Refusing To Rise

As I pointed out in the previous post, I think the Republicans need to stay focused on a local level rather than trying to combat a nationalized election strategy the Democrats and their blatant supporters in the media are trying to foster. Robert Novak has a glimpse of how that strategy is working out on the micro level. Rather well, it would seem.

FLORENCE, Ky. — Democratic candidate Ken Lucas looked like he would rather be any place other than Kentucky's public television studios Monday night as he debated freshman Republican Rep. Geoff Davis. A moderate conservative, Lucas was not going deep into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) liberal playbook that is intended to nationalize midterm Congressional elections.

Lucas had been coaxed out of political retirement at age 73 to run for the northern Kentucky congressional seat he held three terms. That put Davis, a conservative 25 years Lucas's junior and highly regarded among House Republicans, on the endangered list, trailing in early polls. But Lucas showed Monday night this has not been a happy campaign for him. While Democratic candidates nationwide pillory George W. Bush, Lucas did not mention the president's name and appeared uncomfortable with the DCCC attack litany.

Democrats must win seats like this to achieve a substantial working majority in the House. But Republicans have limited the election in Kentucky's 4th congressional district to a "choice" between two candidates instead of a "referendum" on an unpopular Republican president and Congress. That demonstrates that the struggle for Congress is not really a national election but is about 50 hotly contested local ones.

If the Republicans refuse to rise to a referendum and keep it at a local choice level, they are going to stop the so-called wave right in its tracks. I think that is why the picture is so muddy right now. The Dems are already taking victory laps based on national polls that are meaningless on a local level. Novak's point is that as the 4th district goes, so goes the election. If the wave doesn't rise in Kentucky, the Dems lose. He may well have that called right.