House Democrats are responding to last week’s complete and utter meltdown by overhauling their communications strategy. They’re obviously in need of a change after taking the heat on this, this, this, this, this, this AND definitely that. Or, if you don’t have time to look at all those, this will do.

Democrats kicked off their effort to communicate what exactly it is they think they’ve been doing for the last 9 months yesterday at a pizza party where which “top advisers to the party’s leadership called on every Democratic lawmaker to amplify domestic accomplishments, from raising the minimum wage to expanding college aid, in a series of events back home in their districts.”

Democrats do their best to spin the new communications plan as a means to “brag about their accomplishments,” but the frustration engendered by record low approval ratings and a series of legislative setbacks clearly shows. A Democrat aide told CNN: “We put in long hours over the last 9 months. …We need to communicate that. We can walk and chew gum at same time. Now is the time you take in the fall to communicate that.”

Also worth nothing, in today’s Boston Globe, under the headline, “Tsongas’s slim victory signals a derailed Congress,” Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos writes about the lessons of last week’s stunning near-victory by Republican Jim Ogonowski in a solidly Democrat district in Massachusetts: “…[T]here are very few people outside the Democratic leadership who believe that Congress is on the right track. … It now seems as though the Republicans … have regained some of their political footing.”

READ MORE:

• Speaker Pelosi’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week
  
• What They Said About “The Biggest Political Misstep” of Nancy Pelosi’s Speakership
  
• What They Said About Rep. Stark’s “Ugly Moment”
• CNN: Pelosi Suffers Key Losses
• MSNBC: “A Difficult Week for Nancy Pelosi and Democrats”

Tagged as: General
Posted 23 Oct 2007

In case you might have missed it Friday, two stories – one in CQ Today (“Tough Week for House Democrats Buoys GOP”), the other in CongressDaily (“For House Democrats, this was a bad week.”) — discussed the recent legislative failures and public relations embarrassments for the Democrat Congress. This theme spread into weekend coverage with even The New York Times editorial board throwing up its hands in a Saturday piece: “Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. … It was a very frustrating week in Washington. It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.”

• In the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol writes, under the headline, ‘Epitaph for a Congress,’ “The Democrats engaged in endless efforts to make sure the war really was lost. They failed. Now it looks as if the war, despite the Democratic Congress’s best efforts, may well be won. It’s the congressional Democrats who are the losers. And so could be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. Are the American people likely to elect the candidate of a party that has tried its best to lose a winnable war?”

• On the same note, US News & World Report’s Michael Barone writes under the headline, ‘We’re Not In 2006 Anymore:’ “Democrats are coming face to face with the fact that there’s a war on — and that Americans prefer success to failure. If the choice is between stalemate and withdrawal, as it seemed to be in November 2006, they may favor withdrawal; but if the choice is between victory and withdrawal, they don’t want to quit — or to undermine the effort. Last week, Democrat Niki Tsongas won a special election with only 51 percent of the vote, in a Massachusetts district where John Kerry won 57 percent in 2004 and would have run much better in 2006. History doesn’t stand still — we’re not in 2006 anymore.”

• And CQ Weekly goes with a cover story titled, “A Crisis of Confidence in Congress,” and says that “a broader theme that emerges from recent polling … is that the public simply doesn’t think Congress is doing anything. In a follow-up last month to the poll that produced the 18 percent rating, Gallup found that people cited variations on that theme as their reasons for disapproving of Congress. Nearly one in five said Congress wasn’t passing anything; 16 percent said it wasn’t making enough progress in ending the war; 14 percent said it needs to pay ‘more attention to the needs of the people;’ and 10 percent said it needs to ‘stand up to the president more.’ And in an ABC News-Washington Post poll late last month, 82 percent said Congress had accomplished ‘not much’ or ‘nothing’ this year.”

A Conference offering from last Thursday, “Speaker Pelosi’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week,” can help explain to you how we got here.

Tagged as: General
Posted 22 Oct 2007

House Republican Conference just published a new Web video entitled “Spotlight on Abuse.” Watch it below or here.

House Republicans are still seeking signatures to our petition to make all earmarks subject to a debate and vote in the House. Democrats prefer to keep earmarks veiled in secrecy. To date, zero Democrats have signed the petition, and to force a vote we need 218. We need fiscally responsible Democrats to join us in this effort. So far, none have.

Pull back the blinds. Let the sunshine in. Support Republican earmark reform petition by sending this video everywhere.

While you’re at it, read more on Democrat earmark abuses.

Tagged as: Democrats Abuse of Power, Earmarks
Posted 02 Oct 2007