makayla3tg1: Forum Making Money

Does the 2012 primary campaign really start in January 2011? Perhaps not. Most of the presumed contenders for the Republican presidential nomination have apparently decided to skip the Hispanic Leadership Conference despite its location in Florida, a key state in the early part of the primary schedule. Of the generally-recognized candidates for the ticket, only outgoing Governor Tim Pawlenty has confirmed his appearance next month:

It was billed, in part, as a forum for the 2012 Republican presidential field to speak directly to Hispanics – a replica of the vaunted Conservative Political Action Conference, but tailored to the fastest-growing slice of the electorate.

Yet, when former Gov. Jeb Bush, former Sen. Norm Coleman and former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez open the first Hispanic Leadership Network conference next month in Miami, the only potential presidential candidate confirmed to attend – so far – is Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. …

A poor showing could raise doubts about the commitment of Republicans to court Hispanics, one of the open-ended questions of the 2012 presidential cycle.

It could, but there are some mitigating factors. The conference is being held at about the same time as the RNC winter meeting, for one thing. That won’t usually require attendance by candidates, but the organizers within the party will most likely opt for the RNC meeting rather than the first iteration of this conference. The organizers may want to make this “the CPAC for Hispanic Republicans,” but the actual CPAC is just a couple of weeks later. The activities in Washington will overshadow Miami, and the organizers of the HLC will probably be attending CPAC anyway.

The general timing may not work well, either. Unlike the 2008 cycle, when both parties had an open primaries for the first time in decades, the GOP can take its time putting a pre-primary campaign together. No one will feel rushed into making January announcements; most candidates need time to organize for a national campaign. Some of those sending regrets also hold political office now, such as Senator John Thune, Governor Mitch Daniels, Governor Rick Perry, and Governor Haley Barbour (who hasn’t confirmed his response either way). Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin have media jobs that they will want to extend as far as possible before having to take hiatuses after announcing their intent to run. Pawlenty’s term of office ends this month and he’s been organizing for a while, which means those pressures won’t keep him from outreach efforts like this.

The organizers for HLC perhaps should have rethought their scheduling and picked a date farther into spring, perhaps in April or May for their first-ever conference. Its close proximity to CPAC alone will mean that potential attendees may have to decide whether to spend money in Miami for a limited event or spend it in DC for CPAC where they can network on a much wider basis. The GOP definitely needs to organize to make their case to Hispanic voters, but organizers need to keep logistics in mind, too.

Politico said he wasn’t, now Fox News (and Frum Forum) say he is. To help you process this news, read Ed’s post from this morning about Obama potentially spending a cool billion on the 2012 campaign and then have a look at Jay Cost’s graph of Republican fundraising over the last four cycles. Said Cost, believing that Steele was set to bow out, “In the end, this is what did Michael Steele in. He could not raise the money, and that just will not do moving forward.”

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

So that explains why he didn’t show up at the RNC chair debate: He was lying low, cagily making it look like he wouldn’t run again so that, er … more contenders would jump into the race. Frum Forum’s whip count puts him at around 45-60 votes in the first round of balloting, with 85 needed to win; several of his former aides and allies (Reince Priebus, Gentry Collins, etc) are in the race as challengers, so a key question will be what happens to their supporters if/when they’re eliminated in the first few rounds. Are those supporters so disgruntled with Steele that they’ll gravitate to a consensus alternative, like Saul Anuzis? Or are they actually clubby RNC insiders who prefer Priebus and Collins to Steele but will resort to the chairman as a next best option if their preference is eliminated? Or will some outsider with fundraising appeal, like Norm Coleman, sweep in to provide yet another alternative?

There are only two reasons to conceivably back Steele, as I see it. One: The GOP did, after all, win 63 seats on his watch, and he’s been lying low enough over the last few months that at least it looks like the gaffe-o-rama phase of his chairmanship is finally over. All of which is well and good, but in that case I urge you to follow the link up top and eyeball Cost’s graph again. The question isn’t whether the GOP did well this year, it’s whether it could have done better if the RNC had been flush with cash. Gentry Collins argued that poor fundraising might have cost Republicans an extra two dozen House seats, but given that he’s now challenging Steele for the chairman’s position, take that estimate for what it’s worth. Two: If you believe that, in an age of online donations and targeted giving to campaigns, the RNC will never again be relevant the way it once was, then maybe it’s better to keep Steele in place. It’ll avoid a nasty public squabble between pro-Steele factions, led by Palin, and anti-Steele factions like the “Bush establishment,” and it’ll spare us the spectacle of Steele doing interviews to dump on the GOP after he loses. Plus, if Steele’s reelected, Republican outside groups are bound to start planning way ahead to pick up the slack in case the RNC can’t get its act together to fulfill its traditional fundraising and GOTV roles. No one cares about the RNC as an organization, only that its functions are being done and done well by some conservative outfit. If Steele’s reelected, it means that some other outfit or outfits will be pressured to step up. Inconvenient, but not fatal. I think.

surface encounters rock tops surface encounters rock tops

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Forum Making Money

No comments:

Post a Comment