that. for more on this, we turn to the political war room, karen finney and former communications director for the dnc, matt slap, a form arer deputy assistant to george w. bush. gteed good saturday afternoon to both of you. we heard from andry a nebraska and maine use the congressional district system right now. why change the rules now? i have to say, craig, this has me scratching my head. i m a partisan republican. at least you acknowledge it. i m not happy how the election came out. i think there are a lot of things we should focus on. trying to find a way how to get an electoral college victory while still losing the popular vote by over three points doesn t seem to send the right message to the american people and the right message is we ve heard you. we listened to you and we need to do a better job of explaining what we believe. we have to do a better job of recruiting candidates and we have to learn from the obama
future and moving in the wrong direction for the republican party among young people, african-americans. how do they do something about that in the short term? i think the first thing is just realizing you have a problem, which they didn t do prior to this election. and then it s, you know, getting out there and actually i think getting back to the basics for their entire party. training candidates, recruiting candidates that are young, that are more demographically diverse and being able to talk about the good parts of republican theology that resonate with independent voters, smaller government, more free markets and doing that over years. it takes a sustained effort. if you look at the democratic success that thiey ve had throuh technology and organization, a lot of that s been in the works for ten years. the stuff you can t just flick a switch. and for republicans, there s a sense of urgency because those demographic trends don t get better. they get worse. the share of the elect
and get this. the reason why he said this was a 90-minute conversation he had with fox news national security analyst, kathleen mcfarland who went on ailes behest to pitch this. petraeus said at the time my wife would divorce me if i decided to run. i love my wife. we have a beautiful house with his and hers bathrooms, believe it or not. i just want to live in it. i ve never spent a night in it. he was doing other things, i guess. it s also raising an interesting debate. should the head of a news organization be actively involved in recruiting candidates for president? obviously, you know, in this day and age, we know which network leans left, which network leans right. should you be that actively involved to say i will quit to run someone s campaign? it raises an interesting debate and media circles, i think, as well.
emotionally suited for politics than they used to. but another big part of the change is simply the changes in the party polarization. that is, today in american politics is parties have ideologically moved apart. as voters have become more concerned with issues and ideological differences between the parties that has made the gender running for office less salient. for most voters it doesn t matter if it s a man or a woman. what matters is republican or democrat. jennifer, i m curious about the reaction you re getting. the first thing i thought looking through the study is when you talk to folks who are recruiting candidates particularly for congress, they ve had some real problems getting women for some of the reasons you talk act, for some of the gender stereotyping but also because they approach governing very differently. but i m wondering, do you think that it might result in more women being willing to run for high positions? well, i d say two things. the first is that by no
discussion where is politics. these guys are running indiana, right? they are running in their state for united states senate, but it reflects the culture of the state they re in as a very conservative state. indiana is a conservative place. i have a position as the republican. that s where this gets mercy about state and local to federal. democrats had success in 2006 recruiting candidates that were pro life and culturally more in tune with their district. to get the house majority. to even pennsylvania. so it doesn t clean necessarily along those lines. you said this the first hour, the election is about the economy, pocketbooks, jobs. we like talking about the cultural issues. both sides like talking about what this country is, what it s about, who s it for, what does freedom even mean. freedom to do what? of course this has support. none of those cultural issues