The L.A. Times reports that White House political guru Karl Rove is pursuing a three-pronged plan that he is confident will help the GOP hold onto power it can in Congress:
As the midterm campaign enters the homestretch, the GOP congressional juggernaut that has dominated national politics for more than a decade may be over. Polls show Democrats extending their leads in pivotal races across the country. But the man largely responsible for the Republicans’ glory days — and arguably still the most powerful political operative in the United States — is far from discouraged.
Instead, Rove is giving a virtuoso performance designed to prevent the Democrats from taking control of the House and Senate or, if that is no longer possible, to hold down the size of the Democratic victory to make it easier for the GOP to come back in 2008. His plan is three-pronged: to reenergize any conservatives who may be flagging; to make sure the GOP’s carefully constructed campaign apparatus is functioning at peak efficiency; and to put the resources of the federal government to use for political gain.
And this week will begin a busy one, indeed:
This week, Rove and his staff will turn to their endgame.
They will oversee a mobilization of political employees from Cabinet agencies, Capitol Hill and lobbying firms — many of them skilled campaign veterans — to more than a dozen battleground states. Many will act as “marshals,” supervising the “72-hour plan” developed by Rove in 2001 with Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director who now heads the Republican National Committee.
Various news stories have noted that the Democrats are aware of how the GOP has software that successfully targets a variety of often-unusual demographic groups, identifies their interests, makes a pitch to them and gets maximum turnout of these groups on Election Day. According to these stories, the Democrats have made strides to start to get on the same footing, but they’re not there yet.
In a sense, given the poll numbers and all that has gone wrong under GOP full-control-of-the-branches-of-government, this election is a test of whether a masterful three-pronged plan can essentially trump all. If it works this time, it probably means the GOP has this down to a science (which it is probably still refining) and the Democrats will remain the minority party for some time to come.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.