National GOP leader rallies Iowa volunteers

URBANDALE - The co-leader of the Republican National Committee traveled to Iowa's political trenches Friday to thank the foot soldiers working to deliver a GOP November election victory - an effort she believes is being aided by President Barack Obama's failed leadership and failed Democratic policies.

'It's not him personally that's helping,” RNC co-chairwoman Sharon Day of Florida told reporters, 'it's his failed administration and the failed legislation they have passed and the way they have passed it.”

Day said the country has floundered because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has sidetracked more than 400 bills passed by the GOP-led U.S. House, and Obama has created confusion by repeatedly shifting directions on national security, Obamacare and Ebola response issues.

'People are hungry for leadership, people are hungry for solutions, they're tired of the games that are being played by Harry Reid, they're tired of the nonsense that's coming out of this White House,” she said.

Day predicted next month's elections will be a chance for voters to register their dissatisfaction with the nation's direction and the gridlock in Washington D.C., and that is why volunteers like the ones she spoke to in Iowa are so important to electing conservative Republicans and winning full control of the U.S. Congress.

'We know that taking back the Senate runs right through here in Iowa with Joni Ernst,” she said.

Day said her party made an important tactical shift in 2014 by adopting a 50-state strategy, rather than 'picking winners and losers” by focusing GOP resources in eight or nine key states like it did in 2008 and 2012.

'You don't build a national party that way,” Day told a couple dozen volunteers and party activists who were on hand Friday at the party's victory headquarters in Urbandale. 'If you're going to win national elections, you have to act like a national party.”

She said the GOP has built an effective ground game that is countering past Democratic advantages in early and absentee voting and complimenting candidates' get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day.

'The importance of what we have to do in the next 18 days is big because if we don't do it, we understand that we can't change the direction of this country,” said Day, who also traveled to Iowa City and Davenport and was scheduled to be in Hiawatha on Saturday.

Day was among a growing list of nationally prominent political figures that are coming to Iowa with less than three weeks left in a volatile campaign - a list that includes New York entrepreneur Donald Trump, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, U.S. Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and first lady Michelle Obama, who will be in Iowa City next Tuesday.

Day noted that the president's name is not on that list. 'You don't see Obama with any of the candidates anywhere,” she said. 'They'll take his money, but they won't be seen with him.”

The RNC co-leader said Obama did not do fellow Democrats any favors by declaring that his name may not be on the 2014 ballot but his policies are.

'That was the last thing I can guarantee you that any of those Democrats wanted to hear him say but he can't help himself. He's got to make it about him,” she said. 'I think across the country that's exactly what you're seeing, that it is a referendum on a lack of leadership and a failed administration.”