GOP to HQ... We have a problem

On March 9th a little-known Democrat named Bill Foster won a special election for the seat formerly held by former GOP house speaker Dennis Hastert over Republican Jim Oberweis. Hastert had held the GOP seat in the house for 20 years. McCain had personally endorsed Oberweis, while Obama endorsed and cut a TV ad for Foster.

On May 3rd a Democrat won a special congressional election in Baton Rouge Louisiana taking a seat the GOP had held since 1974. Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated Republican Woody Jenkins for the seat opened up when Republican Richard Baker a 20 year incumbent resigned. Cazayoux was attacked in ads that painted him as a supporter of Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This was second special election for a long time GOP seat where negative campaigning from the RNC tried to force negative association with the Democratic candidate with Obama and the Rev Wright. In both cases the negative attack ads failed to secure a GOP win in a historically GOP congressional district.

While the rest of the nation was focused on the West Virginia Democratic presidential primary on May 13th, another special election was unfolding in Mississippi. And at this time CNN has projected that Democrat Travis Childers will defeat Republican Greg Davis in a GOP seat held since 1994. For the third time in as many special elections the RNC threw the book and a ton of money into this election. There were major negative ads run against Childers again linking him to aspects of Reverend Wright through the national picture of association with Barack Obama. Both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the conservative group Freedom Watch spent heavily on television commercials that linked Childers to Obama. While Obama had not endorsed Childers, it was obvious that the RNC thought such a linkage was going to be an effective campaign strategy leading up to the November elections. If that was their thoughts, they may be rethinking it now after three straight special election defeats.

If the GOP does not seem concerned about a national thrashing in November, they might want to start worrying a little bit more, as seats traditionally considered safe for the Republicans in the general election, may not be as safe as they once thought. A second repercussion of these three special elections, could be that the current conventional wisdom of the historic Red and Blue states may be a whole lot more Purple than the GOP, and even Hillary Clinton and the Democrats may be thinking.