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    melinda-henneberger

    Melinda Henneberger

    Is the Next President of the United States a Republican Governor?

    Posted:
    11/19/09
    93 Comments  + 
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    AUSTIN – Did you know that Americans who get a major share of their news from the Internet are more likely to be Republicans? The Republican Governors Association did – and targeted their ad buys in the November elections accordingly, with quite satisfying results, Governors-elect Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Chris Christie of New Jersey told reporters at the group's annual meeting here.

    "We bought banner ads in virtually every major site," McDonnell said. "You couldn't go to those sites without having a pop up with my name on it. I think that helped us a lot."
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    McDonnell also said he ripped a page right out of the Obama presidential campaign's playbook, and is glad he did: "One of the first things I did was I hired the company that did Obama's text messaging. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we hired'' the wheel-makers. He also bragged about his campaign's number of Facebook friends – around 30,000, twice as many as his Democratic opponent – and enthused that his team had been busy "tweeting on Twitter on a regular basis."

    Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said that people who told exit pollsters they got a major share of their news from the Internet went 50 percent to 38 percent for Christie and 62-38 for McDonnell. Earlier in the evening, former Ohio congressman and current gubernatorial candidate John Kasich had been complaining that Republicans needed to move into the current century on the communications front – only, just as Kasich was saying this, the governor seated next to him on stage, Texas's Rick Perry, held up the BlackBerry he'd apparently been stealing looks at. Kasich high-fived him in response.

    Kasich looked back at the flush 1990s as proof that when the Republicans took over Capitol Hill, all was right with the world. (What? You thought Bill Clinton had something to do with that, and also seem to recall the Republican-led Congress under George W. Bush was not exactly on a starvation diet? Silly you.)

    Christie said that with all the cash his opponent, incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, had to throw around, he's not sure how he won, even now, and is just glad to have the whole thing behind him.

    McDonnell was asked why Sarah Palin didn't campaign for him; was that because he considered her a liability? Nooooo, he said: In fact, he had tried to get her to come when she was still governor and she was too busy. And after she quit her job "we pretty much had our strategy set.''

    Both McDonnell and Christie said they did not consider public anger over the health care reform bill a major factor in their election; McDonnell called it "background music.''

    When McDonnell was asked to respond to Pat Robertson's recent statement blasting Islam, he said he did not agree, and could not be held responsible for the views of all of his 15,000 donors: "I think there are people in various religions who do violent things and should be judged by their acts."

    One of the most impressive speakers at the gathering, which continues today, was Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, whose presentation made me wonder who that goofball was who gave the Republican response to Obama's State of the Union address. Because it couldn't have been the erudite, fast-talking guy who told his fellow governors that, politically speaking, he thought it would be great for Republicans if the health care reform bill passed, because the public would surely hate it. (Natch, that's not what he hopes happens, though, because "what I worry about is the damage that would be caused.'')

    When a reporter asked Haley Barbour, who is reportedly mulling a presidential run, whether the next Republican nominee had been on stage Wednesday at the Austin gathering, he said with a straight face: "What stage? I wasn't paying attention, but every Republican needs to have his or her eye on the 2010 election. . . .Then and only then do I think" people can focus on 2012. "And so I take my own advice, and I don't notice who was up on stage.''



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