Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Time has an article on incoming White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and his five-point plan for optimizing Republican victories in November. The philosophy is that Republican gains are pretty much out of the question at this point, so they're going to play to the base to stem the tide as much as possible. I have no idea if this is the right thing to do when independents have turned on your party, so I can't comment politically. But wasn't playing to the Republican base the idea when they were trying to win the general election in 2004? Dammit Karl, throw me a bone here.

In any event, here are the five prongs of the GOP electoral pentagram, with the benefit of my riotously successful analysis:

1. Immigration enforcement at the Mexican border. After the huge protests in the streets of most major American cities, I no longer think immigration is an electoral winner with anyone but the Republican base. So to the extent that's what Bolten's trying to do, it's a good plan. But Hispanics have been voting Republican more and more in recent elections, and a soft approach to illegal immigration might have proven the tipping point, denying Democrats one of their longtime bases of support. The hardline approach by the Bush administration, though, might turn Hispanics away from the Republican Party for decades. There's local precedent to this theory: conservatives in California successfully passed Proposition 187 in 1994, a voter initiative that barred illegal immigrants from non-emergency social services. But doing so turned enough Hispanics away from the Republican Party that California went from being a presidential swing state as late as 1992 to being one of the most Democratic states in the country. If the administration's tone in 2006 has the same effect nationally, fantastic.

2. Change the tone of discussions on the economy by winning over Wall Street. Basically they want to extend the tax cuts on stock dividends and capital gains. Now, I have family members who are Republicans entirely because of capital gains taxes, but I was pretty swayed by John Edwards' argument that taxes should be higher on income acquired through wealth (i.e. not doing anything) and lower on income acquired by work (i.e. we encourage people to work hard to make money). As for the political ramifications, I have no idea, but this policy plank reminds me of 1993 when the early Clinton administration focused almost exclusively on cutting the deficit (an idea noticeably absent here) to convince Wall Street bond traders that the economy was sound enough to justify their investment. It worked then. With the deficit still in terrible shape, I would be surprised if these tax cuts won Wall Street over.

3. Better PR. Now, see, I'm biased, but I thought the reason that the Bush administration was getting such negative press on Medicare, Iraq and the economy was that they were doing a terrible job on all three fronts, not that they weren't trying hard enough to promote their successes. But Josh Bolten disagrees, so away we go. Trouble is, I think the president's credibililty is too far gone for his arguments on any of these fronts to succeed, assuming they even exist. Which, let's be honest, I don't.

4. Take a hard line on Iran. Yikes. I mean, this could very easily go like 2002, where Democrats get stuck between wanting to look tough on national security and wanting to stand up to the president. Of course, if Democrats come up with a viable alternative for dealing with Iran, or if Democrats stick together in saying that Iran's not a real threat but the issue is just a political game the Republicans are playing, this may not prove an electoral winner. My knowledge of the policy here is limited, so I don't know if Iran's a threat or not, but there's got to be a hefty chunk of Americans no longer willing to trust the administration on anything having to do with Middle Eastern threats. In any event, Democrats should really have no problem coming up with a tough anti-terrorism policy that takes into account Iran's actual menace.

5. Do a better job courting the press. Wasn't this #3? This mostly involves hiring Fox News' fair-and-balanced analyst Tony Snow to be Scott McClellan's replacement as press secretary. I guess having someone more, you know, effective than McClellan might not be a bad idea. How this will stem losses in November, though, I'm not sure.

Funny how reading that made me more optimistic than when I started. Go team!