Posted on 11/07/2002 4:19:30 PM PST by Coleus
WHY FORRESTER LOST - AND LOST BADLY…
Rick Shaftan
Liberal “experts” attempt to alibi Doug Forrester’s humiliating defeat saying it was because he was “too” conservative even though across the nation, conservatives like Norm Coleman, Jim Talent, Saxby Chambliss, Wayne Allard and of course Scott Garrett won unexpected or larger than expected victories.
Forrester lost badly because he never connected with New Jersey’s largest group of swing voters - “Reagan Democrats” - conservative Catholics who live along Routes 3, 17, 46 and the Parkway. And Republicans will continue to lose as long as they believe that being pro-abortion is the only way to win these voters.
Instead, judging by the campaigns and candidates Republicans have nominated over the past decade, one would think that the “swing” voter in New Jersey is a liberal woman whose can trace her ancestry to the Mayflower. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
No Republican has won a vote majority in this state since George Bush got 55 percent against Michael Dukakis in 1988. And in that time, conservative Catholic towns like Secaucus, Bloomfield, Lyndhurst and Clifton have gone from producing 3-2 Republican majorities in statewide elections to 3-2 Democratic majorities.
Now if you listen to the “experts” who have blown election after election in this state, you would think that the way to bring back Republican victories in these towns is for Republicans to move even farther to the left. To the contrary, for Republicans to win in politically marginal areas like New Jersey, they must move back to the conservative base, embrace conservative issues - not run from them - and energize the base. Consider this.
1. While Republicans around the country were making the case for GOP Senate control by attacking liberal judges, Doug Forrester actually said he would vote against conservative judges supported by President Bush - and never once attacked Lautenberg for supporting a host of leftist jurists, including those who took “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Republican Party bosses and academic “experts” like David Rebovich say that conservative pro-Life voters “have no place to go” and therefore can be ignored by Republicans. But many pro-Life voters are Democrats (ditto for gun owners). Forrester, ignoring reality, got into a well-publicized spat with New Jersey Right to Life and saw his lead among pro-Life voters drop from 56-32 to 46-38 in two weeks, without any increase among pro-abortion voters. No Republican should win less than 80 percent of the pro-Life vote. If Forrester had won 80 percent of the pro-Life vote, he would be Senator-Elect today.
3. No one has yet explained how “right-wing extremist” Scott Garrett won a higher percentage than Forrester in the allegedly “socially moderate” 5th Congressional District. And don’t look for the answer in the press or from Dr. Rebovich, who always seems to be wrong - they’re still in shock.
4. Inexplicably, Forrester not once referred to Lautenberg as a liberal (neither did Haytaian in 1994 - another losing race in spite of a massive national GOP trend), even though the former and future Senator had among the highest liberal ratings in the Senate - always in the 95-100 percent range. Polling indicates that conservatives outnumber liberals in New Jersey by 2-1. But the Forrester campaign seems to have foolishly believed those numbers were reversed and that they, in fact, were really running in Greenwich Village.
5. Our polling in a variety of towns indicated a carefully targeted Democratic campaign to identify Forrester as a “right-wing conservative” among liberals. Forrester’s defensive response was to tell conservatives that he was in fact a liberal, rather than to tell conservatives that Lautenberg was one. If you’re going to be attacked as a conservative, you might as well get the upside. And that didn’t happen because Forrester was more afraid of being attacked than energizing the conservative Republican base that, outside of the 5th CD, stayed home.
6. Forrester was the only Senate candidate targeted for defeat by Sarah Brady who lost - coincidentally also the only one who never filled out an NRA questionnaire and therefore was not on the little orange postcard that the NRA sent out in other states (or the one sent promoting Scott Garrett).
7. Forrester focused his message on “integrity” (whatever that means - we are dealing with politicians here) and the “debate on debates.” By highlighting Lautenberg’s supposedly being afraid to debate they only lowered expectations. When Lautenberg held his own (all he had to do was not drool on TV) Forrester lost any remaining rationale for his candidacy.
8. The centerpiece of the post-Torricelli campaign was an endorsement by “Uncle Tom” Kean, who has not endorsed a winning candidate in a competitive race since 1985 (unless you count Bill Clinton in 1996 or Rush Holt in 1998). The Forrester campaign should have looked at Kean’s record back in 1987 at the height of his “popularity” when he endorsed 10 GOP State Senate candidates in tight races and all 10 lost (he also “un-endorsed” 3 GOP Senators, all of whom won).
