Mike Murphy

In an op-ed published in Time last month, Republican political consultant Mike Murphy wrote, "[it] was a huge shock to the GOP when Barack Obama won Republican Indiana last year. The bigger news was how he did it. Latino voters delivered the state. Exit polls showed that they provided Obama with a margin of more than 58,000 votes in a state he carried by a slim 26,000 votes. That's right, GOP, you've entered a brave new world ruled by Latino Hoosiers, and you're losing."

I was on the ground in Indiana during much of the 2008 election campaigns working as an Organizing Fellow on the Latino Steering Committee for then-Senator Barack Obama's Campaign for Change in East Chicago. When I began work there in July, many Latino voters were undecided, having supported Hillary Clinton during the long, dramatic Democratic Primary that had opened many wounds.

What persuaded many East Chicago Latinos whom I met to ultimately vote for Obama in '08 was that they felt vilified by the Republican Primary's chest-thumping over immigration reform -- led by then-Congressman Tom Tancredo.  East Chicago's Latinos also shared the increasingly widespread disillusionment with the GOP over the Bush administration's two terms in the Oval Office, terms that left a disproportionately high number of Latinos from places like East Chicago dead on battlefields in the Middle East. These were but two of the many, many grievances East Chicago Latinos had that Republican candidates failed to effectively address during the campaign, if they addressed them at all.  

So...why didn't Republican candidates immediately move to evaluate, engage and inspire Latino voters in the aftermath of then-Senator Clinton's withdrawal?  This was a question I asked my fellow "Hopemongers" throughout the campaign.  The most common response I got was that Republican campaigns were catering to ideologues' anti-immigration bravado.  I found this response to be implausible in that it called into question the competence of the Republican Party's strategists, who horsewhipped their Democratic counterparts through most of the last three decades of American politics.  Or to put it particularly, many foul political qualities are now synonymous with Karl Rove's name; incompetence is not one of them.  

A more plausible variant of the "anti-immigration bravado" responses that were occasionally offered was that anti-immigrant ideologues were indispensable in the existing Republican campaign finance structures; but there is little evidence to support this claim.  

Whatever the reason the GOP chose to ignore (and in many cases, offend) the Latino vote, without it, the party's future would appear to be a series of increasingly humiliating election losses.  According to research done by the Pew Hispanic Center, "Hispanics now make up 22% of all children under the age of 18 in the United States -- up from 9% in 1980."  And the majority of these children [read: future voters] are the U.S. born offspring of immigrants.  One can thus surmise that the current and future states of the American electorate is one in which immigration will not be a vague historical statement of "uniqueness", but a flesh and blood reality of a vast, rapidly growing demographic of potential voters.  To continue to vilify the "illegal aliens" as "criminals" is just the sort of messaging that could create at least one generation of Latino voters with a deep-seated tendency to vote for the Democratic Party's candidates similar to the unanimity Ronald Reagan inspired among Evangelical Christians for the Republican Party.  The difference here is that Evangelicals were a noisy fringe of the overall demographic, whereas Latinos are poised to someday replace Caucasians as the majority demographic in the United States.

Murphy suggests that "[a] smart GOP would be deeply in the microloan and free-English-lessons business in immigrant communities," and that it would also avoid seeking the "cheap applause" of the anti-immigration right.  To Murphy, "cheap" is a quantified word.  He "made a career out of counting votes" and thus recognizes that a serious strategic approach to the GOP's future must accept that the electoral value of noisy anti-immigration posturing is plummeting at a rate roughly commensurate with its ability to win national elections. 

Republican Party strategists should take to heart the extreme sensitivity in the media during this week's Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor to any remark that can be spun into an overall ethnic-, "race-" and gender-related diatribe by Republican lawmakers (and therefore, the Republican Party) against all Latinas (and therefore, all Latinos).  This should come as no surprise to today's GOP strategists, as it was their predecessors who perfected the tactics that are now used against them. 

But Obama's in the White House now, and earlier this year the New York Times reported that "comprehensive immigration legislation, including a plan to make legal status possible for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, would be a priority in [President Obama's] first year in office."  While I have my doubts about just how much of a first year priority comprehensive immigration reform will prove to be, it will be a priority during President Obama's first term; and when comprehensive immigration reform happens, the party that calls it amnesty will fare far worse on election day than the one that supports it as necessary, justice, emancipation, etc.  However it's fed to the media, behind closed doors, what Mike Murphy's vote-counting counterparts in the Democratic Party see in comprehensive immigration reform is 12 million potential votes.

