Defense is not a position that House Republicans of the 112th Congress are accustomed to playing. ...NYT
They'd like to lose that "obstructionist" label but they don't really want to stop obstructing, according to a report in the Times. How to have a better image during an election year without having to work for it?
Senior Republicans are eager to minimize the drama, letting the party’s presidential candidate, when he is finally chosen, take the lead.
“Most of us expect the major decisions aren’t going to be made this year,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a former chairman of the House Republican campaign committee. “It’s a very political year. The big thing for us is to not be part of the conversation instead of trying to inject ourselves into it.”
But attracting positive attention while avoiding confrontation is proving to be a challenge in an election year, particularly for a group that in 2011 seemed to relish showdown after showdown. ...NYT
Then there's the bad blood among members of the Republican leadership in the House.
Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor, whose strained relationship recalls the days of the intraparty intrigue that bedeviled Newt Gingrich as speaker, have had to spend time trying to stamp out perceptions that they are working at dangerous cross-purposes. ...NYT
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Everyone has been talking about it -- and now it's official. The numbers are in. Republican voter turnout during the primaries has been unusually low -- lower than in 2008. Neither the candidates nor the party itself are generating much enthusiasm. The ongoing dissension among Republicans in Congress can't be helping. Listening to the report this morning, it was hard not to think... Jeb Bush as something -- anything -- to raise the severely lagging enthusiasm of Republican voters?
A report in the Washington Post focuses on the upcoming primaries.
... Let’s see if we can make any sense of this rambunctious story so far, and what the Republicans and independents in the first four states that held contests have told us about their hopes and fears — and volatility, insurgency and populism — in an unsettled America.
For now, they are angry and anxious and uncertain, sick of a bunch of elites in Washington who can’t fix their lives and suspicious of all promises, and their 2.6 million votes reflect the deep cracks in a party of people who can’t seem to get along.
This has been the most turbulent Republican presidential race in a generation. ...WaPo
But then, Obama has been up and down, too.
The electorate is just as deeply conflicted about President Obama. One day this week, a Gallup poll deemed him one of the most polarizing presidents ever. Yet a day later, in a Washington Post-Pew survey, 55 percent of all respondents put him first, ahead of Romney and Gingrich, in understanding the problems of ordinary Americans.
The professional political class earns big money by analyzing statistics that relate to voter preference and behavior. This may be the year that those metrics produce static rather than clarity. ...WaPo
Speaking of money, Obama is not likely to stay ahead in the race for campaign money. If there's anything to which Republicans have access -- if not actual votes -- it's obscene amounts of money. We've begun to recognize and accept the damaging truth that money wins over votes every time. When we get to the point where we accept that it's not just that money wins over votes, but that money now replaces votes, maybe we'll do something about it.
