National Republican Congressional Committee Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) managed to survive an unexpectedly strong challenge in his home district, but he nevertheless woke up yesterday with a certain ignominious label: he was the NRCC chairman when Republicans lost the House for the first time in 12 years.<\/p>\n
In an attempt to understand what went wrong, Reynolds is taking stock<\/a> of the losing campaigns. I think he’s come to the wrong conclusions.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of Tuesday’s election rout, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), the GOP campaign chief in the House, leveled blame at Republicans who failed to “disqualify” their Democratic opponents.<\/p>\n During his Wednesday morning recap, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) continued to insist, as he had throughout the campaign, that “all politics is local,” despite signs otherwise on election night. […]<\/p>\n “I accept the fact that you have good people lose in hard-fought battles, but I can also unfortunately show examples of some of my colleagues who did not disqualify their opponents at all, or too late,” Reynolds said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, when Reynolds talks about “disqualification,” he’s not referring to procedural rules and staying on the ballot; he’s talking about using bitter attacks to take out a rival.<\/p>\n That’s right, as far as the NRCC chairman is concerned, Republicans failed because they weren’t nasty enough<\/i>. The GOP establishment had specifically warned against<\/a> this tack. An internal GOP strategy memo distributed to candidates a couple of months ago was quite direct: “Define your opponent immediately and unrelentingly…. Don’t make the mistake of pulling your ads in favor of a positive rotation the last weekend.”<\/p>\n The result, therefore, is a Republican Party that’s left believing that their candidates would have been better off being more relentlessly bitter and negative. That’s<\/i> the lesson of 2006, as far as Reynolds is concerned. But here’s my question: how, exactly, could the Republicans get more negative?<\/p>\n The NRCC spent 90%<\/i> of its ad budget<\/a> on attack ads over the campaign’s last month. The NRCC, RNC, and its close allies made things up<\/a>, trying to suppressed voter participation<\/a>, played on people’s prejudices<\/a>, and tried desperately to win through fear<\/a>. Indeed, I could probably write a whole chapter about the pure insanity<\/a> of Vernon Robinson’s ads in a book about the more offensive campaign advertising in U.S. history.<\/p>\n
\n
\nIndeed, Reynolds specifically criticized Rep. Anne Northup (R-Ky.), who was upset this week, and who ran positive ads in the campaign’s waning days. “[Northup] did many good things, but I think she chose a strategy in the final days of the campaign, with her consultants directing it, that I might not have done,” Reynolds said.<\/p>\n