All Politics is Local

Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President – and How Conservatives Can Win Them – Ed Morrissey (Crown Forum)

Comedian Darrel Hammond used to do a bit on Saturday Night Live playing former President Bill Clinton, usually in a bar, trying to come to grips with something and uttering the line “what the hell happened?!” It was that familiar refrain that sadly became the catch phrase of Republicans following the 2012 Presidential election as they tried to understand exactly what the hell happened!

Conservative blogger, writer and radio host Ed Morrissey reminds us of the painful details of what was clearly a White House ripe for the taking following a 2010 Republican mid-term blowout, President Barack Obama mired in the controversy of Benghazi, and the mess that is Obamacare. And yet it didn’t take long to see the Election Day handwriting on the wall for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with his lack of testicular fortitude and inability to close the deal to send Obama packing.

 

Well now Morrissey not only dissects what went wrong, but how serves up a roadmap for how to fix the problem in 2016 and take politics down to a granular level in his new book, Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President – and How Conservatives Can Win Them. Morrissey spent time on the ground researching and investigating not only the so-called battleground states, but those pivotal counties within those all-important states.

There are a handful of political prognosticators that have the ability to drill down into the ground game that has become part and parcel of winning national elections and in many cases even statewide races. Morrissey is one of those folks. His deep dive into politics at the micro-level really proves that all politics is local and that successful candidates will have to custom craft their messaging to target these microcosms of voters. This is truly an intriguing proposal for victory, it will interesting to see if the Republicans are will to take up the mantle.