stumper

Notes from the Struggle for Republican National Party Leadership

2008-11-13T23:04:25Z

As the Republican Party struggles to find its footing and craft a message it is in search of new national leader. Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer is considering making a bit for that role along with jockeying from Republican Party chairs Saul Anuzis of Michigan and South Carolina's Katon Dawson. Michael Steele, a self-described Lincoln Republican and the first African-American to hold statewide office in Maryland as Lt. Gov., is also believed to be in the running; he is said to be announcing as early as today.

The choice of RNC head will signal whether the party's emphasis is going to be conservative, following the lead of stars like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford or Sarah Palin, moderate in the image of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist or Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or somewhere in between, like Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal. “We need to discuss within the party who will be the RNC chair and where the philosophy will come from--the North or South, Conservative or Moderate,” Greer says “and what the party should push over the next four years as a message. Someone like Katon believes that the message needs to be more focused on social issues as much as with government issues.” Greer and Gov. Crist are more moderate “live and let live” voices. Greer believes that for the party to grow it needs to nod to the values issues and then move on. “We need to say ‘yes’ loud on pro-life and faith and family issues but then move on and focus on important American issues. No one is sitting at home talking about abortion or the gay movement. We have to be about employment opportunity, economic issues and challenges, the education of our children and retirement. My position is you can’t go either direction [moderate or conservative] without responding to the other group first. You cannot build a house with a weak foundation.”

Palin Steals GOP Show

2008-11-13T21:30:22Z

By Catharine Skipp

Gone were the ruby red lips and matching peekaboo pumps; the big wink served up with red meat. There was no updo. The look was sedate, save for a maverick-y black leather jacket. The famous accent was toned down; there was nary a “You betcha” to be heard. But Sarah Palin made her mark, nonetheless. With 11 somewhat somber fellow governors at her back at this week’s Republican Governors Association Conference in Miami, Sarah Palin was introduced by Texas Gov. Rick Perry with a hearty, “She is just getting started!”

Palin sought to stay on message, as the governors pull together to remind the party faithful that the GOP power base has shifted to the state level, now that the White House is gone and their standing on Capitol Hill is diminished. She also sought to brush aside speculation about her own political future. "Let the pundits go on with their idle talk about the next election, what happens in 2012," Palin said. "Our concern should be about our state's next great reform, our next budget, our next opportunity to progress in the states that we serve." During the Q&A session afterward, it was clear she hadn’t persuaded the press to ignore 2012. “The campaign is over,” when asked why she was giving a press conference now. “I don’t want to talk about strategy within a campaign that is over. Just suffice it say that I, like every other governor, understands that it is very important that we are speaking to constituents, we are speaking to the people whom we are serving and you have to do that through the media so happy to do that today.”

And at a session dubbed “Looking Towards the Future: The GOP in Transition,” Palin, the pitbull of 2008, offered nothing but praise for the incoming president. “If he governs with the skill and the grace and the greatness of which he is capable, we’re gonna be just fine. And as he prepares to fill the office of Washington and Lincoln, know that this is a shining moment in American history."

But she showed she hadn’t lost the spunky sense of humor that helped make her such a sensation this fall. Talking to the governors in the plenary session, she gave them a thumbnail sketch of what she’d been up to since last they’d met. “It hasn’t been that long I think since we all gathered, but I don’t know about you, but I managed to fill up the time,” she quipped. “Let’s see, I had a baby, I did some traveling. I very briefly expanded my wardrobe. I made a few speeches, met a few VIPs, including those who really impact society like Tina Fey. Aside from that, it was pretty much same old, same old.”

Stumper Signs Off--For Now

2008-11-07T14:13:23Z

Progress

2008-11-07T13:42:56Z

McCain's YouTube Moments

2008-11-07T09:30:47Z

2/23/2007  Government Reform

Obama's YouTube Moments

2008-11-07T09:29:19Z

1/16/2007  Barack Obama: My Plans for 2008

The Senate’s New Power Players

2008-11-06T16:43:53Z

By Eleanor Clift

The Best of NEWSWEEK's Top-Secret Election Project, Vols. II, III and IV

2008-11-06T15:13:48Z

A 21st Century President?

