Today's front-page story in the Washington Post about political briefings given to top diplomats and diplomatic agencies such as the Peace Corps provided an extra bounty for those on the left and right who see Karl Rove as the political mastermind behind all things in this White House. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the panel, is seeking more documents relating to questions about whether the briefings complied with Hatch Act provisions that generally make it illegal for most federal employees to engage in political activities while working on the taxpayer dime. Capitol Briefing, for now, will leave those questions up to the Foreign Relations Committee and other congressional panels exploring this issue, and instead focus on the politics.
Sen. Joseph Biden is seeking documents relating to questions about whether the briefings complied with Hatch Act provisions that generally make it illegal for most federal employees to engage in political activities while working on government time
Rove-Taylor PowerPoint: GOP "conduct" caused losses, not Iraq
Today's front-page story in the Washington Post about political briefings given to top diplomats and diplomatic agencies such as the Peace Corps provided an extra bounty for those on the left and right who see Karl Rove as the political mastermind behind all things in this White House.
In documents provided to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the State Department included a more than 20-chart PowerPoint presentation given by Sara M. Taylor, then the director of the White House's political affairs office, to a group of ambassadors in early January during a meeting the diplomats had with Rove in the West Wing. The PowerPoint is the summation of Rove's thinking about the 2006 elections, in which Republicans lost 30 seats in the House and six in the Senate.
Here's the link to those documents. The ambassadors, on Jan. 4, received a slightly more detailed briefing than the one given to senior officials at the General Services Administration a few weeks later, including a list of the top 36 House Democratic incumbents being targeted for 2008. (GSA officials only got a glimpse of the top 20 targets, but they did get a listing of top House Republican incumbents the White House is trying to protect.)
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the panel, is seeking more documents relating to questions about whether the briefings complied with Hatch Act provisions that generally make it illegal for most federal employees to engage in political activities while working on the taxpayer dime. Capitol Briefing, for now, will leave those questions up to the Foreign Relations Committee and other congressional panels exploring this issue, and instead focus on the politics.
A review of the presentation shows that Rove believes Republicans lost their majority mostly because of corruption-tinged Republicans in Congress. One page of the presentation is headlined: "Corruption" Voters' Top Issue. It then highlights, according to exit polls, 41 percent of voters who considered corruption an "extremely important" issue. Another chart indicates the number of "corrupt" lawmakers and "complacent incumbents" who were ousted from their seats.
Interestingly, the Iraq war is not prominently featured as the main reason for the losses. Another chart is headlined: Dems Won Corruption, Econ., Iraq Voters. It seems to spread the blame among those 3 issues for the losses, highlighting the percentage margin Democrats won from the overall electorate in the midterms. Of those issues, Republicans face a 21-point deficit among voters focusing on Iraq, and 20-percent deficits among voters focusing on the other issues.
And the Rove-Taylor briefing shows that this White House's congressional losses are about on par for other "wartime presidents". According to Taylor's PowerPoint, the average president overseeing a war loses 32 House seats and 5 Senate seats in midterms. There's also a chart showing that the 30-seat loss in the House falls in the median for presidents dating back to Woodrow Wilson.
Finally, Rove contends that the Democratic gains in Congress came not out of any ideological ground gained by liberals but because middle-of-the-road independents fled the Republican Party. According to exit polls in the Rove-Taylor charts, the percent of the electorate identifying itself as Democrats stayed roughly the same over the previous four elections, 39 percent in 2000 and 38 percent in 2006. The liberal percentage of the electorate was 20 percent in 2000 and 20 percent in 2006.
The presentation notes a 31-point drop in Latino voters for Republicans in 2006, a net loss of 8 points among suburban voters, and a 14-point drop among self-identified moderates.
Claiming that the 2006 elections did "not yet [show] an ideological shift," the Rove-Taylor presentation again placed most of the blame for the losses on lawmakers, in a highlighted box at the bottom of one of the charts summing up the White House belief about the 2006 losses: "More about rejecting Republican conduct than about supporting Democrat ideology."
