not a foolish thing” that Mr. Corzine had sought repeatedly to link him to the Bush administration. “If Bush’s numbers were where they were a year ago, or even six months ago, I think we would have won on Tuesday.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“But wait,” Bush allies will say. “The president didn’t even campaign for Forrester, so it’s not his fault.” It’s true that Forrester didn’t want Bush to make any in-state appearances, but the president was still a key factor. First, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove did appear in New Jersey on Forrester’s behalf. Second, one of the more common Corzine campaign ads told New Jersey voters, “Doug Forrester is George Bush’s choice for governor…. Is he yours?”<\/p>\n

And it’s not just New Jersey. Some Republicans in Virginia are raising similar concerns<\/a> about Bush dragging the whole party down.<\/p>\n

President Bush’s sinking popularity helped seal Democrat Timothy M. Kaine’s victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial election Tuesday, politicians and pollsters said [last week]. <\/p>\n

“We know that George Bush is just killing us,” said Delegate David B. Albo, a Republican who narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger in Fairfax County. “His popularity just brought the ticket down. There’s no other way to explain it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As this sentiment continues to permeate GOP thinking, Rick Santorum<\/a> and J.D. Hayworth<\/a> won’t be the only ones keeping Bush at arm’s length next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To hear the White House tell it, last week’s Dem election victories had absolutely nothing to do with the president. As Scott McClellan told reporters, “I don’t think any thorough analysis of the election results will show that the elections were decided on anything other than local and state issues and the candidates and their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}