Priebus memo claims Wisconsin boost -- Politico

[bsteadman]

Priebus memo claims Wis. boost

Politico
Alexander Burns
6/5/2012

Excerpt:

"The GOP victory in Wisconsin's gubernatorial recall election was an "absolute disaster for President Obama" and represents a clear sign of Republican momentum heading into the fall presidential election campaign, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus argues in a memo set for release Wednesday.

In the memo -- shared early with POLITICO -- Priebus writes that the struggle in Wisconsin allowed Republicans to prime a first-rate operation in the state for the November election. And the results added up to a vote of confidence in the GOP's 2012 message on spending restraint and the size of government.

"Less than four years after Obama won Wisconsin, Democrats lost in an election of their own making. That's because the GOP excelled at our ground game, now giving us a significant advantage for the presidential race," Priebus argues. "Working with the Wisconsin GOP, the RNC ran joint voter contact Victory operations and opened 26 statewide offices. Since January, our volunteers made over 4 million voter contacts, more than the GOP did in the entire 2008 campaign and substantially more than Democrats and their union allies in this election. ... In the process, more than 3,400 Wisconsin volunteers have signed up to help the party. And the data collected by door-to-door volunteers for Governor Walker was all promptly added to the RNC's data center, thanks to the use of iPads, iPhones, and iPods."

He continues: "This race should draw a sharp contrast in the eyes of voters. On the Republican side stood Scott Walker--a man who kept his 2010 campaign promises and delivered. He balanced the budget, got Wisconsinites back to work, and put government back on the side of the people. It's certainly a far cry from what President Obama is offering."

By most assessments, Wisconsin is still a Democratic-leaning state at the federal level. Thanks to the recall campaign, it may also be the one state where Democrats can't count on a significant organizational head start over Republicans in the presidential campaign. And that's a real feather in the cap of Priebus, who was only two years ago a relatively low-profile state party chairman from Kenosha, and has now presided over both a financial turnaround at the RNC and a successful gubernatorial battle in his home state."
.................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-...st-125399.html

[bsteadman]

Priebus: Obama ‘Left Democrats at the Altar in Wisconsin’ -- Newsmax

Priebus: Obama ‘Left Democrats at the Altar in Wisconsin’

Newsmax
Paul Scicchitano
6/5/2012

Excerpt:

"RNC Chairman Reince Priebus predicted that Badger State voters will not forget that President Barack Obama “left Democrats at the altar in Wisconsin when they needed him the most.”

Appearing on CNN minutes after the Wisconsin polls closed, Priebus told host Wolf Blitzer that Tuesday’s recall election between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tom Barrett could have national implications.

“We’re here because of big unions and people around the country care about this state because what happens tonight could have an impact on whether we win Wisconsin or not in November,” he said. “I think that’s what you’re seeing around the country.”

Priebus joked that there would likely be a “circular firing squad” among Wisconsin Democrats on Wednesday if the Republican emerged victorious from Tuesday’s recall election as he eventually did based on network projections.

“President Obama is going to come in here in two months and he’s going to say, ‘hey guys remember me. You have to get me elected now president.’ And these Democrats are going to look at this president and say, ‘hey thanks a lot pal. We appreciated the help when we needed you most,’” according to Priebus. “I think that’s a dynamic that you can’t measure today Wolf but you’ll be able to measure it in a couple of months.”

Priebus, a native of the state, was also optimistic that a superior Republican ground game will even the odds for GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the traditionally Democratic state.

“For a long time it’s been a light blue state that can go red under the right circumstances. But I think we’ve consistently shown over the last couple of years that in tough battles Republicans can win here,” he said.

Priebus dismissed Walker’s advantage in outside funding, which CNN estimated at 6 to 10 times greater than Barrett’s.

“I think that the unions are spending a whole lot of money too that you don’t see yet,” he explained, citing involvement from organized labor like the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
......................

View the complete article at:

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Pri...6/05/id/441316

[bsteadman]

Red Flags All Over for Obama in Wisconsin

National Journal
Josh Kraushaar
6/6/2012

Excerpt:

"President Obama wasn't on the ballot in Wisconsin, but Gov. Scott Walker's decisive victory in last night's gubernatorial recall is a stinging blow to his prospects for a second term. The re-election was a telltale sign that the conservative base is as energized as ever, that the Democratic GOTV efforts may not be as stellar as advertised, and that the Democratic-leaning "blue wall" Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania will be very much in play this November.

Walker won by a bigger margin than he did in 2010, and with more overall votes. He carried 38 percent of union households - a slight improvement from his 2010 midterm tally -- a strikingly strong number given how he's been cast as the villain of labor. It's a sign of the cultural divide between national Democrats and blue-collar whites, one that is particularly acute for the president.

Obama's team is taking consolation in the fact that exit polling showed him leading Mitt Romney, 51 to 44 percent. But that's hardly good news: with near-presidential level turnout (and notably higher level of union turnout), Obama is running five points behind his 2008 performance. Replicate that dropoff across the board, and all the key swing states flip to Mitt Romney.

