Stumble It!
...We can hope...T
Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections, but not much else over the past six years. They’ve captured the House and Senate. They now hold 31 governorships and 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers. What this means is pretty simple: There’s an emerging Republican majority.
The GOP still has significant emerging to do before reaching majority status. It may never get there. The rise this year may be Republicans’ peak for now. They may have achieved nothing more than what University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato calls “the emerging outline of possible GOP victory in 2016.”
At the very least, a Republican must win the White House in 2016 while maintaining control of Congress. Republicans need to attract more votes from minorities, particularly Hispanics. They must continue to improve their appeal to women. Most of all, Republicans must avoid self-inflicted wounds such as prompting another government shutdown or nominating a poor presidential candidate.
That’s a lot to pull off. But Republicans have advantages they lacked in the presidential years of 2008 and 2012. One is the eight-year itch. That’s the tendency of voters to change parties in the White House after a two-term presidency. The only exception in the last seven instances of such a presidency was the election of George H. W. Bush in 1988 after Reagan’s two terms.
And President Obama is likely to make things worse for the Democratic candidate in 2016. He is not only unpopular but also appears committed to an unpopular agenda. Every poll shows Americans want compromise in Washington. Obama’s preference is for confrontation.
Then there’s the ideological direction of the Democratic party. It’s tilting left.
All the energy and passion is on the left. The party is being McGovernized. Moderates have about as much influence as liberals do in the Republican party. The Democratic agenda—bigger government, higher taxes, increased spending, and cultural nihilism—isn’t a winning combination for 2016.
Midterm elections are not predictive of presidential outcomes. We know that from recent history: After winning in a landslide in the 2010 midterm, Republicans lost the presidential race two years later. Still, the 2014 election offers some clues about political trends. For instance, it suggests the Obama coalition is not the same as the Democratic coalition.
Obama was a great presidential candidate. He maximized the Democratic vote. But when he wasn’t on the ballot in 2010 and 2014, Democrats lost badly. Their turnout machine didn’t work as effectively without him on the ticket. So the Democratic coalition will probably be less broad in 2016.
Democrats think they have a number of current issues on their side. But issues that poll well don’t always cause voters to back candidates of the party associated with those issues. Raising the minimum wage is a good example. It’s clearly a Democratic issue. In November, voters in Arkansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Alaska backed increases in the minimum wage. At the same time, they elected Republicans to the Senate—and by large margins except in Alaska.
Among the major Democratic issues today are global warming, same-sex marriage, abortion, and voter ID. Global warming is so far down the list of issues that voters care about, it has dropped out of sight. The fight over gay marriage is over. Democrats benefited in two election cycles from blaming Republicans for a “war on women” involving abortion and contraception. That issue died in 2014. Opposing voter ID laws may galvanize African Americans and the party base, but that’s it. Besides, there’s no evidence such laws prevent voting.
Immigration is different. It divides the country. It’s a problem for Republicans, who need 40 percent or more of Hispanic voters to win the presidency. It is one of the few issues that actually may help Democrats. Even so, Republicans fared better with Hispanic voters in 2014 than in 2012. In Texas, Republican Greg Abbott got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in winning the governor’s race.
The Hispanic vote is growing, but it’s voters over 65 who are increasing the fastest as a share of the electorate. According to one estimate, seniors will be 30 percent of voters in 2030, Hispanics only 15 percent. And older voters tend to be more conservative, thus inclined to vote for Republicans.
The youngest voters, 18 to 29, are beginning to slip away from Democrats, too. Exit polls showed House Democrats had “half the advantage” with voters under 30 this year than they did in 2006. “The party’s grip on the young may be loosening,” wrote Mark Bauerlein in the New York Times.
Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe said Democrats ought to have touted aggressively the economy in the 2014 campaign. He should know better. Employment has improved, especially if you’re happy with a part-time job. But the recovery from the 2008-2009 recession is the slowest in many decades as average middle-class income stagnates and the exodus of Americans from the job market continues.
Assuming Obama sticks to his unimaginative Keynesian policies, it’s doubtful the economy will be any better in 2016. And a mediocre or worse economy won’t boost Democratic candidates, quite the contrary.
Finally, it’s worth looking at the Democratic presidential candidates. They’re old. Hillary Clinton will be 69 in 2016, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders a ripe old 75, and Jim Webb, the former Virginia senator, 70. Outgoing governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland will be a mere 53, but the main feature of his governorship—tax hike after tax hike—was repudiated in this year’s election. True, younger candidates may jump in.
