Interviews/Profiles

"The fact is that many people associate the Republican Party as the party of the rich,” said the former congressman.

“I just wish Republicans would believe in something" as much as Nancy Pelosi believed in healthcare reform, says Chris Chocola.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she never doubted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act.

In an interview with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl on Thursday, Pelosi (D-Calif.) said neither the ruling nor Roberts’s defection to the court’s liberal wing came as a surprise. 

Tea Party leader Judson Phillips called on Boehner to be replaced by a "Tea Party Speaker of the House."

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus says Republicans have had "great success" with Hispanic voters, but fall down communicating it.

Indiana governor is best known as the “truce” candidate for calling on the GOP to declare one on social issues.

Many of the top Republican campaigns this cycle are using Hollywood-based consultant Fred Davis to produce their TV ads. The image-maker has been responsible for some of the most memorable spots of the cycle.

He created "demon sheep" for California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, the "danged fence" ad for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and the "one tough nerd" spots run by Rick Snyder during the Michigan GOP gubernatorial primary.

Davis allowed The Washington Post to shadow him for three days for a profile. Here's one of the best anecdotes that came out of the piece.

One night, he took a reporter to the cedar-hued lounge for cocktails. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Davis and strategist Mark McKinnon met here regularly to plot Bush's ad campaign.

The club has 300 members, among them many of Hollywood's leading men. Davis steps into the humidor room, where he and other members store their cigars in personal wooden lockers. Never mind that he's not much of a smoker and says that he hasn't opened his box in months. Davis is here to gaze at the gold-plated name cards: Arnold Schwarzenegger ... Sylvester Stallone ... Hulk Hogan ... Mel Gibson ... David Geffen ...

Fred N. Davis III.

He returns to a retro velvet couch to meet his friend, the actor Robert Davi, one of Hollywood's lonely dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. Davi, who played the villain in the James Bond film "License to Kill," has a distinctive baritone. And in an exclusive deal, he provides the voice-overs for many of Davis's ads. He narrated every video at the 2008 Republican convention.

"We never told who Robert Davi was," Davis says. "If you write that in your story, you'll be the first. He's the voice of Rick Snyder, McCain — all the McCain stuff — Carly. He was the voice of 'Demon Sheep.' "

Davi, smoking a Cuban torpedo, turns to his friend and dubs him "the Wizard of Oz of political campaigns."

"Here you have the Yellow Brick Road," Davi says. "You're creating an illusion. You're creating a world in Dorothy's head. The iconic use of the straw man and the lion. In the political arena, you're creating an illusion."

NEW ORLEANS – Louisiana Senate candidate Charlie Melancon said his daughter urged him not to run against Sen. David Vitter.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sat down with The Hill on Monday and said he was "optimistic" about Republican chances in November, and warned Democrats there is a "statute of limitations" on how long they can run against former President George W. Bush.

McConnell said "if the election were today, we'd have a good day. The president's approval rating is well below 50 and has been for a month or so. The party generic ballot — 'Would you be more likely to vote Republican or Democrat?' — is very good. … I'm reluctant to kind of project the future. But we're optimistic. We're optimistic that it will be a good day on Nov. 2 and restore some balance to the government."

He wouldn't predict how many seats his party might pick up, but he did scoff at one of the Democrats' main attack angles this election cycle: that returning Republicans to power would mark a return to the Bush-era policies.

"The Democrats would like to have a 'do-over' of the '06 and '08 elections," he said. "There's a statute of limitations on how long you can run against President Bush. They've been in office 18 months now."

He also noted that the voters "know who's in charge. They know who's in the White House. They know the president has a big majority in the House and a big majority in the Senate, and they've focused fully on what's happened in the last year and a half. And it is naïve of our friends on the other side to assume they can run again the '06 and '08 elections. This is going to be about the present, not the past. And about the record of this administration, not the previous administration."

McConnell also has a competitive Senate race in his own state, where Republican candidate Rand Paul is running to keep retiring Sen. Jim Bunning's (R-Ky.) seat. Paul won the nomination largely on the support of the Tea Party, which has become a presence in many primaries this year.

McConnell called the group a "positive" factor.



"With regard to the Tea Party factor, I think it's been positive," he said. "These are citizens who feel like we're losing the country, and the issues that they seem to be most concerned about are the issues that Republicans are most concerned about. And one thing I would point out is that the issues that are driving the Tea Party are the same issues that are driving surveys and driving independents in our direction."

The Senate Republican leader also predicted President Obama would become a "born-again moderate" after the election.

"If there is a mid-course correction in November, I think the president will become a born-again moderate," McConnell said.