I find her walk back over Memory Lane in Politico today pretty interesting. She confirms what many assumed back in 2012-that she helped Todd Akin win the GOP primary just so she could face him in the general.
"Tom Kiley, my pollster, turned up some findings that seemed crazy to me. For example, less than one quarter of the likely Republican primary voters believed that Barack Obama had been born in the United States. These were the voters who could help tip a Republican primary to an archconservative, but that conservative would have a hard time winning the state. Yes, it was a three-way primary of equally viable candidates, but a subset of energized people with strong religious convictions and serious aversion to gay people, public schools, immigrants and reproductive choice could help elect someone like Akin."
"I began to consider whether it would be useful to help Akin spread his message, keeping in mind that he was the weakest fundraiser out of the three potential nominees."
"Akin’s track record made him my ideal opponent. Many of his votes in Congress contradicted his claim of being a fiscal conservative. While he opposed President Barack Obama’s authority to raise the debt limit, during the Bush administration, in 2004, he had voted to raise the limit by $800 billion. A vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s stimulus efforts, in 2001 Akin had voted in favor of a $25 billion stimulus package that mostly benefited large corporations and the wealthy. And he was a big earmarker: in one fiscal year he sponsored or cosponsored $14 million worth of pork and once sought $3.3 million in a special appropriation for a highway near nine acres he owned and was planning to develop. While opposing spending money for child nutrition programs, veterans’ health benefits, and disaster relief, he repeatedly voted to raise his own salary."
"His extreme positions on social issues and ridiculous public statements made him anathema to many independent voters. He sponsored an amendment that would define life as beginning at conception, thereby outlawing common forms of birth control. He voted against repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation. When the Affordable Care Act was being debated, he stood on the House floor and asked for God’s help in keeping the nation from “socialized medicine.” In 2008, he claimed in a House floor speech that it was “common practice” for doctors to conduct abortions on women “who were not actually pregnant.” He had made speeches calling for America to pull out of the United Nations and claiming the government had “a bunch of socialists in the Senate” and a “commie” in the White House."
"So how could we maneuver Akin into the GOP driver’s seat?"
"Using the guidance of my campaign staff and consultants, we came up with the idea for a “dog whistle” ad, a message that was pitched in such a way that it would be heard only by a certain group of people. I told my team we needed to put Akin’s uber-conservative bona fides in an ad—and then, using reverse psychology, tell voters not to vote for him. And we needed to run the hell out of that ad."
"My consultants put together a $1.7 million plan. Four weeks out we would begin with a television ad boosting Akin, which my campaign consultant Mike Muir dubbed “A Cup of Tea.” The production costs were pretty low, about $20,000, because we didn’t have to film anything. We just used pictures and voice-overs. We would spend $750,000 at first and run it for eight or nine days. Then we’d go back into the field and test to see if it was working. If it was, we’d dump in more “McCaskill for Senate” money, and we’d add radio and more TV in St. Louis and Kansas City. The second TV buy would approach $900,000. We hoped that some of our friends watching the TV ads would catch on and some of the outside groups would augment the last week with mail and radio. Sure enough, a radio ad calling Akin “too conservative” that went on the air in the closing days of the primary was paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. We would later find out that their rural radio buy was $250,000."
"As it turned out, we spent more money for Todd Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his whole primary campaign."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/todd-akin-missouri-claire-mccaskill-2012-121262.html#ixzz3idyNGoXk
It's a really interesting time for her to talk about this with the rise and rise of Donald Trump. I've argued that we are in the middle of one of the great troll jobs-maybe the greatest in an American presidential election since the GOP Know Nothing campaign of 1860
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
However, McCaskill clearly is a great troll of history too.
By the way, on a totally unrelated matter, the one candidate Hillary should really fear is Donald Trump.
Actually in a way you can compare him to Akin but in reality the supposed serious candidates-Jeb, Mario, and Scott Walker-have a record on abortion every bit as bad as Akin which is a little ironic considering that he was drummed out of the party.
Trump is probably still prochoice and he is not for destroying Planned Parenthood.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/trump-says-he-may-pick-woman-for-his.html
You never know-maybe we Democrats will troll ourselves and Trump really does beat Hillary. I doubt it-I still don't think he can win the GOP primary though like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.
But even so, he would have better policies than Jeb. My guess is that a Trump Administration would unnerve world governments and markets-especially with all his autarkic talk against China.
But many of his domestic and social policies would be better than a real GOP President and he probably would just go an entirely independent route ignoring his GOP party in Congress. It would be what economists love the most: a fascinating natural experiment.