Republicans continue to lose because of the leftward drift, not in spite of it. And an even bigger problem is the perception that the party is anti-Catholic. Running “Republicans” who continue to emphasize how pro-abortion they are doesn’t help. Even non-pro-Life Catholics perceive “pro-choice” Republicans as having latent anti-Catholic prejudices. The election returns back that up.
It’s been 30 years since Republicans ran a Roman Catholic in a state that is majority Catholic - that’s just dumb. And the drop in GOP percentages is not just a New Jersey problem - with “pro-choice Republicans” at the helm, Republicans have taken a major nosedive in Catholic suburbs from Boston to St. Paul in the last decade. And this will continue as long as the party is controlled by a small group of elitist rich (and of course non-Catholic) liberals who fit the stereotype of what Democrats say Republicans are.
With another great Republican election night passing New Jersey by, maybe it is time for New Jersey Republicans to follow the rest of the nation’s lead rather than defy it and move back to the right. Again and again we are told that some liberal “Republican” is the new Golden Boy, only to see them lose on Election Day. It’s time for a change and the first step should be a total housecleaning at the Republican State Committee, starting with Joe Kyrillos.
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Rick Shaftan (who is not Catholic) is a political consultant for “conservatives with the guts to win.” The president of Neighborhood Research, a polling company and Mountaintop Media, which produces TV, radio and direct mail, his clients were 12-0 on Tuesday, with one race still in doubt. Among his successful clients this year were conservative Democrat Russ Pitman, who defeated 20-year liberal Republican incumbent Len Kaiser for North Arlington Mayor, conservative freshman Virginia Republican State Senator Ken Cuccinelli, and the Coalition Against the Tax Referendum which defeated a proposed Northern Virginia Sales Tax increase by a 55-45 margin.
Opposed by Brady and not endorsed by the NRA, see what happens when you run as a moderate, nobody on either side likes you!!!!Revelations 3:15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Our ads centered on 9/11 and the war on terror, and how Lautenberg was out of touch with America and too extreme for New Jersey on the issue of opposing the death penalty for terrorists who murder Americans, and a vote to cut $1 billion from the intelligence budget and $80 billion from the defense budget. We pointed out that if it were up to Frank Lautenberg's extreme views, the killers of Daniel Pearl and even Osama bin Laden himself would be spared the death penalty. The ads were called too "divisive".
We also raised the age issue in three major ads, the softest focusing on the sheer hypocrisy of his criticism of Millicent Fenwick being "too old" for the Senate at age 72, when he will be 79 in January. The hardest ad simply ran a video medley, not unlike the Rush Limbaugh audio medley, showing a bumbling, incoherent Lautenberg from their first debate. The ad ended with a big question mark and was punctuated with voices saying "What?" "Huh?" etc.
None of our ads were factually incorrect. They were smash-mouth politics, which is desperately needed to knock off a nasty, fear-mongering SOB like Lautenberg.
The Forrester campaign REFUSED to run a single one of our ads. Meanwhile Lautenberg was beating their brains in every day on NYC and Philly networks. We told them they would lose. They did. There was never a question.
Pascoe and his team did not even run a single ad at ALL for THREE WEEKS after Torricelli pulled out, wating precious time to define their candidate to the public and losing an opportunity to crush Lautenberg with attack ads and build his negatives while he was still not funded and while the Democrats were still in disarray.
MAke no mistake, despite what was written above, this race was totally winnable using advertising. We were heavily involved in the ads for Chambliss, Talent and Jeb Bush. Those were all highly aggressive campaigns committed to destroying their opponents. They all won. Pascoe and the Forrester team thought it was out of bounds to attack Lautenberg over 9/11 and his disgraceful record on terror, defense and intelligence. However the Chambliss team saw no problem in shredding a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran over national security issues. THIS is the difference. You either win through TOTAL WAR, or the Democrats will defeat you through lies, fear and deception.
The Forrester failure shows how fear of waging total war against the Democrats can lead only to failure.
Wow. This I did not know....
IF this is true, then I am delighted that Forrester lost.
I have maintained on many threads over the past couple of years that New Jersey is a scumbag little pissant state, hopelessly lost down the liberal toilet forever. But I now wonder if maybe New Jersey is a decent place after all and it is the New Jersey Republican Party that is the pack of scumbag little pissants.....
Wowza!
This guy Rick Shaftan sounds like somebody you hire if you are a conservative who wants to win.
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