Posted on 09/01/2008 6:22:17 PM PDT by Born Conservative
Lou Barletta is George Bush.
In a nutshell, portraying the Republican Hazleton mayor as the local version of President Bush is the main Democratic strategy so far in the 11th Congressional District race between Barletta and U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, the incumbent Democrat.
And this isn’t the only place where Democrats are betting on the wildly unpopular Republican president to lead them to victory.
As the Republican National Convention gets under way, Democrats all over the country are doing their best to play up ties between the president and Republican congressional candidates, especially incumbents, in hopes of increasing Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and winning the White House.
“Where they do (have ties to Bush), we’ll make them walk the plank,” said Brian Wolff, the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which helps elect Democrats to Congress.
The strategy is most visible in the presidential race, when Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama says the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is “running for George Bush’s third term.”
“Bush is incredibly unpopular, so Democrats are trying to use the president to damage other Republicans … tying them to Bush in every possible way,” said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, a Washington newsletter that tracks congressional races.
Several recent nationwide polls put the president’s approval rating among voters at 29 percent.
In Pennsylvania, it’s even worse. Only 21 percent of likely voters graded Bush’s job performance well in a recent Franklin & Marshall College poll co-sponsored by Times-Shamrock Newspapers.
No independent polling is available in the local race, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has aired three commercials that tie Barletta to President Bush. Kanjorski’s campaign aired one commercial praising him for standing up to the president “so seniors could buy affordable medicine” and two others that tie Barletta to Bush.
The connections between the president and Barletta aren’t hard to find.
In his 2002 congressional race, they shared many of the same views. They included Barletta’s support for tinkering with Social Security to allow some diversion of the payroll tax to personal retirement accounts, a view Barletta has since renounced. The president also appeared in a campaign commercial for the mayor during that campaign.
When Bush visited Lackawanna County the day after the 2004 Republican National Convention, he singled out Barletta. “Hey, Lou, fill the potholes,” he said.
Barletta also led Bush’s campaign efforts in Luzerne County that year. A month after the election, Bush invited him to a Christmas dinner at the White House.
But their paths diverged in 2006 when Barletta mounted his campaign against illegal immigration. By a rally in Hazleton in June of last year, the mayor was denouncing a proposed Senate bill that Bush favored.
“With all due respect, Mr. President, you’re wrong,” he said.
Barletta said the Kanjorski/Democratic strategy “could be worse.”
“He could be trying to tie me to Congress,” the mayor said.
That’s actually one element of Barletta’s two-pronged counterattack — paint Kanjorski as a Washington insider who ignored the country’s gasoline and Social Security crises and other major problems.
“Only one of us have been in Congress for 24 years in what is now probably the worst Congress in the history of this country,” Barletta said.
Congress’ approval ratings are even lower than the president’s.
Second, Barletta is emphasizing his differences with Bush.
“I’m not in Congress. It’s impossible for me to vote for his initiatives,” Barletta said. “He voted with President Bush on many instances while he was in Congress.”
Asked to name one instance when Kanjorski voted with Bush, Barletta chose the congressman’s initial support for the war in Iraq.
Asked if he would have voted against the war, he hedged.
“I’m not saying I would or wouldn’t have. I’m just saying he’s voted with President Bush more than I have,” Barletta said.
Barletta’s tactics are also part of the national strategy to elect Republicans to Congress.
“I tell this to all our candidates. I would run against Washington, D.C., first and foremost, because nobody thinks we’re doing a very good job,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which aids Republican candidates. “And frankly, I wouldn’t be afraid to be critical of our own party. You know I’m a very proud Republican, but we haven’t done everything right.”
Ed Mitchell, Kanjorski’s media consultant, thinks neither of Barletta’s strategies will work because Republicans controlled Congress and the White House from 2001 to 2007.
“There’s no reason to think that were he elected to Congress, he wouldn’t be voting with McCain on all those things that McCain wants to do that Bush did,” Mitchell said.
Vince Galko, Barletta’s campaign manager, said the Democrats’ bid to link the president and the mayor will fail.
“This race will ultimately not be about George Bush,” Galko said. “Mr. Kanjorski insults the voters’ intelligence by assuming that it will be. In four months, George Bush is gone.”
The strategy of tying candidates to an unpopular president has worked before.
In 1994, voters dissatisfied with Democratic President Bill Clinton swept Republicans
into complete control of Congress for the first time in more than four decades. In 2006, with Bush’s popularity on the wane, the tide turned, and voters handed Congress back to the Democrats.
Christopher Borick, Ph.D., the director of the polling institute at Muhlenberg, said it’s a no-risk strategy to associate Republicans and the president.
“It’s not going to work in all cases, but you find the points where there are connections and you amplify them,” Borick said. “The more people associate Barletta with George Bush, the better Kanjorski’s chances are.”
Political analyst Michael Young, Ph.D., said the strategy could be less effective in the Barletta-Kanjorski race.
“I think they (the Barletta campaign) pay a price for the Bush association but maybe not as big a price as a Republican incumbent in Congress,” Young said. “Barletta has established himself as an independent and a very strong independent and that sort of inoculates him.”
Jerry Shuster, Ph.D., a political communications professor at the University of Pittsburgh, thinks the political ties to Bush aren’t enough to defeat Barletta.
“Everybody supported Bush in ’04,” Shuster said. “If he were today espousing his solidarity and support of the war effort or policies of George Bush on the economy and health care, it would be different. Past history is not going to work for them.”
I'll continue to look for a link...
George who? He has been such a lame duck for so long I really have to wonder if people care that much anymore. I really wish the Republicans would use Truman’s line too: Obama has been going around for so long acting like he’s president, people want a change.
Prediction: Barletta will *cream* Korruption Kanjorski.
No Bush wanted amnesty for illegals.
After Barletta wins, the corrupt news media will forget that they claimed that he and President Bush were unpopular.
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