GOP Campaign Strategy

Mike Allen, White House correspondent for Time magazine, explains how the GOP is trying to re-energize Republican voters.

Mike Allen: Well Tavis, if you're a red state, red-blooded voter out there, you probably voted for a Republican because they're competent on national security, because they have fiscal discipline, they're not gonna waste money, and because they have family values. Now you look at the news, why do you vote for Republicans now?

I asked some people, some of my friends who work for the party, would you vote for yourselves? That's the problem, is that the people who the Republican qualities, the Republican brand, is most important to, have reasons to doubt each of those things. Now, what you'll hear Republicans and the White House saying is Democrats would be worse. That the president has kept the nation safe in a dangerous world. That we've now come to take for granted that there's been no new 9/11.

But that that is something that well could have happened, Tavis. You and I probably would have bet that that would have happened. And that's one of the points that the vice president makes in his speeches, is that that's no accident. And he attributes it partly to some of these controversial policies like eavesdropping.

Tavis: So the answer to Iraq and that quagmire, the answer to Mark Foley, the answer to what the leadership knew and when they knew it, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, the answer to all of this, in his stump speech, is that the Democrats would be worse?

Allen: No, Tavis, let's be fair about that. That's one of the points that they make. And Republicans continue to sell themselves as someone who will protect you from increased taxes, who protect the nation from danger abroad, and who are more in touch with Americans who are concerned about a changing culture, who are more sensitive to that.

But Tavis, you mentioned Mark Foley. Obviously, that's tremendously problematic. And Tavis, after the Mark Foley story started to get a lot of attention, there was a real wind shear in Republican polls. Even when things weren't looking so well, the president told his people, "We're gonna win." There was not contingency planning in the White House for what you do with a Democratic Congress, because they remained confident.

And as you know, you've interviewed these people over and over, over the years, and you know that that's one of their qualities, is they have confidence and optimism; and voters like that. And that's been one of their big appeals. But Tavis, they've now seen, in that first round of polls after Mark Foley, they saw that that's something they're probably not going to recover from.

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