The Republican presidential race, in contrast, is brimming with potential candidates in their 40s or early 50s. A partial list includes Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, and Ted Cruz. Who’s likely to be a more exciting candidate in 2016, Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio?
Favorable trends guarantee nothing in politics. But if they didn’t exist, Republicans wouldn’t have emerged in 2014. Should they continue in 2016, Republicans will emerge again. And in the not too distant future, they’ll be the majority party.
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Saturday, December 06, 2014
On a Roll: Suddenly, things look up for the GOP
Friday, July 04, 2014
Free to Choose
The greatest economic mind of the 20th century, Milton Friedman. Here is his entire TV series on PBS, "Free to Choose", taken from his book of the same name, that became the intellectual foundations of the Reagan ( and Jack Kemp) Tax cut bill that saved our nation in the early 80's. Without Mr. Friedman, it is questionable that there would even have BEEN a Reagan presidency. God bless him! Watch them all via the link below...T
http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/
Here's one sample. Please watch them all!...T
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Against the ‘New Normal’ - Obama's Acceptance of Permanent Decline
How refreshing. I had wondered if ANYONE in America worried, or even noticed, our stunning and precipitous decline these last 5 years
Are you alarmed by the counterterrorism failures increasingly evident as we learn more about the Boston terror attack? Don’t be. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has helpfully explained, “This tragedy is the new normal.”
Are you surprised that a whole city was ordered to “shelter in place” as one “knockoff jihadi,” in Vice President Biden’s term, roamed the streets? Don’t be. It’s the new normal. Are you shocked by the Obama administration’s dissembling in response to terror attacks in Benghazi? Don’t be naïve. It’s the new normal. Are you worried that the president proclaims “red lines” to deter dictators from, e.g., using chemical weapons, then does nothing to enforce them? Don’t be unsophisticated. As Rep. Adam Smith, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, explained, “The president said it was a red line. What the president never said was what that meant exactly.” It’s the new normal. Are you startled that the commander in chief accepts defense cuts that the president’s own defense secretary said would be “devastating” and “a disaster” and “would inflict severe damage to our national defense”? Don’t be foolish. It’s the new normal.
And do you think, back home, that we might do better than slow economic growth, high long-term unemployment, mountains of debt, and a massive health care reform that’s a “train wreck,” in the felicitous term of the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who helped shepherd it through Congress? Didn’t you get the memo? It’s all the new normal.
By the way, the new normal is bipartisan. It’s of course true that the administration in power during this period of national decline has a particular interest in selling the concept of a new normal. It’s true that the idea fits uncommonly well with the fatalism that, beneath the airy talk of hope and change, lies at the heart of modern liberalism. But Republican elites aren’t immune to the charms of the new normal, which excuses subpar performance in so many areas.
So it’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders in Congress to be more interested in exempting themselves from Obamacare than in laying the groundwork for repealing it, and thereby exempting all Americans. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP elites to spend all their time, money, and effort trying to quickly muscle through a poorly crafted immigration bill—which once passed will have irreversible effects—than trying to do anything significant for American workers or against crony capitalism. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders, at once terrified and contemptuous of their own base, equally intimidated by donors and voters but uninterested in treating either group as grownups, to think they too can simply shelter in place, under the awning of the new normal. (One might add that, when it comes to the leaders of both parties colluding to preserve power and perquisites, the new normal bears a striking resemblance to the old normal.)
Normal Americans, we would wager, don’t accept the new normal. For one thing, they remember being told that all manner of problems, from the existence of the Soviet Union to economic stagflation to high crime rates to welfare dependency, had to be accepted as normal. Both party establishments were wrong in their earlier embrace of various pathologies deemed to be permanent. Why are they owed greater deference today?
There are times when the conservative party ought to be and has to be the party of normalcy, standing against utopian or destructive or foolish change. But there are times—and this is one of them—when a modern conservative party has to be the party that refuses to accept what is said to be normal. This is a time for a serious political party to point out that the new normal is merely a new excuse by the powers-that-be for their deficiencies and failures.
The historic task of American conservatism is not merely to defeat the liberal party in the next election, which, given the way things are going for this administration, shouldn’t be very difficult. It’s to refuse to accept, to boldly challenge, and to fundamentally reverse, an enervating “new normal” that would acquiesce in American decline and say farewell to American greatness.
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Monday, March 25, 2013
The GOP: Delusional, Schizophrenic or Just Plain Stupid?