Unless the Republicans prefer losing successive elections by increasingly wide margins, they should encourage Republican lawmakers to stand with President Obama on comprehensive immigration reform.  I know.  I know.  But they broke the law!  They steal 'merican jobs!  They don't even speak English! etc.  The fact remains that a most of them are already us, as in We the People, as in citizens with votes to cast.  And many more of them will be of voting age or naturalized into the electoral processes very soon.  Republicans can't prevent this, and Democrat lawmakers are happy to let a Republican colleague look like a "racist" hillbilly asshole for interrupting a Supreme Court nominee during her confirmation hearing.

Therefore, Republicans should go out of their way to make comprehensive immigration reform as painless as possible.  Obama has mentioned having illegal immigrants pay a fine, as criminals.  Republicans on Capitol Hill could oppose this aspect of the reform bill as a show of good faith to the demographic at the heart of their landslide losses last fall.  Furthermore, Republican Party messaging has always revolved around the rhetoric of the "bootstraps" party of self-determination, manifest destiny, and the importance of family.  Well, these are the very principles that brought successive generations of Latino immigrants to the United States. 

Finally, when their man from Oklahoma, Senator Tom Coburn, interrupts a Supreme Court nominee by attempting to get on television with an innocuous "You'll have lots of 'splainin' to do," call him on it.  Blog, tweet, phone, email, etc. to let him know that interrupting a Supreme Court nominee with a wisecrack--any wisecrack--is not what he's paid to do during a Supreme Court nomination hearing, especially a wisecrack Time can easily interpret as "invoking a phrase familiar to fans of the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy, on which Lucy's long-suffering husband Ricky Ricardo (Cuban-American Desi Arnaz in real life) would often utter the refrain in exasperation at his zany wife's antics."  But before any of this can happen, Republicans must first recognize that the rise of the Latino voter is as inevitable as a naturalization process for the suspected twelve million undocumented immigrants in the United States.  Failing to do so is to insist upon the Republican Party's indefinite political irrelevance.

We've seen an awful lot of nasty verbiage from the chattering classes in response to the Sarah Palin resignation. Upon reflection, it says a lot more about them and what they think about the people who really support the Republican party than it reflects on Palin.

Let me first preface that I'm assuming Palin isn't stepping down because she is running off to the tropics with Rosie O'Donnell or has converted the Alaska pension funds into gold bullion in a numbered Zurich account. Assuming that she simply thought "going with the flow" was what dead fish do; this move still could be as useful to her ambitions for elective office as Plaxico Burress's marksmanship was to his football career. It does appear the Republican base were understanding of the move; but that still won't win a general election.

I'll also preface that I respect the opinions of those who simply and dispassionately think Palin is not presently ready to run for President, and will not make the effort to attain that stature.  I'm willing to reserve judgment until I see what Palin 2.0 looks and sounds like.

But I think we ought to at least appreciate that Palin took on the thankless task of trying to derail the Barack Obama juggernaut.  Unfortunately, it seems the DC insiders are for the most part more interested in fragging their own troops than leading the counteroffensive.

Two in particular are Micks gone wrong---Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy. As for our party, it's like they've thrown away their rosaries and enlisted in the Black & Tans 

Peggy Noonan once used her "force" for good. Sadly, she seems to have slipped the surly bounds of both political reality and good taste in her latest columm.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.

Since I have no reason to believe Ms. Noonan actually interviewed Palin before this writing this diatribe the concept of "facts lacking evidence" seems to kick in. But then again, I was busy learning a profession when Peggy was writing feel good speeches for President Reagan.  

It also seems that the alternative--the election of Barack Obama--was less "horrifying" to Ms. Noonan. Jeez.

Noonan then goes on to disparage the Republicans who identify with Palin's background. You see she really isn't  that blue collar and we shouldn't identify with the "politics of resentment"  And you see    " She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

If anything, the reaction of the Republican rank and file since her resignation announcement should demolish the lie that social conservatives and libertarians are "easy to command" . The entire media establishment  said the Palin decision was at the least "bizarre".  Evidently it was a bad thing now the Republican voter wasn't "easily manipulated" and reached their own conclusions.

