Robert Holsworth's Election Analysis
After big wins for the GOP, the President and fellow Democrats, as well as the Republicans are trying to formulate strategies for the next election cycle. Craig Carper talked with political analyst Bob Holsworth.
In the wake of Tuesday’s election results in Virginia and around the country, political analyst Dr. Bob Holsworth says President Obama has two major challenges: to create a refocused agenda on jobs and economic recovery, and to disprove the Republicans' portrayal of him as out-of-touch.
Holsworth: Some of the issues that the President hit during his first two years arguing that they were necessary for the economic recovery such as health care, cap and trade, the public really never embraced that theory. They thought that essentially there were some misplaced priorities, excessive spending on issues that diverted attention away from a clear focus on jobs, which the President is going to have to have.
Holsworth also notes that the Republicans will have big challenges ahead as well. Having taken control of the House of Representatives, the GOP will need to start building success stories to tell when they run again in two years, which will mean some compromise with the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Obama.
Holsworth: The Republicans are a diverse party right now; there are a number of people who are going to be very impatient with any kind of leadership compromises with the Democrats. There are a number of people who would prefer that the Republicans take just a directly adversarial stance against the President right now, putting forward various plans to repeal the health care law and letting the President veto them all. I think that could be a dangerous path for the party to take.
Should compromise not succeed, Holsworth says each side will blame the other.
Holsworth: The last time this happened, when Bill Clinton lost 52 seats in the mid 1990s, Clinton was extraordinarily effective in blaming things such as the shutdown of government on Newt Gingrich and was able to coast to re-election in 1996. I think the Republicans are going to be looking at that playbook and they’re going to try to find ways to ensure that if things don’t go well, if the economy doesn’t improve, that somehow Barack Obama won’t be able to do what Bill Clinton did so effectively to Newt Gingrich in the mid 90s.
Craig Carper, WCVE News
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