Republicans plotting for 'Thumpin' II

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Republicans plotting for 'Thumpin' II

by Mark Silva

Republicans got "a thumpin''' in the last midterm elections, George W. Bush once famously said.

Now Republicans are plotting "a thumpin''' of their own in the next midtermsand they're drawing on the game-plan of the Democratic architect of the last "thumpin:''' Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who was a congressman from Chicago at the time and ran his party's successful campaign for control of the House.

California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, chief recruiter for the Republicans' House campaigns, says he wants his party to pick its candidates based less on ideology and more on their prospects for winning, Bloomberg News reports. He is seeking candidates who are ethnically diverse, female, less partisan "and even supportive of abortion rights''though at the moment, this is a drawing board scenario.

"Have you read 'The Thumpin'?" asks McCarthy, citing the book about Emanuel's brass-knuckles approach to winning control of the House for Democrats in 2006it was penned by then-Tribune writer Naftali Bendavid.

"This isn't original thought,'' McCarthy says of the notion of picking winners.

In 2006, Emanuel recruited "anti-abortion, pro-gun candidates such as Brad Ellsworth, 50, a sheriff in Indiana, and Heath Shuler, 37, a former NFL quarterback, in North Carolina,'' Bloomberg's Heidi Przybyla writes. "The premise: identify candidates whose views best mirror those of their districts' constituents rather than Democratic Party orthodoxy.''

So McCarthy is trying to recruit John McKinney, a Republican state senator from Connecticut. On his Web site, McKinney describes himself as a fiscally conservative, socially moderate centrist. He has said he is considering a run for the U.S. House, though he hasn't made a formal announcement. His spokesman, Brett Cody, says McKinney supports abortion rights.

McCarthy calls this sense of pragmatism essential to rebuilding his party, which lost control of Congress and the White House in the past two election cycles.

We're at 178" seats in the House out of 435, he tells Bloomberg. "You get beyond the majority and people can worry about what they want to purify."

The argument rankles some Republicans, Bloomberg notes: "Standing for something is better than standing for nothing," says consultant Eddie Mahe. "There's that age-old saying, 'The reason moderates don't accomplish much is they don't believe in anything enough to fight for."

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