House Republicans to run against Washington — again

That’s the theme of a new message campaign prepared by the National Republican Congressional Committee, which hopes to defend the GOP’s newly minted House majority next year by labeling Democrats as a party “Made in Washington.” It’s a reminder that Republicans don’t control the Senate and the White House — and voters still have cause to channel their outrage toward Democratic incumbents.

According to a PowerPoint presentation delivered late last month and obtained by POLITICO, NRCC officials aim to accuse Democrats of “not listening to the American public” and adopting policies that are “of Washington,” despite the rebuke voters delivered in 2010.

The broad idea, according to NRCC officials, is to protect the outsider brand Republicans used to great effect in 2010. House Republicans hope voters will continue to see the GOP as an insurgent force, fighting against a federal government that’s largely in more liberal hands.

It’s a challenging task, given that it’s now a Republican — John Boehner of Ohio — who sits in the speaker’s chair. But the desired contrast, in the GOP’s words, is between a party that’s “Fighting Washington” and one that’s “Made in Washington.”

Earlier versions of the messaging — organized around the themes “Dems still don’t get it” and “D.C. doesn’t get it” — were discarded in favor of a catchphrase inspired in part by the powerful “Imported from Detroit” 2011 Super Bowl television ad run by Chrysler.

The NRCC has barely begun to deliver this message in paid media, though the “Made in Washington” language has cropped up in robocalls the committee is running against certain Democratic incumbents.

“During this Congress, Democrats doubled down on the same failed policies that killed jobs and indebted us to China,” said NRCC spokeswoman Joanna Burgos. “On the other hand, House Republicans are fighting the Washington status quo of more spending, more borrowing and more taxing.”

Though Republicans have far fewer vulnerable Democrats to target in 2012 than they had last year, the anti-Washington message is designed to undermine a handful of long-serving incumbents who still hold competitive seats. Among them are 10-term Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, and 18-term West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall.

The “Made in Washington” attacks are also expected to be useful against the former members of Congress, including a handful of promising politicians defeated in the 2010 wave, whom Democrats have been recruiting to run in 2012.

The NRCC communications blitz is modeled on the committee’s “Code Red” initiative last year — a well-branded, health-care-themed message that caught on among activists and in the conservative media.

NRCC operatives began work on the new messaging campaign on Jan. 24, when strategists at the committee agreed that a “Code Red”-like program would help Republicans organize their message now that they are in power in the House.

Much like “Code Red,” the “Made in Washington” brand is initially being rolled out online, at the website madeinwdc.com and in NRCC news releases pummeling incumbent Democrats.

If the campaign gains traction, Republicans expect to use it through the 2012 election, including in television ads of freshman lawmakers and challengers seeking to recapture the GOP spirit of 2010.

The NRCC is gearing up its communications machine as a debate unfolds in Washington over whether the House majority might truly be up for grabs in the 2012 campaign.

The Democratic-aligned polling outfit Democracy Corps released a survey last week of 50 House districts, making the case that newly elected Republicans haven’t gotten a honeymoon period from the voters who elected them last fall.

The poll, conducted by the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, showed 35 first-term members were “largely unknown and … very vulnerable in 2012.”

Republican pollsters Glen Bolger and Jim Hobart, of Public Opinion Strategies, countered that the makeup of the 2012 battlefield will make it impossible for Democrats to take back the House, no matter how the political atmosphere changes.

Democrats, they observed, would have to win 13 or more House seats President George W. Bush carried during the 2004 campaign in order to take back control of the chamber — no easy lift. Democrats need to net a total of 25 takeovers in order to regain the House majority.

So far, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted vulnerable Republicans with a dual message: attacking them as tea-party-aligned extremists while simultaneously bashing them as having sold out to powerful special interests.

“It’s laughable for House Republicans to claim to be fighting against the Washington they are now in charge of — Republicans are only fighting against themselves,” said DCCC spokesman Jesse Ferguson. “They spent their first months protecting taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil companies and pushing an extremist social agenda, so it’s pretty clear that House Republicans aren’t ‘fighting Washington’, they’re fighting for Washington and its special interests.”

The NRCC campaign is aimed at blunting at least the tool-of-special-interests part of those attacks, by telling a story about scrappy Republican lawmakers who, as one NRCC strategist put it, “are listening and have been fighting the Washington dragon.”

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