You know Peg, I started in Brooklyn and you started there a decade earlier. I ended up at 'Cuse and you went to where, Fairleigh Ridiculous. The difference is my Irish folks don't put on the "lace curtain" airs, pretend we were like the Kennedys and trash the common folk for not being socially aware. Your loss.  

Then again, once you did work for CBS, maybe rooting for the MSM is like hardwired in your DNA. I dunno.  Never had that problem.

Now, for that other marksman of friendly fire, Mike Murphy.  Murphy is a Georgetown grad (one reason I, a Cuse grad, distrust him)  hailing from Grosse Pointe, MI, so there's little reason to think he's really encountered any appreciable number of working stiffs. And let's look at his resume. 

Murphy is a writer and Republican political consultant who has advised John McCain, Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jeb Bush.

(Yep, Arnold's been such a great Republican governor, Mike. Hope you aren't owed any IOU's. I hear Alaska still pays cash) 

Murphy's a bit less catty than Noonan, but still jumps all over someone whom he says he was an admirer of --McCain--for picking Palin.  And again, it's those terrible clueless people in Middle America who don't know what's good for them. 

 Palin profits mightily from a Republican blind spot. She has all the right smirking enemies in America's media elite. To them, Palin reeks of flyover America, that vast and corny collection of Nebraskas and Alabamas where the Army can always meet enlistment quotas and Tina Fey's private jet stops briefly to refuel. Red state Republicans see the snarky, elite attacks on Palin as an attack on them. And in some ways, they are.

I'm trying to figure out what Murphy's accomplishing here.  He can't be doing his buddy Mitt Romney any good by trashing the very people Mitt needs to get nominated. But then again, Murphy does MSNBC and is writing scripts in Hollywood. Maybe we just aren't that important to him anymore?

I may not be part of the meritocracy here, Mike, but, hmm, it's not like you haven't been associated with campaigns that crashed and burned----which you conveniently omit from the resume.  ( Hey, I never spent $42 million to lose what started as a dead-even statewide race to Hillary Clinton--by 12 points!)

I won;t even dignify the likes of John Weaver--last seen trying to get Huntsman in as the RINO hope after failing to get McCain to run as a Democrat--with a response. Nor Steve Chapman who thinks Palin's support is all due to looks, as if every Republican doesn;t have a gender gap.   

Lemme set this one up for ya, Peg and Mike. You guys have been running the Republican party from your little salons for over a decade. And running it into the ground while the both of you have personally done wonderfully.  And you think the rank-and-file weren't gonna notice?

You guys act like you are in the Omega House and we are the Delta House.

Let's see where a decade of poll tested, focus grouped, well researched, blow dried Republicanism got us from the professionals and party statesmen.  Sarah Palin's favorable rating is higher than that of the Republican party.  Hello, who's dragging who down?

Voters are turning against the center and that includes the professional consultant industry, K Street lobbyists, retread candidates (including the "heir force") and especially Republicans who'd rather attack their own party members instead of Obama.  Maybe we're tired of being told things like Arnold is pro-taxpayer or the GOP Congress was against wasteful spending.

I think we crave authenticity and the willingness to fight. And that's the last thing to expect from the old timers trying to keep their grip on the party. It's time for some "creative destruction" to the hackasaurses who can't see their way clear to respect the very people who are now the Republican Party 

I have a suggestion for any and all Republicans who do not want Sarah Palin to be our nominee in 2012.

How about....hmmmm....running a better candidate and explaining why he or she is better?

or isn't that haughty enough? 

Bill Kristol thinks Mike Murphy will be joining the McCain campaign soon. I haven't seen Murphy's work up close but he has a solid track record on McCain's 2000 Presidential run and Mitt Romney's 2002 governor run. More importantly McCain trusts Murphy and is willing to accept criticism. Kristol writes, "As observers of the 2000 effort know, he has a deep rapport with McCain — including an ability to tell him when he’s made a mistake."

I'm disappointed it's taken three months for McCain to get his campaign organized, but I'm starting to have hope they'll be able to develop themes to best position McCain to "NOT OBAMA" voters.