This from Bernie Goldberg today: Couldn't have said it better myself. Doesn't anyone in the GOP remember Ronald Reagan and his conservatism?...T
Another day of political news reports. Another day of flip-flops, ridiculously late recognition of the obvious and disjointed and dispiriting dribble from the Grand Old Party. Geez…can they possibly be this mindless and out of touch? Yes, me thinks.
Where in the world to start? There’s enough material for a whole season’s worth of political sitcom episodes…perhaps titled Bozos and Bureaucrats.
I read RNC chairman Reince Priebus “wants to explore the possibility of choosing who actually asks the questions during the debates.” Imagine that. The equivocations in his statement turn one’s stomach.
But, perhaps we should be thankful Priebus stumbled upon a glaring flash of the obvious: the deck has been stacked again Republicans and Conservatives (note the distinction) in presidential debates for, oh, let’s give it thirty years or so.
Perhaps if Priebus remains in his current position another thirty years his growing observational acuity will reveal another revelation, something small, not really significant…like not going to political gunfights with down-filled pillows.
We have good ‘ol John Boehner, God love him. He didn’t trust Obama, but now he does. He once believed the massive deficit is a fatal affliction; now it threatens the country’s financial health no more than a hangnail. He vowed to repeal Obamacare, now he doesn’t. What am I missing here?
And, according to Erick Erickson, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and that stalwart defender of conservatism Mitch McConnell (just kidding) continue to talk the talk of Obamacare repeal, but, in reality are caving like the French Army in 1940.
John McCain and his sidekick Lindsey Graham are always good for a flashback…to the good old days of a permanent Republican minority in the Senate. Go along, get along and relish the positive press coverage for reaching across the aisle to the always reasonable and compromising Democrats.
But…it seems Rand Paul and Marco Rubio are getting a little frisky, not laying low in the bunker. The whacko birds are causing a little heartburn in the so called ‘world’s greatest deliberative body.’ John and Lindsey ain’t real happy about it.
Anybody wonder why four million Republicans sat out the 2012 election?
If you answered that question correctly, here’s another.
Does anyone not understand why that pesky talk of a third party just won’t go away?
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Friday, November 18, 2011
Congressional Supercommittee Is Super Divided - But has Time-Tested Solution at Hand!
So we are apparently to see from this "Super Committee" a package of phony budget cuts and massive real time defence cuts, all because the democrats will agree to cut NOTHING after Osama has increased spending by 4 trillion $ in 3 years, more that all the previous administrations in US history, combined, from Washington through Bush.
The above quote demonstrates 2 things:
- 1: There is a time tested alternative that would work, as it always has, and would raise revenues, as the democrats demand, which also means ...
- 2 The democrats DON'T WANT REVENUE, they want to tear down those who have, in the name of fairness. Whatever happened to the concept of "a rising tide lifts all boats"?
Conclusion: It ain't gonna happen! Our best alternative for now is to let the sequestration occur, and next time, don't cave when time to raise the debt limit comes. When Romney or Newt is president, and we control the Senate, all this can be reversed...T
The freshman Pennsylvania Republican has impeccable conservative credentials. Before he ran for the Senate last year, he ran the Club for Growth, an anti-tax, pro business political action committee that supported GOP House and Senate candidates who fought tax hikes, even knocking off some pro-tax Republican incumbents in party primaries.
Toomey's move was denounced by the Democrats who refused play his game, saying his plan didn't do enough to raise revenues. It also opened up a deeply divisive split in his own party.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, the Republican co-chair of the supercommittee, has sided with Toomey, as have other Republicans, including party leaders. But dozens of members see his plan as a betrayal of the GOP's position against raising taxes at any time, especially in the middle of a weak, high unemployment economy.
Rep. Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, who calls Hensarling one of his mentors, gathered more than 70 signatures from House Republicans this week on a fire-breathing letter to the panel's leadership that called any tax increases "irresponsible and dangerous to the health of the United States."
But the headlines and the stories about Toomey's tax plan leave out a critical component. While it would cap a number of itemized deductions that taxpayers take, thus raising their taxes, it would also offset those increases by lowering the income tax rates across the board.
Under Toomey's plan, all of the income tax rates would be reduced by as much as 20 percent -- lowering the top rate from 35 percent to 28 percent. The 10 percent bottom tax rate, created under President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cut law, would drop to 8 percent.
The details of these deduction caps are not clear right now and, as a chief analyst of a major business lobbying group told me this week, "the devil is in the details."
