From the first Morning Jolt of the week:

It’s Time for Republicans to Experiment in Getting Out the Vote

One of the recurring lines I’ve heard in my “where do Republicans/conservatives go from here” conversations is, “Why don’t the [Koch Brothers/Sheldon Adelson/wealthy GOP donors] take all the money they wasted on SuperPAC ads last year and this cycle spend it on [their preferred idea].”

Now, sometimes “[their preferred idea]” is a good one, sometimes it sounds like a bad one, and oftentimes we don’t really know if it’s a good one or a bad one, because it either hasn’t been tried, or it hasn’t been tried on the scale that the person is envisioning.

But usually the idea requires some massive investment of millions of dollars, and the speaker usually wants to be in charge of the budget for this multi-million project.

Now, there have to be some ideas out there that can be implemented without the support of a Koch brother or a Sheldon Adelson, ones that can be implemented by the grassroots. Because if our comeback is entirely dependent upon the wealthiest guys making the right choice when it comes to which political activity they want to finance, we’re in trouble.

The first congressional contest of this year is the special U.S. House election for Illinois’ 2nd congressional district in Chicago and a portion of its southern suburbs on April 9.

The district represents a steep challenge for Republicans; the district gave 90 percent of its vote to Barack Obama in 2008 and was until recently represented by Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr., who managed to easily win reelection in 2012 even though he was under criminal investigation and on medical leave. The district scores a D+32 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, it does have some less heavily Democratic sections, stretching from 53rd Street on the city’s South Side through the south suburbs of Chicago, all the way to Kankakee County.

There are five Republicans running; they’re all relatively unknown. Breitbart’s Rebel Pundit has talked to Paul McKinley and Dr. Eric Wallace. Earlier this month I spoke to the one candidate who has something of a media presence, syndicated radio commentator Lenny McAllister.

I don’t know if this guy is going to win the primary; and I have no illusions at the near-miracle it would take for the Republicans to win this seat. But every Republican who’s depressed by seeing the results of the November election agrees that our party has to get better at getting out the vote, in friendly districts, unfriendly districts, and everywhere in between. This is our first opportunity, and we have a few things going for us: A Democratic primary with 17 (!) candidates, and the low turnout of a special election. (When Rahm Emanuel left to become White House Chief of Staff, there was an open-seat race in another corner of Chicago in 2009. Total turnout: About 41,000 votes, with the winner claiming about 31,000. Rahm Emanuel himself didn’t vote in it, saying he forgot to file for an absentee ballot.) In November’s House race, with Jackson Jr. on the ballot, 67,396 voted for the Republican candidate, Brian Woodworth. How many of those 67,000 can Republicans get out to vote on April 9?

The low chances of success in this contest might actually be liberating. Suppose the Republicans in this district try an idea that backfires terribly; it’s not like a mistake like that would botch a seat we should have won. If it doesn’t work, we scratch it off the list and try another one. This is the time to experiment and try new things. This year we have two more special elections in not-terribly-competitive districts, the South Carolina first district seat on May 7, and the Missouri eighth district seat sometime in the spring (the date isn’t set yet). Then we have the bigger fish, the Massachusetts special Senate election (date to be determined, sometime in late spring, but perhaps as late as around July 4) and this November’s gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.

But note that these ideas are unlikely to come from the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Republican Governors Association, or the National Republican Senatorial Committee. It’s not that there are bad guys running those groups (although I know some of you disagree). It’s that they’re big institutions with large risks for putting resources – financial, time, manpower – into untested ideas. (You know the old anecdote – any CEO who needs an outside consultant goes with the biggest name, because they know they’ll never get grief for making the safe pick. If you hire somebody who’s relatively unknown, you look like a genius if it works out but you look like a fool if he falls flat on his face. You see the same phenomenon with the National Football League’s annual coaching carousel.)

Actions by the big party committees are guaranteed to attract scrutiny. If the NRCC tries some new strategy for direct mail or organizing volunteers online and it flops, you’ll hear the same mockery from the mainstream media about those hapless Republicans, and more grumbling from the grassroots, outside critics sneering they’re the gang who can’t shoot straight, etc. The grassroots organizers within these particular districts have a lot more leeway to try new ideas.

Patrick Ruffini continues his fascinating dissection of Obama’s successful 2012 campaign, examining the “legacy report” of the campaign:

“Three out of five team leaders and one in five team members volunteered 10 or more hours per week, much more than other volunteers.”

80% of Obama volunteers reported living within 10 miles of an office. 631 Obama offices in target states vs. 282 for Romney.

So, presuming you can afford it, a key step is having as many campaign offices as possible in as many different places as possible. You want your campaign to have a presence in every community, whether it’s red, blue, or purple, and to leave no vote unpursued…

Below, I mentioned:

The media is speaking increasingly loudly about the president’s mandate; what they fail to realize is that every member of the House GOP thinks he was reelected (or in the case of the new members being seated in January, elected) with a mandate to oppose all tax increases because they’re economically destructive.

This has caused some lefties on Twitter to argue that the GOP only held its House majority because of gerrymandering.

But that’s not true, or at least there’s quite a bit of evidence against it. For starters, there were states where Democrats controlled redistricting and benefited, like Illinois, and places like California that redrew old incumbent-friendly lines and where the Democrats picked up additional seats. Heading into the election, most analysts felt the most recent round of redistricting added up to a wash between the two parties. Also, there were states where Republicans controlled redistricting and still lost seats, like New Hampshire and Utah; clearly redistricting isn’t a magic wand that can protect any House GOP incumbent or rising star like Mia Love.

But don’t take my word for it; take the assessments from left-of-center guys like Jonathan Bernstein, Eric McGhee, and Kevin Drum; one of the calculations they examine concludes that redistricting can be credited with seven of the Republicans’ 234 seats. If we had just used the old lines, John Boehner would still be speaker, just with a smaller majority.

McGhee concludes that

even under the most generous assumptions, redistricting explains less than half the gap between vote share and seat share this election cycle. . . . We have argued that incumbency is a likely culprit, but as Dan Hopkins recently pointed out, Democrats also do worse because they are more concentrated in urban areas. They “waste” votes on huge margins there, when the party could put many of those votes to better use in marginal seats.

What happens is that a lot of House Democrats in urban districts win by wide margins, sometimes 90–10, while House Republicans won their suburban and rural districts by much closer margins.

The current popular vote in the House races adds up to about 50.29 percent for the Democratic candidates and 49.7 percent for the Republican candidates. You could redraw the district lines to give Democrats a winning percentage in 218 districts with those figures . . . but the new lines would be as jagged, awkward, and bizarre as the ones we have now.

Over on the home page, a look at the GOP prospects for holding the House of Representatives in 2012. I figure it will get many comments and links and Facebook likes, as it’s one of our biggest articles.

It’s there. No, not the giant Roman Genn caricature of Newt Gingrich as Marvin the Martian.

No, lower.

No, lower.

Here.

Republican pollster Glen Bolger:

Control of the House of Representatives after the 2012 elections will still belong to the Republicans. IF Barack Obama stages a political comeback (which is certainly within the realm of possibility), Democrats will start the presidential coattails drumbeat. However, there are two compelling tables in this post underscoring that the House outcome will dance to the beat of a different drummer . . . The first factor is that even strong Presidents who win re-election do not have long coattails . . . The other factor putting a stake through the vampire hearts of the Democrats’ hopes of control post-2012 is the overwhelming shift in redistricting fortunes. Because of GOP gains in Gov races and the legislatures, there will be a dramatic change in the structure of the 2012 House races.

We’ll remember this, Namath.