Scandals Tailor-Made For GOP Base – NationalJournal.com

When a president’s party has a difficult time in midterm elections, it’s usually because the campaign has become about the president himself. As Democrats look towards an already-challenging midterm election cycle in 2014, they can thank, or blame, President Obama for handing Republicans several opportunities to focus voter attention — and anger — at the White House.

Any of the developing scandals, over the Internal Revenue Service’s harassment of conservative organizations, the Department of Justice subpoenaing Associated Press telephone records and the immediate aftermath of the attack on a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, would damage an administration first elected in 2008 in part as a reaction to the previous administration’s mismanagement of government. Taken together, they amplify the threat to Obama’s second term, and to the party he ostensibly leads in next year’s elections.

Had Republicans been handed a menu of possible scandals to pin on the Obama administration, they could hardly have picked three more beneficial options. Midterm elections are exercises in base turnout, and all three scandals are tailor-made to energize the Republican base and depress Democratic voters.

Democrats have taken the opportunity to distance themselves politically from the White House — members as different as conservative Democratic Rep. John Barrow of Georgia, and liberal Democratic Rep. Mike Capuano of Massachusetts, have called for investigations into the IRS scandal. But in an age of hyper-partisanship, where an individual candidate’s identity matters less and party labels matter more, declaring one’s independence from one’s own party has lost the salience it once held.

via Scandals Tailor-Made For GOP Base – NationalJournal.com.