McCaskill and Bill Clinton ought to get together.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/bill-clinton-republican-party-kingmaker.html
"Tom Kiley, my pollster, turned up some findings that seemed crazy to me. For example, less than one quarter of the likely Republican primary voters believed that Barack Obama had been born in the United States. These were the voters who could help tip a Republican primary to an archconservative, but that conservative would have a hard time winning the state. Yes, it was a three-way primary of equally viable candidates, but a subset of energized people with strong religious convictions and serious aversion to gay people, public schools, immigrants and reproductive choice could help elect someone like Akin."
"I began to consider whether it would be useful to help Akin spread his message, keeping in mind that he was the weakest fundraiser out of the three potential nominees."
"Akin’s track record made him my ideal opponent. Many of his votes in Congress contradicted his claim of being a fiscal conservative. While he opposed President Barack Obama’s authority to raise the debt limit, during the Bush administration, in 2004, he had voted to raise the limit by $800 billion. A vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s stimulus efforts, in 2001 Akin had voted in favor of a $25 billion stimulus package that mostly benefited large corporations and the wealthy. And he was a big earmarker: in one fiscal year he sponsored or cosponsored $14 million worth of pork and once sought $3.3 million in a special appropriation for a highway near nine acres he owned and was planning to develop. While opposing spending money for child nutrition programs, veterans’ health benefits, and disaster relief, he repeatedly voted to raise his own salary."
"His extreme positions on social issues and ridiculous public statements made him anathema to many independent voters. He sponsored an amendment that would define life as beginning at conception, thereby outlawing common forms of birth control. He voted against repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation. When the Affordable Care Act was being debated, he stood on the House floor and asked for God’s help in keeping the nation from “socialized medicine.” In 2008, he claimed in a House floor speech that it was “common practice” for doctors to conduct abortions on women “who were not actually pregnant.” He had made speeches calling for America to pull out of the United Nations and claiming the government had “a bunch of socialists in the Senate” and a “commie” in the White House."
"So how could we maneuver Akin into the GOP driver’s seat?"
"Using the guidance of my campaign staff and consultants, we came up with the idea for a “dog whistle” ad, a message that was pitched in such a way that it would be heard only by a certain group of people. I told my team we needed to put Akin’s uber-conservative bona fides in an ad—and then, using reverse psychology, tell voters not to vote for him. And we needed to run the hell out of that ad."
"My consultants put together a $1.7 million plan. Four weeks out we would begin with a television ad boosting Akin, which my campaign consultant Mike Muir dubbed “A Cup of Tea.” The production costs were pretty low, about $20,000, because we didn’t have to film anything. We just used pictures and voice-overs. We would spend $750,000 at first and run it for eight or nine days. Then we’d go back into the field and test to see if it was working. If it was, we’d dump in more “McCaskill for Senate” money, and we’d add radio and more TV in St. Louis and Kansas City. The second TV buy would approach $900,000. We hoped that some of our friends watching the TV ads would catch on and some of the outside groups would augment the last week with mail and radio. Sure enough, a radio ad calling Akin “too conservative” that went on the air in the closing days of the primary was paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. We would later find out that their rural radio buy was $250,000."
"As it turned out, we spent more money for Todd Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his whole primary campaign."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/todd-akin-missouri-claire-mccaskill-2012-121262.html#ixzz3idyNGoXk
It's a really interesting time for her to talk about this with the rise and rise of Donald Trump. I've argued that we are in the middle of one of the great troll jobs-maybe the greatest in an American presidential election since the GOP Know Nothing campaign of 1860
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
However, McCaskill clearly is a great troll of history too.
By the way, on a totally unrelated matter, the one candidate Hillary should really fear is Donald Trump.
Actually in a way you can compare him to Akin but in reality the supposed serious candidates-Jeb, Mario, and Scott Walker-have a record on abortion every bit as bad as Akin which is a little ironic considering that he was drummed out of the party.
Trump is probably still prochoice and he is not for destroying Planned Parenthood.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/trump-says-he-may-pick-woman-for-his.html
You never know-maybe we Democrats will troll ourselves and Trump really does beat Hillary. I doubt it-I still don't think he can win the GOP primary though like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.
But even so, he would have better policies than Jeb. My guess is that a Trump Administration would unnerve world governments and markets-especially with all his autarkic talk against China.
But many of his domestic and social policies would be better than a real GOP President and he probably would just go an entirely independent route ignoring his GOP party in Congress. It would be what economists love the most: a fascinating natural experiment.
McCaskill and Bill Clinton ought to get together.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/bill-clinton-republican-party-kingmaker.html
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