Kansas City Star’s David Goldstein features The Winston Group’s David Winston in his latest article on Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts, and what that means for Democrats and their policies.
“One of the problems that Democrats have had is they understood late that they’ve been on the wrong issue. This has been about jobs and unemployment. When you have three months of unemployment 10 percent or higher, the public is unhappy.”
To read the complete article, turn to theKansas City Starwebsite.
New York Times’ Jackie Calmes writes about President Obama’s current challenges in light of the employment report released January 8th. The article features commentary from The Winston Group’s own David Winston:
But David Winston, a political consultant who advises Congressional Republican leaders, said the unemployment rate was the most important indicator for voters assessing Mr. Obama’s performance.
“If this number doesn’t significantly improve, that’s going to be a negative for him and for his party,” Mr. Winston said.
Access the full article here: nytimes.com
Thomas Beaumont of the Des Moines Register features David in a recent article profiling Iowan voters and getting insights about the GOP from Iowan Republicans.
“I think the conservative brand is generally fine,” said Republican pollster David Winston. “But the Republican brand has difficulty at this point. And there’s no question that, until the party stops being the opposition party and starts being the alternative party, it’s not going to help its brand.”
To read more, turn to DesMoinesRegister.com
Richard W. Stevenson of the New York Times recently wrote on article on the renewal of populist conservatism, mostly due to Sarah Palin’s re-emergence on the political forefront. Stevenson briefly chronicles several instances of populism in political history, and features commentary from The Winston Group’s David Winston on how populism has played a role in elections:
David Winston, a pollster who advises the Republican leaders in Congress, said that when populism is married to a positive agenda that gives voters a concrete alternative to the status quo, it can alter the landscape, as it did when Republicans captured the House in 1994.
“The challenge is not tapping into a populist environment, it’s creating an alternative that brings about the next political shift,” he said.
To read more of Stevenson’s article, turn to nytimes.com
Dan Gilgoff in today’s US News and World Report writes:
Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee called a meeting with activists on the right, including religious conservatives, to discuss the lessons of New York 23. “Any time you have a loss like we did in 2008, there’s a debate about how the party should go forward,” says David Winston, the pollster for congressional Republicans. “But New York 23 showed that that debate could be poisonous.”
“Faith-Based Challenges Show a New Rift in the GOP”: US News and World Report
Byron York’s latest article features commentary from David Winston on the real top issue right now – jobs (not healthcare). Even with unemployment in the double digits, there an urgency missing in addressing the problem, even from both sides of the political spectrum.
“Any time you have unemployment this high, it is the number one story, whether it’s being written about or not,” says David Winston, a Republican pollster who for months has urged GOP officeholders to focus steadily on the issue.
To read more of the article, click on washingtonexaminer.com
Ben Pershing writes about the divergent views within the GOP on why Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman lost the NY-23 Congressional race against Democrat Bill Owens. The Winston Group’s David Winston weighed in on how clashes between the base and moderates can affect off-year elections:
“This is not a simplistic problem,” said Republican pollster David Winston. “You watched Democrats go through this after the 1994 election. It’s the constant tension within any political party.”
To read the full article, click to the Washington Post’s website.
In a recent article in NRO by Robert Costa, David offers a strategist’s view on where Obama stands now that August recess is over and the health care debate still rages on. He also offers some advice for GOP leaders since they now have the opportunity to present a more viable alternative for Americans:
David Winston, a Republican pollster, agrees. He says that Obama “has to do a kind of reset on health care and figure out if he can regain the initiative on the policy debate, since he clearly lost the month of August.” Winston cautions, however, that Obama has bigger problems than his message. “One of the difficult stress points of a majority coalition is how you keep your base and the people beyond the base together to sustain that coalition. Health care is the first clear example where the two have divergent views.”
If Republicans are heartened by Obama’s summer stumble, that doesn’t mean they should relax. Republicans, says Winston, should work to create a “positive policy choice”…
To read the full article, access nationalreview.com
David was recently featured in an article by LA Times’ Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook about what’s to come from Obama in the next few weeks in terms of health care reform and lays out several issues that may arise. David provides some insight into Obama’s recent poll numbers:
“This is his big moment in managing a majority coalition,” said David Winston, a GOP strategist who compared Obama’s challenge to those faced — unsuccessfully — by three other former leaders: Clinton on healthcare, President George W. Bush on Social Security, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the budget battle that shut down part of the government during Clinton’s first term.
“Every one of them overreached,” said Winston. “But the question is, do they understand they have overreached? And what do they do in response?”
Access the LA Times article here
The Right Idea, Episode 19: Tech & the Obama Administration from The Winston Group on Vimeo.
This week, Kristen Soltis talks to Patrick Ruffi from Engage and Liz Mair from Hynes Communications to address the current administration’s use of technology in terms of messaging, transparency, and other recent efforts.
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In Walter Shapiro’s latest post on “Politics Daily,” writing about the politics behind health care reform, David Winston offers insight into what voters are really looking at once congressional elections are underway:
There are actually Democratic insiders who believe that passing health care reform is more politically important going into the congressional elections than even the economy. In contrast, Republican pollster David Winston, who advises the congressional GOP leadership, persuasively argues, “This is ultimately going to be an election about jobs. And there’s going to be one number that people will follow – and that’s the unemployment rate.”
David provides some insight into what direction Sarah Palin needs to take in terms of her political future, now that she’s resigning from office as Alaska’s governor.
Her task now is to establish her own credibility on a range of voter issues. Her expertise on the crucial issue of energy gives her a good opportunity to join the current political debate. Had she focused on her energy bona fides during last year’s presidential election, she might have had a better shot at quieting critics.
Read the full post here: “Room for Debate”: What’s Sarah Palin’s Political Future?
Today, I posted at The Huffington Post about how the Republican Party can win back young voters. This post, coming from my thesis research on the topic, follows a series of posts on Pollster.com about the predicament the GOP finds itself in with young voters. Give it a read and weigh in on the comments over at HuffPo.
The GOP’s Challenge to Win Back Young Voters (Huffington Post)
The Right Idea, Ep. 12 – Republican Identification from The Winston Group on Vimeo.
Kristen Soltis, Jill Bandes and Jon Henke continue to discuss Arlen Specter’s switch from the Republican party to the Democrat party and its implications, as well as questions of how conservatism should be defined.
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Winston provides insight into the problems the GOP is facing, with Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic party showing how less voters are identifying with Republicans.
“Clearly the Democrats want to portray the Republicans as the ‘Party of No’ and the challenge for Republicans is how do they become an effective opposition party at the same time defining a clear choice?” said David Winston, a prominent strategist and pollster who works closely with the congressional Republican leadership. “Once people see the Republicans defining a choice, the ‘Party of No’ goes away.”
Read more of CNN’s analysis on CNNPolitics.com