If this is true, this is just gross political incompetence at the White House political division:
President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.
White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate. The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska.
“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.
Apparently, the only places left on earth where they do not realize that the tea party is a GOP operation are Fox News and the White House.
Lee Hartmann
I think you missed the worst part:
“President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas…”
I’m glad they’ve started to think about ways to help Dems, really really glad. Not that they would think of something such as, oh I don’t know, we need more stimulus and the Repubs won’t let us. Too deep.
Odie Hugh Manatee
We’re Americans, we need the obvious pointed out to us.
Keith G
Every presidential administration has weaknesses and blind spots. To my mind they usually pop up where entrenched ideology trumps common sense.
The Obama team flat out amazes me when they seem to, at times, ignore common sense just for the sake of ignoring common sense.
This tendency is Obama’s greatest enemy – not the Tea Party.
Edit – I meant to add: I do not think Rahm is evil, but I do feel that he is not as competent as other CoSs. He really needs to go back to Chicago.
henqiguai
@Top
__
Serious question: is there some law that requires an organization (e.g. the Obama White House) to publicly display *all* its strategies and tactics ? Must the organization present a project plan for the review and approval of the unwashed outsiders ?
There are constant complaints and lamentations about the apparent obliviousness or obtuseness or incompetence of the Obama team, then when the sun actually does rise the next day there’s celebrations and 20/20 hindsight high-fives. Doesn’t that ever get sort of tiresome ? Just curious, ’cause I don’t have the time (interest ?) in following the play-by-play activities of politics like some here. Which is one of the reasons I hang out at the ‘Juice.
Rhoda
Actually, most places don’t tie the tea party to the Republicans because the MSM makes a point of keeping the two sepearte in their stories and it’s only been since Delaware that we’ve gotten the tea party and Republicans are one. Similarly, you have Clinton on giving credibility to these guys and saying they are misguided. The messaging on these folks across the board has been horrible because IMO it’s difficult dealing with an astroturfed group that the MSM will not report as an astroturf group.
I think the Alaska deal was what started to give the MSM and media pause and how Murkowski lost out of no where; at least with Bennett they could blame Democrats and the fact he proposed a health care bill. You couldn’t with Murkowski or Castle.
Anyway, Axelrod denies a national campaign which sucks. I think a national ad campaign of the Republicans want to take away your Social Security, deny you unemployment if you lose a job, and subsidize rich people would be great right about now.
Rhoda
@henqiguai: The NYT thing seems to be “democratic strategists” not from the WH itself.
Linda Featheringill
The DCCC, on the website, seems to be not so oblivious. All along, it has been a case or R vs D, with no detours.
And that site is probably closer to the source than the NYT, along with its “democratic strategists.”
JPL(formerly demo woman)
The tea party was started by libertarians who knew that they had to unite with the Republicans in order to be viable. They allowed the evangelicals to join the party because without them, their numbers would be limited.
roshan
__
What kind of competence can one expect from “strategists” who spout such language?
I bet these people have never heard about Glenn Beck either.
Dennis SGMM
Nothing like waiting until the last minute to come up with a plan to help Democratic candidates in the mid-terms. These must be some of the same strategists who propelled Martha Coakley to victory in Massachusetts.
mad the swine
The Tea Party movement, like Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, is nonpartisan. Democrats, Republicans, members of third parties and independents are all welcome, as long as they love their country and hate [goddamn spam filter]ism. If that requirement excludes 99% of Democrats, well, that’s hardly the Tea Party’s fault.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
…now Cole, haven’t we had this discussion about stupid-sounding stories that only source anonymously?
Keith G
@henqiguai:
No. But it seems to me that the proof *is* in the pudding and at present the pudding seems rather watery.
jwb
Remember the source of this article (the NY Times), which is always unreliable in reporting these sorts of campaign process stories. The only thing new here is the debate on whether to make “teabaggers are goopers in tri-cornered hats” part of a national campaign strategy. That tells me that the polling on the issue is promising but not definitive, and that they’ve opted not to do it unless floating the idea through the Times pays unexpected dividends.
Guster
Fuckin’ Hamsher.
Dan
Phillip Morris changed its name to Altria
Corn syrup manufacturers now call it corn sugar.
Now the republican party is the tea party.
All for the same reason.
Nick
Well I certainly hope that’s not true, otherwise we have a problem with Independents liking the tea party.
Ash Can
Whoa there, buckos. Just because the NYT is reporting on this now doesn’t mean that the WH or anyone else in the Dem party has been oblivious to this so far and is just now realizing what’s happening. Frankly, I think waiting until now to roll out this kind of ad campaign is a good move. It comes on the heels of Christine O’Donnell’s primary win and the ensuing GOP consternation over it, it comes after the long dead time of the summer when a lot of people aren’t paying attention to this stuff, and it comes just as the real campaign season is heating up — striking when the iron is hot, as it were.
Now, what remains to be seen, is how clear, forceful, and effective those ads are, and if they do in fact appear on a timely basis.
El Cid
This cannot be true. All is 11 dimensional chess, anything done inefficiently or wrongly is the fault of the professional left, and it is not our purpose to ask the sorts of questions which do not praise the wisdom or helpfulness of Democratic Party political policies, because we are lessers and are to leave that to our betters.
Uloborus
I’m sorry, I don’t see any issues in this article (or at least the part you quoted). The Tea Party isn’t a GOP operation. It was meant to be, but it’s not. The GOP is a Tea Party operation, and that’s a great message to be sending. Moderates hate obviously crazy extremists, and the inmates are truly running the asylum Republican-side now.
roshan
__
Pollyanna till the end.
