Confessions Of the Advocate

TW: These ex-post facto confessionals from campaign insiders always intrigue me even if I doubt even the ex-post facto perspective is completely without agendas. Steve Schmidt, McCain's former campaign manager, has made several headlines speaking bluntly about the sorry state of the Republican party. Therefore I suspect he is burning up what limited credibility within the party he had remaining. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager also made some remarks. Here are some highlights from a recent roundtable:

Via Dana Milbank at WaPo:
Schmidt's comments-
"...On the Bush-Cheney drag: "The first night of our convention was President Bush and Vice President Cheney. I literally thought by the second night of our convention we could be down 25 points."

On Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin: "That is one of the two most consequential interviews that a candidate for national office has given, in a negative way, the other being Roger Mudd's interview of Ted Kennedy . . . when he couldn't answer the question of why he wanted to be president."

...On the Republican Party: "It is near-extinct in many ways in the Northeast, it is extinct in many ways on the West Coast, and it is endangered in the Mountain West, increasingly endangered in the Southwest . . . and if you look at the state of the party, it is a shrinking entity."

...Schmidt spoke openly of McCain's reluctant choice of Palin after hopes of running with former Democrat Joe Lieberman were scuttled by the right, which threatened a convention floor fight. "That would have had the effect of blowing up the Republican Party," he said, "and when you look at all the challenges we had during the 2008 election cycle, blowing up the party wasn't one of the menu items of things that were going to improve our situation."

...[Schmidt] joked about the GOP leadership vacuum ("this 'Lord of the Flies' period"), mocked the party's presidential strategy ("Hold the South and we'll spend $80 million trying to flip Ohio")

...He willingly accepted responsibility for denying Palin the right to speak on election night, because "if you lose, the concession speech is a singular moment" that "acknowledges the legitimacy of the victory and refreshes, if you will, the constitutional order."

...[on Obama]As a political proposition, his first 100 days have been successful," he said. "His approval rating is in the 60s, there has been dramatic improvement in the 'right track' number, he's had success . . . at passing legislation, and the Republican Party as a matter of reality in the first 100 days has not done anything to improve its political condition."

Plouffe's comments-
"I think the scoreboard of how many House Republicans voted for a certain bill is a flawed measure, because the truth is there's very few House Republicans that worry about the middle of the electorate anymore," the president's former campaign manager said.

"We've won all there is to win in the House, so these folks are worried about their primaries, and Newt Gingrich is calling all their shots and pulling out the dusty playbook from 1994 and saying, 'Just oppose the president, and maybe if things don't go well you'll profit.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042304209.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns