GOP strategy for 2014 midterms: ‘Keep the lights on’

The new political calendar year brings bulletins that the serial troubles of the Affordable Care Act will translate into an overwhelming advantage for the Republicans in the midterm congressional elections this November. 

As evidence of this rising red wave, the generic ballot test from CNN/ORC International polling released the day after Christmas showed a monumental shift in just weeks, from the October shutdown numbers that favored Democrats 50 to 42 percent to the year-end Obamacare-driven numbers that now favor the Republicans 49 to 44 percent.

Polling also shows that Democrats trail Republicans in voter enthusiasm, and that voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes President Barack Obama than for one who supports him.

The numbers are so positive for the GOP that the victory strategy has become very simple. “Keep the lights on,” a member of the congressional leadership told me about the overall plan to gain seats in the House majority and to win the Senate.

“That’s the plan, keep the lights on, nothing else,” he said. “No shutdown, nothing like it. Door open. Lights on.”

When pressed, my source said that the stories of woe about the federal HealthCare.gov hub, as well as the 14 state-built hubs, are so unpredictable and maddening that there is no other story that can gain and hold national attention. 

The latest from Iowa underscores the point. In 2012, Iowa voted confidently for the president and the Democrats; it is not an electorate that resists the Affordable Care Act. As of Dec. 27, 36 hours after the repeatedly extended final deadline, the Iowa Department of Human Services announced that all 16,000 Iowans who had already enrolled through the federal hub must reapply through the state Department of Human Services, either by using the state website or through a call center. The explanation: The federal site failed to transfer data properly, and now thousands of families are in limbo.

“It’s Obamacare,” my source said of 2014. “Are you for or against it? And every Democratic member of the House voted for it I don’t know how many times.”

The GOP has a 32-seat House majority in the 113th Congress. The most optimistic estimate I have seen for the GOP is a gain of the 10 toss-up seats in the 25 Democratic-held districts rated competitive. This presumes no losses in the three toss-up races of the 18 Republican-held districts rated competitive. The Koch brothers’ surrogate super-PAC, Americans for Prosperity, has already launched Obamacare attack ads against two of the most fragile Democrats, Rick Nolan of Minnesota and Ann McLane Kuster of New Hampshire, and this template appears certain to be used against all toss-up incumbents.

What would wreck this Republican victory parade would be a repeat of the GOP government-shutdown antics of last October. 

My House source tells me that the congressional rebels have learned from their folly. In the December Ryan-Murray budget compromise vote, which passed easily with 169 Republican “yea”s, some of the 63 Republican “nay”s admitted afterward that they had dissented only to avoid primary challenges, not as an act of defiance; they were pleased the matter was settled.

The successful Ryan-Murray budget vote is said to be the new model for 2014: lots of tempestuous tea party rhetoric followed by expedient obedience to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

My source tells me that votes over the debt ceiling, immigration reform and all the other significant social and fiscal debates in 2014, such as the ongoing one over extending unemployment insurance, will go forward with routine Republican melodrama but little intransigence.

Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics.com, told me in mid-December that, if the election were held then, the GOP would have had a high probability of taking the majority in the Senate, with a net pickup of seven seats.

“As soon as the shutdown ended,” Trende explained, “and people started paying attention to Obamacare,” the Republicans pulled ahead in seven red states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012: North Carolina, Georgia, West Virginia, Arkansas, Lousiana, South Dakota and Montana.

Trende added that the Republican wave has already brought purple states into play, where the polls show the incumbents at risk: New Hampshire, Virginia, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado “and even Michigan.”

Surprisingly, what most favors the GOP in the Senate races isn’t the exasperating Obamacare mistakes alone, but rather the overall decline of the president’s approval ratings since the beginning of 2013.

“In the Romney states,” Trende explained, “the president’s approval is in the 30s. In purple states, it is mid- to low 40s …  In midterm elections, the races are a reflection of (the president’s) approval rating.”

More of the tea party contretemps from the shutdown could weaken the Senate wave. Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina face tea party primary contests that will mar their status and drain their resources.

Nevertheless, the national theme of every midterm, following Trende, is a referendum on the party in power. The Affordable Care Act’s demonstration of sloppiness, along with the looming facts of tens of millions of families without trustworthy health insurance policies because of bureaucratic ineptitude and denialism by the Obama administration, points to a year of defensiveness, blame-shifting and retreat by the Democrats in Congress.

As for Republicans, they plan to embrace more of the “do-nothingness” that is disdained in the polls, but not as much as Obamacare is. In 2010 the GOP’s favorability was 10 points lower than that of the Democrats, and the party still swept into power in the House. The “keep the lights on” plan begins 2014 with muted confidence.