For all of Obama's political talent, he's been a major drag on his party since taking office. In 2009, Republicans won two hotly-contested gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, with the victors (Chris Christie/Bob McDonnell) now on Romney's vice-presidential short list. During the heat of the health care debate in 2010, Scott Brown picked up Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in deep blue Massachusetts. Later that year, Republicans regained control of the House, by winning a whopping 63 seats while picking up six Senate seats. And now, Walker wins the recall by a bigger margin than in the 2010 election, which was already a watershed year for Wisconsin Republicans.
All this suggests that something has to change fast for Obama to avoid the fate of his party colleagues come November."
...................................

View the complete article at:

http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2...or-obama-i.php

[bsteadman]

Three Takeaways From the Recall Vote

Real Clear Politics
Sean Trende
6/6/2012

Excerpts: - June 6, 2012

"The Democrats' attempt to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker came to an end Tuesday night, as the incumbent increased his victory margin beyond his five-point 2010 win over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. There are three important takeaways from this:

1) The results don't tell us much about 2012 . . . Basically, this spin from progressive sites right now has some truth to it (except that this is somehow good news for President Obama). This is a special election, held in June, to recall a governor. Special elections have notoriously poor track records predicting general election outcomes, and the presidential electorate will likely look different (and more Democratic) than this one.
..................................

2) . . . but the results do tell us something about 2012. At the same time, turnout exceeded that of the 2010 gubernatorial race, and this was a high-profile election effort. In other words, it was anything but your typical, under-the-radar special election.
..................................

3) In the long run, this matters a lot. Remember, Democrats didn’t hold a recall election because they badly wanted to hold the Wisconsin governor’s mansion. They didn’t try and recall 10 Republican state senators (and note that as of now, they appear to have taken back the state senate), or go all out for a state Supreme Court seat just to rack up the score against Republicans.

These elections were meant to serve two purposes. First, they were supposed to provide a show of force on the part of organized labor. Republicans in the upper Midwest once tread carefully around labor, not wanting to arouse unions’ ire -- especially after a series of ill-timed right-to-work initiatives precipitated an electoral disaster for the party in the region in 1958. - (bold emphasis added)

That is changing, and labor wanted to demonstrate that there would be real, negative consequences for passing laws such as the one Walker pushed through the legislature. Instead it looks like a paper tiger. Future GOP legislators are now less likely to be deterred by labor’s muscle, rather than more, especially as data increasingly suggest that the GOP can win the message wars on labor-related issues.

This ties in with the second purpose of the recalls: Labor wanted to stop additional laws from being passed, but it also wanted to prevent these particular laws from going into effect in Wisconsin. This fight was about balancing the state budget, but it was also about diminishing labor’s clout even further by hampering its funding source and by removing incentives for joining a public employee union in the first place. - (bold emphasis added)

Wisconsin -- and much of the region -- has been gradually trending Republican over the last 20 years, as Democrats performed steadily worse among white voters nationally. One of the few mechanisms remaining for transmitting Democratic ideas and information to white working-class voters were labor unions.

This law won’t provide immediate benefit for Republicans (aside from hampering labor’s get-out-the-vote efforts), but substantially weakening one of the last remaining Democratic firewalls in Wisconsin could result in a purple state that leans blue becoming a purple state that leans red over the next few election cycles.

That’s what this fight was always meant to prevent (or cause, from the viewpoint of the Republicans who passed the law). By failing, labor and the Democrats lost an important battle in an ongoing political war in a critical swing region."

View the complete article at:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...te_114391.html

[bsteadman]

MSM Reports Wildly Flawed WI Exit Polls To Spin For Obama

Breitbart/Big-Journalism
John Nolte
6/6/2012

Excerpt:

"You should've seen the MSM last night on Twitter. I make it a point to follow several of these folks in order to keep an eye on them, and the Wisconsin exit polls, released just after the state's polls closed at 8pm CT, showed the recall race between Republican Governor Scott Walker and his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, tied at 50/50.

And was the corrupt media giddy?

Oh yes they were.

Not only was the MSM giddy over the idea Walker might lose, but they then drip-drip-dripped all the internal numbers that spelled gloom and doom for our side. But the number the media was most excited to share was that exit polls showed Obama beating Romney in Wisconsin by seven points. ABC News says nine:

Wisconsin voters by 52-43 percent said they’d support Obama over Romney if the election were today, the ABC News exit poll found, by 43-37 percent picked Obama to do a better job than Romney handling the economy and by 47-36 percent preferred the president on “helping the middle class.”

Yes, the media is still quoting exit polls that couldn't even get the main event correct.

The results between Walker and Barrett aren't 50/50. It wasn't even close. Walker trounced Barrett by an even wider margin than when they squared off in 2010: Seven points instead of six."
......................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journal...-Comfort-Obama

[bsteadman]

Free Republic is running a thread titled, 'BREAKING NEWS: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker survives recall effort, NBC News projects [ticker]', which was started 6/5/2012 by 'Steelfish'

The thread references the election coverage provided by MSNBC.

View the complete Free Republic thread at:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2891981/posts