Patrick Ruffini is one Republican who thinks the RNC needs to pay more attention to down-ticket races:
If you’re a conservative looking at the odds, what should really scare you is not the 80 to 90 percent chance that Barack Obama is the next President. It’s the very real chance that Democrats could get to 60 or tantalizingly close to it in the Senate. President Barack Obama is unfortunate. President Barack Obama with 60 votes in the Senate means a socialist America.
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The NRSC and the NRCC, like the McCain campaign at the national level, are being buried by the Democrats’ massive financial advantage. In 2006, the RNC was able to come to the rescue of these committees. In one case, I believe one of their independent expenditures tipped the outcome with their humorous, effective, and perfectly legitimate ad against Harold Ford in Tennessee.
This time, no such help has been forthcoming in Senate races. The RNC IE unit has targeted one and only one candidate: Barack Obama, with $15 million.
Extraordinary circumstances compel us to begin considering different strategies, including a break with the RNC’s tradition as the Presidential committee in Presidential years.
The RNC’s IE unit should drop at least $15 million on 4 or 5 key Senate races that are salvageable in the last three weeks.
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And McCain should start explicitly making the argument for divided government, with him as the only hope of preserving it. This is unlikely to be a voting issue at the Presidential level, but we need to get the idea percolating that we are about to elect Obama with unchecked, unlimited power. Power corrupts… absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc.
It would seem to be a wise strategy, especially if McCain is unable to make any appreciable progress in cutting in to Obama’s mounting popular vote and electoral college advantages in the week after tomorrow’s debate.
