RNC’s Swing-State Strategy to Take Back WH

The National Republican Committee, led by Chairman Reince Priebus, is targeting Wisconsin as one of the 13 battleground states for the 2012 general election even as the GOP nomination fights remains unsettled. The committee is changing its ground game as it aims to unseat President Barack Obama, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported Friday.

Committee officials know they’ll face an Obama fundraising machine that’s may bring in upwards of $1 billion for the race. Still, they see an opportunity to beat the incumbent.

"We're not going to raise $1 billion, but if we're smart about how we target our voters, which we will be, I fully anticipate that we're going to level that playing field, regardless of the money that he's going to have," Rick Wiley, the RNC political director, told the newspaper.

Wiley, a former political director and executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said the GOP can win by targeting key battleground states. Nine of those states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — went for George W. Bush in 2004 but were carried by Obama four years later.

The other four states on the RNC chart — Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — were states in which Republicans achieved major successes last November. In Wisconsin, Republicans won control of both branches of state government and the governor's office, as well as two House seats and a Senate seat held by Democrats.