2008-11-05T22:17:23Z

On Jan. 3, 2008, I arrived at the apartment of Paul Tewes, Barack Obama's Iowa state director, as the icy streets of downtown Des Moines filled with young Obamaniacs hugging and cheering, "We did it!" Upstairs, scruffy postcollegiate staffers squeezed between couches and credenzas to celebrate the senator's surprise victory in that night's Iowa caucuses. Cans of Bud Light covered every surface. Youth turnout, I was told, was up 135 percent from 2004, and the under-25 set alone gave Obama 17,000 votes--nearly his entire margin of victory. The next morning, a 25-year-old Obama supporter sent me an ecstatic email. "This," he wrote, "is our next president."

At the time, there was no way of knowing what would happen eleven months later. But I had my suspicions. It was clear to me that night in Iowa that Obama had begun to build the first 21st century campaign--a campaign with the potential, I imagined, to propel him to a 21st century victory in November. On Tuesday, we learned that both of these premonitions had, in fact, come to pass. The question now is whether Obama will fulfill his promise and pursue a 21st century presidency.

The litany of Obama's idiosyncrasies and innovations--as both campaigner and candidate--is nearly as long as it is familiar. For starters, he's black. (In case you missed it.) Less than 150 years ago, many Americans would've treated Obama as property. Now he's our president. That's progress--incredible, awe-inspiring progress. Similarly, Obama represents a new generation of American leadership--in both age and attitude. A mere 47, he urged voters from the start to reject the false dichotomies and "with-us-or-against-us" partisanship of baby-boomer politics--and defeated a Clinton and a Bush (at least symbolically) along the way.

Obama's innovations were technological as well. As you've probably heard, the Internet contributed to his stunning success. But he didn't just log on and let rip, like Howard Dean in 2004. Instead, Obama demonstrated how disciplined online activity can facilitate favorable offline outcomes. The Web enabled him to raise more than $630 million, which enabled to him forgo public financing, which enabled him to invest in an ambitious electoral map, which he then redrew mostly through the efforts of volunteers recruited and organized (you guessed it) online. A cratering economy and unpopular incumbent may have put the wind in Obama's sails. But these strategies were the sails themselves.

Fittingly, the results last night reflected the modernity of Obama's campaign. The Illinois senator not only overcame John McCain in states that had bedeviled Democrats for years (Florida, Ohio) or decades (Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada). He did it by running up the score across a diverse spectrum of growing demographic groups--and, as a result, building a Democratic coalition that looks a lot like the future of America.

Moderates, for example, now outnumber both liberals and conservatives; Obama won them by 21 points. He captured first-time voters by nearly 40 points. Today, more Americans are graduating from college than ever before; Obama transformed Bush's six-point advantage among alums into an six-point advantage of his own. In 2004, John Kerry won Latinos--the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group--by nine points. Obama won them by 36--enough to flip Florida, Colorado and New Mexico. The Democrat also inspired similar shifts among under-30 voters (from nine points to 34 points) and African-Americans (from 77 points to 91 points). Even the nation's fastest growing region--the West--went from a tie in 2004 to a 17-point Obama rout. "It's been a long time coming," the president-elect said last night in Chicago, quoting Sam Cooke. "But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America." Exhibit A? His voters. Thirty years ago, increasing the margins and turnout among blacks, Latinos, young people, college grads and Westerners wouldn't have made much of difference. This year, it made Obama president.

The question now is, "What's next?" Over the coming weeks, months and years, I'll be watching to see whether Obama pursues a truly 21st century presidency--that is, a presidency that prizes transparency, practices bipartisanship, privileges innovation over ideology, avoids the politics of demonization and calls on Americans to sacrifice for the greater good.

Over the last 21 months, the campaign has sent out mixed messages on this front. Early on, Obama refused to accept lobbyist donations and proposed numerous measures to increase government transparency--including a searchable online database of lobbying reports, congressional ethics records and campaign-finance filings. But Obama's secretive, corporate campaign obsessively controlled the media's access to friends, family and documents, often for no discernible reason, and declined (unlike McCain) to release the names of donors who contributed less than $200 to his cause.

In his speech last night, Obama revived a line first deployed at the 2004 Democratic Convention: "We have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States." But while he's crossed party lines on a few consensus issues in Senate--ethics reform, loose nukes, etc.--the president-elect has no real record of bipartisanship on thorny problems like immigration, campaign finance, global warming or earmarks (again, unlike McCain). On the stump, Obama floated above the fray, but he was perfectly content to unleash harsh ads under the MSM radar--including some thinly-veiled swipes at McCain's septuagenarian status. Despite making moderate noises on education and affirmative action, Obama has rarely voted against Democratic orthodoxy. At the debates, he was unwilling to ask Americans to give up anything greater than energy-inefficient light bulbs.