Linda Featheringill
Questions:
Most of the senators and representatives [of both parties] have held their particular offices longer than the current administration has been operational.
Why would the candidates sit around and wait for the WH to tell them what to do?
Why is relevant what the WH “political strategists” say?
Comrade Javamanphil
White House flatly denies Times story about ad assault on Tea Party.
General Stuck
You believe The New York fucking Times. Jeebus, the anonymous source that keeps puke funneling shit like this likely lives in Miami, wears a dandy hat and rhymes with sludge.
jwb
@Comrade Javamanphil: Of course, they denied it because they’ve already decided not to do it (unless the story in the Times pays unexpected dividends). That’s the whole reason the story was in the Times: they decided not to do it. If they were planning on following this strategy, they certainly wouldn’t announce it in this sort of story in the Times.
Uloborus
@General Stuck:
And there’s that too, yes.
jwb
@General Stuck: I actually give the Dems a bit more credit than this. They may well have considered it, and they may well have decided that planting a story in the the Times was the best way to go about doing it. But they clearly have no plans to nationalize the teabaggers are really goopers campaign. It might also be a shiny object being used to keep the media scurrying around not materially aiding the goopers for another day or two.
TooManyJens
If this is true
Evidence that this is true:
::crickets::
Go pet Lily and get on with your life.
p.a.
This should inspire another Sully post praising Obama for playing chess, while conservatives are playing ‘give us the piano wire we’re going to strangle you with’.
General Stuck
@jwb: I seriously doubt they are going to nationalize the campaign singling out the tea baggers. They are roughly 20 percent at most of the electorate and are largely concentrated in already red leaning districts where the only decent strategy is to personalize these races between two individuals.
The WH and Obama have been and likely will continue doing the last statement in Cole’s quote above, point out that it was the wingnuts that created this mess, and do you want to put them back in charge? This is mainly for the single reason to motivate Obama’s supporters and voters in general, though especially swing voters for Obama who are now leaning to vote repub, His approval rating nationally is still around 50 50 which suggests about the same, or a little below, the actual election in 08 numbers, and still high approval with dems in general. So this whole obama is wildly unpopular meme created by the media and fed by the GOP is not based on reality, in fact, polls tell us that the public still thinks less of repubs than dems for fixing our problems.
It is a disconnect, that although shows the enthusiasm is with the wingnuts, nationally, that many of respondents are just spouting off frustration with the slowness of recovery, rather than considering putting wingnuts back in power. But who knows come election day, it seems a good be that if dems can mount a good GOTV effort, they might not do so bad.
valdivia
@General Stuck:
and right on cue Kurtz at TPM starts concern trolling. Ugh.
Mike from Philly
This “strategy” is really just a distilled versin of what gets advocated here on a daily basis no? Shut up and be grateful for what you have because the alternative is far far worse.
He’s already done the requisite DFH punching at a $30,000 a plate dinner. Given this clearly inspiring one/two punch I thought you guys would have been doing cartwheels.
Watered down reform and no tea partiers in Congress. No Bush tax cuts for rich people. Maybe. Helluva platform guys.
RP
Can someone explain what’s wrong with the message in the article? I don’t see the problem (honestly).
someguy
I don’t buy that the Teaturds are a wholly owned GOP subsidiary.
I’d buy the idea that they are a billionaire-funded insurgency from the right.
But they seem to be a bit too at war with the RSCC and RNC to be part of them.
Unless faking being at war with the party leadership is a cunning plan to knock off squishy Republicans…
Allison W.
Actually John Cole the question is where have you been? The DNC has been making videos tying the tea party to Republicans for months. I only see these videos reported on two sites: Washington Monthly and Talking Points Memo.
So when I saw this article last night, I asked myself why is the media now catching on to what they have been doing?
I think its pretty foolish and naive to think that the WH didn’t know the Tea Party was a part of the GOP.
Oscar Leroy
It’s dangerous to let the Republicans back into power NOW. After the election, we can go back to watering down proposals to get Republican approval (even when it isn’t needed) and slowing down the legislative process in order to get the all-important Olympia Snowe on board. But for NOW we can’t let Republicans control the agenda.
Simple: here at BJ The Media is the source of most problems, public enemy number one.
Tsulagi
Ye of little faith. Of course it’s not true. Up on Politico right now: White House: New York Times report ‘100 percent wrong‘…
See? No national ad campaigns. Doing so might later taint the bipartisan well when legislation comes up to ban human mice cloning and groundbreaking masturbation regulation. You professional left just don’t get the 11D strategery.
henqiguai
@someguy (#34): __
You seem to have forgotten; at the end of the day, by default Republicans, including their supporters in the electorate, will always *vote* Republican. And the Tea Baggers, one and all, are simply disaffected and/or radicalized Republicans.
Similarly, a large percentage of those “independents” out there are really just disaffected (or ashamed) Republicans. Once those voting booth curtains are drawn shut, that ole default behavior will kick right back in.
No, I am not a pessimist. Really. Well..
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
Oh my. John, you are quite delightfully shrill and accurate! today.
Chris
Really? It’s “now” really dangerous? That’s what they’re afraid losing the election will do? Then maybe they should’ve been a bit more adventurous during the preceding twenty months. You know, when they actually controlled the levers of power and could try to persuade voters that they would do smart, helpful things with the power they had.
Because the Democratic party – led by Obama – hasn’t exactly done the best job of empowering *itself*.
Though I hear at least David Brooks isn’t sure Obama’s a Muslim, so I guess he’s got that going for him.
gerry
Incompetent???? Yes they are!