Mitt Romney has mess to clean up after falsely accusing Obama on Libya (Washington Post)

After their massive gains in the 1994 midterm elections, Republicans didn’t have a good two years. They got a good deal of legislation passed, but shutting down the government to try to force President Clinton to bend to their drastic cuts in social spending didn’t pay off, and I don’t think Newt Gingrich’s national reputation has ever really recovered. America’s economy was starting to take off — thanks in part to the Clinton tax hikes that doomed Democrats in 1994 (and the Bush 41 cuts that doomed his reelection campaign two years earlier) — and despite a great deal of personal resentment of the Clintons on the right, he was still popular among independents, and there was a broad sense that the country was going in the right direction. There probably should have been a significant tilt back towards Democrats in 1996’s Congressional elections, but Republicans only lost a couple of seats in the house and actually posted further gains in the Senate.

One of the main reasons Republicans posted these gains is because once it became clear, weeks before Election Day, that they had little chance of winning the presidency, they shifted their focus. Bob Dole just never caught on with undecided voters, and Bill Clinton’s personal popularity stood in stark contrast to the stern and strict persona Dole projected during his campaign. (Shortly after the election he went on The Tonight Show and displayed his sense of humour, and that Bob Dole might have actually stood a chance against Clinton.) Republicans were never in danger of losing their majorities in either house of Congress, but when they shifted their focus once it became clear that Clinton would be re-elected, and they turned towards securing their Congressional majorities, they made the best use of their resources and gave themselves a victory they could point to after Election Day. That gave them the political capital they needed to continue to push Clinton to sign more conservative-friendly legislation into law.

Polls right now are still being influenced by the post-convention bounce President Obama and Democrats are enjoying after a nearly note-perfect convention last week; they hit all the notes they needed to hit, they minimized their gaffes, and I think they set themselves up well for 2016 with incredible speeches by Deval Patrick, Julián Castro and Elizabeth Warren. Convention bumps usually disappear within a week, but just having a bump, after Republicans didn’t really have one after their convention, was a good sign for Democrats, a sign that there is room for the electorate to budge in their direction. There’s still seven and a half weeks to go, and a lot can happen in that time, but it still seems like Mitt Romney’s campaign can’t go more than a few days without doing something that smacks of basic incompetence for the job Romney is trying to get. Even Republicans and conservative strategists have gotten on Romney’s case for his ill-timed and tone-deaf response to the deaths of American embassy workers  in Libya, and turning voters’ focus to foreign policy when that’s a Republican weakness just isn’t strategically smart.

Despite the national polls that have occasionally tilted towards Romney, Obama has always led in the all-important electoral college this whole election, in part because Romney’s overperforming mostly in states that John McCain carried in 2008 (and are thus solidly red). Romney will win back Indiana for the Republicans, and North Carolina looks in play, but after the conventions this is Obama’s election to lose unless we have a European financial meltdown (which is still very much possible). I don’t see Romney doing better than tying Obama in the debates (and Paul Ryan has yet to really find his groove as a national candidate), and even though the election should tighten if left to its own devices, if the Romney campaign continues to commit front-page gaffes on a regular basis then it may continue to widen, despite the natural tendencies of elections to tighten as Election Day draws near.

There is the gigantic x-factor of all the money that Romney’s campaign and the well-endowed PACs that support him have raised, and what this could mean in terms of a last-minute advertising blitz. This late in the campaign, though, some of these PACs need to take a long, hard look at Romney and decide whether or not his campaign is the best place for their money. Romney has made so many missteps that one has to wonder if any amount of advertising will be enough to swing voters in his direction to the extent necessary for him to capture enough swing states to win the presidency. If Obama commits a major-league gaffe — and he’s certainly not immune to them — then maybe they can blanket the airwaves with it and turn the election in their favour, but Obama’s in a position now where he can afford to play it safe. Romney is the one who needs to take chances here, and so far none of the chances he’s taken — like attacking the Obama administration while one of our embassies was under siege and lives were being lost — has seemed to do Romney any good. Spending money on getting Mitt Romney elected president is  a bet that may not be so palatable to some conservative backers any longer.

I haven’t seen any reliable predictions on the House yet, but I know that the balance of power in the Senate is still very much up in the air. Republicans wouldn’t have to make too many gains there to take back over, even with Joe Biden casting a deciding vote if we get another 50-50 Senate like we had in the first months of 2001.  With the country taking such a hard right turn in 2010, I would assume that the natural trend would be for the House to start to tilt back towards Democrats, and possibly go back to Democratic control unless the Republicans can restore their brand name. That appears to be difficult on a national level right now with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as their standard-bearers, but on a local and statewide level that wouldn’t be quite so difficult, since it’s easier there to focus on the candidates as opposed to the national Republican image.

Conservatives have a way of spinning election results, no matter whether they win or lose, or how big the margins of victory wind up. After Obama’s election in 2008, many of them were quick to insist that the election was not a mandate for Democrats to do what they want, even though in the wake of his skin-tight 2004 reelection Bush 43 said he intended to use the “political capital” he had from his victory to pass drastic Social Security reform. That narrative, as illogical as it was, was well-received by a good portion of the electorate. Winning the Senate, or even keeping control of the House, would be something Republicans could point to on Election Night even if Romney loses big, so if they’re looking forward to what happens after the election, turning their attention to Congressional elections could be a way for them to save face after the worst-run Republican presidential campaign I can remember in my lifetime, and give them something to point to as a reason fro continuing to set the agenda in the halls of Congress.

I don’t know if this is the time for conservatives to give up on winning the White House in November, but the narrative they’ve put out there for so long, that the Obama presidency and our economic recovery have been so disastrous that this was a shoo-in presidential election for Republicans, clearly isn’t holding water any longer; looking back at the numbers, I’m not sure it was ever true to begin with. Sixteen years ago, faced with another Democratic president seeking reelection, Republicans lost that battle but didn’t lose the war by smartly turning their focus towards the races they could win in Congress. It’ll be interesting to see where all that conservative PAC money goes in the coming weeks; tracking it will probably yield the best indicator of whether or not the right-wing fatcats think they still have a real shot at winning the White House.