Am I saying that Obama should've run a different campaign? Hardly. In a presidential race, winning is the one and only goal--and Obama won big and brilliantly. But the fact is, political pressures--the incentives to conceal, or attack, or stubbornly adhere to Democratic doctrine--don't suddenly dissolve the moment the campaigning stops and the governing begins. In many ways, they grow stronger--especially in the midst of a crippling financial crisis. Last night, Obama asked us to believe that as president he would resist the same urges he periodically succumbed to on the trail. "This victory alone is not the change we seek," he said. "It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were." It'll be interesting to see how he plans to avoid backsliding. Maybe he'll mobilize online supporters to lobby for legislation, or appoint Republicans to his cabinet, or air health-care hearings live on C-SPAN. But to believe that politics ends on Nov. 5 is naive.

My suspicion is that Obama recognizes his 21st-century responsibility and will strive to govern accordingly--just as he recognized how to reach the voters of Iowa and, eventually, 52 percent of the electorate. Right now, all we have to go on is hope. But every improbable journey has to start somewhere.

'I've Got One for Either Party'

2008-11-05T19:29:09Z

'Really Reach Out to the Other Side'

2008-11-05T19:27:40Z

Bush on Obama: 'A Triumph of the American Story'

2008-11-05T17:02:55Z

The Results (So Far): 364 for Obama, 173 for McCain

2008-11-05T16:50:22Z

Obama, 364: Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Iowa, California, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington, D.C., Indiana, North Carolina

The Best of NEWSWEEK's Top-Secret Election Project, Vol. I

2008-11-05T16:09:02Z

Every four years, NEWSWEEK detaches a team of reporters to follow the presidential candidates from announcement speech to Election Day. The deal is simple. The "Project" staffers won't report what they learn until Nov. 5; in exchange, the campaigns give us unprecedented behind-the-scenes access. The information is so hush-hush, in fact, that no one who works on the weekly magazine--including yours truly--is permitted to read the finished product until a winner is officially declared. Which meant I was up until 4:00 a.m., reading away.

The Filter: Nov. 5, 2008... President Obama Edition

2008-11-05T12:56:49Z

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

Obama's Win: The View from Harlem

2008-11-05T06:49:10Z

By Jessica Bennett

Outside the Apollo Theater on Harlem's 125th Street, chants of "Obama U-S-A" echo through subway tunnels and roadways as the final words of the next president's speech--that familiar "Yes We Can"--broadcast through open windows and car radios. To describe the scene here almost sounds like a Lifetime special, except it is real: streets have been blocked off, while black, white, Latino, young, old celebrate peacefully, in multiple languages and urban dialects. "I honestly never thought I'd see this day," says Roland Jackson, a lifelong Harlem native who moved to Indiana six months ago, but came back today to vote. "It's the fulfillment of Martin Luther King's dream," says Richard Washington, 45. "Now we have a new legacy."

Beside me, two friends embrace--"change, man, change," one says, patting the back of his friend. "I'm going to cry," says Elana King, a 36-year-old Harlem native. "Not only is this historic because its a black man, but it's the first time we feel like we truly affected change."

Amid the clanging of pots and pans, the constant blare of car horns and scattered showers from a broken fire hydrant shooting water into the air off Broadway, camera phones are almost as abundant as the Obama paraphernalia: home-made posters, self-designed T-shirts, stickers, flyers and fountains of confetti. "Its like Mardi Gras," says a woman.

Just a lot more historic.

'If There Is Anyone Out There Who Still Doubts That America Is a Place Where All Things Are Possible... Tonight Is Your Answer.'

2008-11-05T05:03:46Z

America has spoken. Now, before 240,000 supporters in Chicago's Grant Park, our new president takes his turn. Here's Barack Obama's 2008 presidential acceptance speech, as prepared for delivery:

McCain Concedes: 'Obama Is My President'

2008-11-05T04:38:41Z

McCain's concession speech from the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Ariz. was everything it had to be--a generous, gracious reminder that when the campaign comes to a close what really matters is our shared enterprise as Americans. It was easy to forget in the heat of battle, but no one does bipartisanship better.

FINEMAN: Weariness at McCain HQ

2008-11-05T04:37:26Z

Over on Race to the Finish, Howard Fineman writes on the McCain camp's mood:

The McCain-Obama Call

2008-11-05T04:27:54Z

McCain called Obama at 11 p.m. Eastern. What they said, courtesy of Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs: