It’s hard to argue with Nate Silver’s data. Unless Karl Rove is very careful, his Conservative Victory Project super PAC is likely to be counterproductive. The record is pretty clear that conservative anti-establishment candidates have not needed much money to achieve an almost 50% success rate in Senate primaries since 2010. The GOP’s preferred candidates have been dropping like flies despite having huge advantages in resources, so having Rove toss them a million extra dollars isn’t likely to help much. However, it will help the insurgents raise their profile and raise money in protest. The insurgents don’t need much money to compete, but they do need some. The more free media they get, the less money they need, but Rove’s intervention is likely to increase both.
Mr. Silver gets to the heart of the problem with this:
The voters who do turn out in Republican Senate primaries are likely to be highly informed consumers of conservative-friendly news media outlets such as talk radio, prime-time shows on Fox News and conservative magazines and blogs. They may also weigh the endorsements of prominent conservative politicians and organizations. An insurgent candidate who is presented in a favorable light in these outlets may have plenty of ability to reach her target voters, even if she is spending little or nothing on paid advertisements and outreach efforts.
Mr. Rove’s efforts could backfire, therefore, if they result in the insurgent candidate receiving more sympathetic treatment through these channels; the amount of so-called “earned media” that the insurgent receives could outweigh the extra advertisements that the establishment candidate is able to afford.
And so we are back to a theme we keep hitting. The mighty right-wing wurlitzer has turned from an advantage to a liability. By making conservatives stupid, right-wing media makes people stop aligning their interests with any sane strategy or set of policies. They don’t care what Karl Rove thinks anymore. They care what Ted Nugent thinks.
Until the GOP establishment fixes that problem, they’re doomed.
Feb 2013, the month where both Karl Rove and the NRA were recognized as negatives.
Funny. I was about to respond to “Do We Have a Spending Problem?” with “We have a Ted Nugent problem,” but refreshed the page and found that you’d written this. Unfortunately, he’s not just the GOP’s problem.
Seems like Nugent, as the currently trending “stupid du jour”, is performing the important function of filling the void left by Akin, Palin, Angle, O’Donnell, etc.
Rove’s initial successes were based on polarization of the electorate because 51% were still homophoebic, xenophoebic etc. But now that 51% is at 47% (Romney’s final total) and dropping. The more fresh bloody Nugent/Coulter/Limbaugh meat is fed into both echo machines, the more unthinkable it becomes to entice one of the 53% to the other side. But Rove is now battling within his “permantent minority” to restore the initial scenario where the über-crazies vote, but don’t poison the broader message by opening their über-crazy mouths and all he’s succeeding in doing is making them louder, angrier and more visible. I would guess that quite a few of Romney’s 47% could be pushed to the other side.
Of course, it’s takes a hell of a lot more than 53% total to overcome gerrymandering and push the right into the margins where they belong. I wonder what Silver and Wang see as the necessary conditions for that to happen.
Ask and ye shall receive:
http://election.princeton.edu/2013/02/03/slaying-the-gerrymander/#more-9434
The only reason that campaigns need so much money is for paid media saturation. The only reason for paid media saturation is to convince voters of something that is contrary to their inclinations.
The candidate who can turn out large numbers of voters without paid media has an advantage. Thus folks who already have positive name recognition or folks who play against type or folks who can generate a lot of free coverage are in high demand no matter how solid their understanding of policy is.
Keep in mind that Faux Noise is on Rove’s side on this one. So it’s not clear the Tea Party will be able to sustain its electoral momentum. On the other hand, Faux needs to be careful not to be labeled part of the RINO establishment or they’ll have no friends (and no viewers) at all.
Good point, except that Fox viewership just hit its lowest point since August 2001 — I’m not sure this is likely to reverse that trend. It might very well accelerate it.
I’ve been seeing a lot of evidence of Fox having gone out of favor with our local wingnuts. This area voted about 75% for McCain and Romney so Fox has traditionally been very popular and was the TV channel of choice at most businesses. But not lately.
A local restaurant has a few TVs on and they’ll change the channel if a customer asks and no one minds. Up until a year ago one side of the restaurant was always on Fox – I’d ask to be seated at the other side. But now few watch Fox so its rarely one of the channels. At the car dealership yesterday (routine maintenance) they had a very big sitting area with two large screen TVs, one on Fox one on CNN. A few people were watching CNN, no one was looking at the Fox screen, most weren’t watching either. A year ago most of the people in the waiting room were rapt watching Fox.
I’ve also overheard a few of anecdotal comments from the local wingnuts that they no longer trust Fox. Now, at first when I heard this I was hopeful that perhaps they were realizing they were being lied to by the right wing media, but I quickly learned that what they were saying was Fox is too establishment wingnut and they prefer “real” wingnut sources instead.
What this suggests to me is that the wingnut frankenvoters have indeed grown out of control of the mad scientists who created them. Rove’s idea of throwing a few million at establishment candidates in primaries won’t have a prayer of addressing this issue, but I suspect that’s not his real goal anyway. This is how he makes money these days – gets PAC contributions and takes a big percentage as a fee. His spending hasn’t influenced elections for quite a while and that isn’t likely to change.
But, no if the Billionaire faction wants to reign in the crazy they have a big challenge ahead. Since they fund most of the right wing media they in theory could get all of the media to tone down the message. But their media operation is intensely decentralized – from communications in churches to smallish web sites to local AM radio all the way up to the bigger operations and then Fox itself. If they try to get that whole operation to tone down the message they will either start losing the audience (which may be what is happening on Fox) or get a backlash as people figure it out.
Very interesting.
It’s what everybody was saying. 2012 was the make it or break it moment for the GOP. Well, they didn’t make it.
I think the the extreme wingnut movement will gradually burn itself out. It will not disappear, but will move back to the fringes where it has always been. But by the time that happens, they may well have destroyed what’s left of the Republican Party.
If the TP retains control of the GOP, it will become a fringe party continuing a rear-guard action in intensely conservative parts of the country.
Purple states like VA, NC, IN, on the other hand, will continue trending blue.
If the establishment wins back control of the GOP, the TP will form a third party and the GOP will find that their constituency is too small to win elections.
There’s also a problem with the Villager Echo Chamber:
Hearsay Economics
Of course, they don’t listen to any old bum on the street; they listen to people of repute, people in their circle. But the repute in question has nothing to do with technical expertise; hey, Admiral Mullen is a serious person, so if he says something on any subject, such as economics, it must be solid.
And where do the reputable people get their information? Why, it’s what they heard somebody in their circle say. It’s hearsay economics all the way down.
“highly informed consumers of conservative-friendly news media outlets”
Actually that’s an oxymoron, a Nate should know as well as anyone.
Perhaps the GOP establishment brand is doomed. But with Wall Street immunity and impunity, erosion of earned entitlements, destruction of public employees’ unions, civil liberties’ rapid disappearance, embrace of very destructive energy production methods, and the surging concentration of power and money into fewer hands, their agenda looks as if it is doing very well indeed.