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MEHLMAN SPEAKS. The American Spectator had breakfast with Ken Mehlman today, and got his perspective on the midterms. He said:
1) The election must be framed not as a referendum, but as a choice. When the question isn't "are you happy now?" but "who do you want, going forward, to handle taxes, national security, and judges, the conservatives or the liberals?," then the conservatives (and, by extension in most cases, Republicans) do better.2) The generic poll numbers in the past few weeks have major errors. a) the polls have sampled a significantly higher proportion of Democrats than actual turnout has shown over the past 25 years. b) the Democratic voters and the Democratic-leaning districts are "less efficiently allocated" than Republican ones, so that whereas the Dems have a big edge in already-Democratic districts, the race in the battleground GOP-held districts is 50-50 -- and that's even with the mis-sampling. 3) Despite the polls, actual turnout in primaries has belied the idea that Dems are more motivated. In 39 contested Demo primaries this year, the turnout was below 30-year averages in 36 of them. But GOP turnout hasn't been significantly lower than usual.Obviously Mehlman is the RNC chief and his commentary may or may not be forthright, but for what it's worth, there it is.
