Patrick Ruffini's blog

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I just had the chance to catch up with GOP chief deputy whip and recent Veepstakes contender Eric Cantor here on the Press level of the Xcel Center. Win or lose, I get the sense that one trend that will continue is a younger, more reformist cohort of House Republicans. Cantor projected a large GOP freshman class in 2009 -- after what Kevin McCarthy reminded us yesterday was the smallest freshman class since 1914 to come in this Congress.

Our top opportunities to knock off Dem incumbents? TX-22 with Pete Olson, WI-8 with John Gard (Steve Kagen is certifiable), PA-10 with Chris Hackett (full disclosure: I consult for Hackett), and CA-11 with Dean Andal.

I asked him about blue state pickup opportunities. One of the big frustrations currently is that when a blue seat comes open, it's automatically assumed that it will stay blue, while a conservative district becomes a tossup and the Democrat is allowed to redefine themselves as in step with the district. This is a problem. Cantor is hopeful that Carol Shea-Porter can be knocked off in NH-1.

He's not willing to take Virginia out the swing state column, but thinks that John McCain wins a competitive race in a state with a large military presence.

For more: GOPYoungGuns.com.

People who know me will tell you this falls into the beating-a-dead-horse category, but I still maintain that if this Rudy Giuliani had shown up during the campaign, he'd be on the stage tonight. 

Speeches like this are what made me believe in the first place. This may have topped his 2004 convention performance.

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Sarah Palin has polarized the establishment from the grassroots in a way we haven't seen in quite some time. This is happening both within the GOP and in the war between the GOP and the media/Democrats. Establishment Republican consultants are still waiting for Palin's first  round of interviews to declare this a done deal, though the speech last night went a long way towards assuaging their initial concerns.

But the fact still remains that if you are thrilled about Palin, you have a grassroots sensibility. If you are not, you have an elite/establishment sensibility. The delegates on the floor are the grassroots. Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan are the elite. The dividing lines have always been there, but Palin provides the ultimate litmus test.

You can put me firmly with the grassroots on this one.

Before Palin, McCain was running an establishment campaign. He had a conventional strategy, relied on big dollar fundraisers, and didn't fire up the base. Part of this was who John McCain is -- he is not instinctively a red meat kind of guy. While McCain's bipartisan bona fides allow him to run stronger than a generic Republican, it was unclear that he could get the volunteer energy to squeeze out those last three points that only a good GOTV operation can bring. That's because the party faced an almost epic enthusiasm gap. This enthusiasm gap threatened to negate any of the benefits of McCain's bipartisanship. McCain's initial approach would bring him close -- but not close enough.

Palin injected a badly needed jolt of people power into the campaign. The maverick spirit is not gone. It's been reinforced in some key ways. McCain is still the same bipartisan guy he always was -- but Palin provides the grassroots with a reason to crawl on glass to make the phone calls and knock on doors and get out the vote. We didn't have that before. We have it now. Polls don't completely factor it in -- and the establishment tends to discount it as playing to the base. But it is the dark matter of campaigns -- that stuff that gives the campaign a good vibe that lets it put its best foot forward. 

Last night represented a triumph of grassroots politics in a campaign we thought had left it for dead. And just as with Republican icons before, the establishment will once again be proven timid and wrong. 

Full text below.

Have at it.

Watch this guy. He has a good, forward-looking sensibility. This is California Rep. Kevin McCarthy speaking to bloggers this morning about his role as chairman of the Platform committee:

He was also there to promote the GOP Young Guns effort, which finds young up and coming candidates to take back seats that should rightfully be ours.

Palin's speech is particularly important tonight. The American people don't know her, and so this will be their introduction.

And therein lies the problem for the media. Dan Quayle reinforced the "not ready" narrative by making numerous gaffes, including at his announcement, and otherwise acting in ways unexpected of a Vice President.

Sarah Palin hasn't done that. Her introduction speech was pretty strong. Tonight, she'll put some more meat on the bones. Once the American people see that Palin in the national spotlight is not a bumbling idiot, or out of her league, Democrats won't have a leg to stand on.

By far the most odious part of the smear-mongering around Sarah Palin is its intrinsic dishonesty. Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy may be off limits -- but why didn't it factor into the vetting process. It's not the pregnancy. It's the vetting.

Yeah. Right.

This is like questioning the agility of Obama's rapid response operation by replaying the Obama is a Muslim rumors in network primetime and assessing if the campaign is doing enough to respond, which is essentially what the media is doing by spreading the Daily Kos rumors. Make-believe biological impossibilities give way to startling revelations about the Palin family which open a door to questioning McCain's judgment.

If McCain's judgment is suspect, then the media basically maintains that Bristol Palin's pregnancy should have derailed Palin's VP prospects, had McCain known (forget the fact that he did). Is this what progressives and the media actually believe?

There's not a whiff of crisis in the air here in St. Paul. Just an enormous sense that the media has overreached and is really stepping in it.

I'm getting ready to make a belated entry in St. Paul, so I will be dark for most of tomorrow (as I have been for most of today tying up loose ends), but something about the Palin pregnancy controversy compels me to make a slightly provocative point that I also think aptly sums up the Republican identity in this week of GOP-centrism.

At its heart, the Republican Party is the party of regular people.

I don't mean this to come off as Average Joe chauvinism. This is not a point about income or wealth, though contrary to the stereotype of the GOP as the party of the rich, there is a strong argument to be made that we represent the Great American Middle in contrast to the Democrats' who represent the very rich/educated and the very poor/uneducated.

When I say regular, I mean regular in the sense of apolitical, well grounded in family and community, and as far away from a Beltway mindset as you can get.

Republican leaders at the national level have tended to tap into apolitical America more. Theirs are usually not the candidates who are scheming from birth to be President. They come to politics later in life after success in business, the military, or other worthwhile endeavors. If being a C-SPAN junkie were a prerequisite to being elected to Congress, we'd have veto-proof Democratic majorities in both chambers. If you upped that requirement to a Harvard degree, it'd be 80-20.

Nor would Democrats particularly dispute this. They claim the mantle of intellectual superiority as proof of their fitness to rule. They believe only those with the right "pedigree" should be elected President.

All of this brings me to Sarah Palin.