Overall, Toomey's plan would reportedly raise $400 billion in additional tax revenue, though an estimated $110 billion of that would be derived from higher economic growth and increased employment.
Supercommittee Democrats argue that his plan would hand huge tax cuts to the wealthy. But GOP aides say that most people in higher income brackets usually take many more deductions to lower their taxable income, so they would on average see their taxes go up.
President Obama and the Democrats are fixated on raising taxes on people who make more than $200,000, as well as small businesses who file as individual taxpayers, major corporations, and investors by raising their capital gains tax rate.
But these taxpayers pay the lion's share of all income taxes. Raise taxes on capital gains and you will get less venture capital investment and a weaker economy. Fewer Americans will sell assets they hold to plow their gains into higher performing, growth investments if the capgains tax rates take a bigger bite out of their profits.
Without knowing the full details of Toomey's plan, he is following a tried and true fiscal path to economic growth. We've had many recessions and downturns in the last five decades, and lowering the tax rates have always helped our economy recover and made it stronger than before.
The Kennedy across-the-board tax rates in the 1960s. The Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s, followed by the broader and bipartisan tax reforms of 1986 that got rid of a number of tax breaks, exemptions and other loopholes in order to lower the rates, cutting the top marginal rate to 28 percent as Toomey would do now.
And let's not forget the Republicans' pro-growth capital gains tax cut President Clinton signed in his second term that unleashed a wave of high tech capital investment that led to full employment and a budget surplus.
Even the Bush tax cuts in in 2001 and 2003 helped us get through several financial catastrophes, cut the deficit in half and produced a 4.7 percent unemployment rate in 2007 just before the subprime, home foreclosure scandal drove us into severe recession.
Still, it is hard to see this bitterly divided supercommittee producing a well thought out growth incentive plan under such a tight deadline, before Thanksgiving.
The driving force behind its creation in the federal debt limit battle was a series of annual budget deficits under Barack Obama's presidency that climbed to $1.5 trillion in his first year and hit $1.3 trillion this year. The total federal debt now stands at a whopping $15 trillion.
But the members of the supercommittee say they are no nearer to a deal now than when they began. They have agreed on a large number of spending cuts, but clearly the stumbling block remains the issue of taxes. Maybe the best course would be to set that issue aside for the time being, turning it over to the tax-writing panels of Congress, and concentrate on a plan to cut spending.
The supercommittee's mission is to cut at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That comes out to a little over $100 billion a year out of a nearly $4 trillion annual budget that wastes more than that sum each and every year.
If they can't agree on even that amount in savings, then I say, let the automatic budget cuts -- triggered under the debt limit deal -- begin.
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Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Reid and Pelosi Finally Get Mugged by Public Opinion
Dead meat! Due to the fact that the demothug congress passed ZERO appropriation bills (to avoid accountability in the recent elections) this year, the incoming conservative majority will have unprecedented authority to restrain comrade Osama and enforce it's will...T
Elections have consequences. The consequences of the November 2010 elections -- and one might add the November 2009 elections in New Jersey and Virginia and the January 2010 special Senate election in Massachusetts -- became clear as lights shined over the snow at both ends of the Capitol on Thursday night.
At the north end of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid abruptly withdrew the 1,924-page omnibus spending bill he had submitted two days before. Reid had hoped that the $8 billion worth of earmarks, including some for Republicans, would provide the Republican votes to pass a bill that financed Obamacare and otherwise furthered Democratic policy goals well into the next calendar year.
But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was able to persuade Republican appropriators not to swallow the bait. Democrats might have gotten their pet provisions through if they had submitted and passed appropriations bills earlier in the year.
But having failed to follow regular legislative order, they were caught defying the will of the voters so clearly expressed in November. Reid's ploy collapsed.
At the south end of the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced to watch gloomily as her Democrats failed to rally majorities to alter -- and probably sidetrack -- the deal reached between Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders extending the Bush tax cuts for two years.
Instead, the House voted 277-148 for a measure that the Senate had passed 81-19 earlier in the week. "If someone had told me, the day after Election Day 2008, that the tax rates on income and capital would not increase for the next four years," wrote Bush White House staffer Keith Hennessey in his blog, "I would have laughed."
Plenty of time for laughter now, for Hennessey and for the couple of million people who in some way, shape or form took part in the protests symbolized by but not limited to the tea party movement.
It is a source of continuing fascination for me to watch the interaction between public opinion, as measured in polls and election results, and the actions of members of Congress, elected in one political environment and looking in most cases to be re-elected in one that may be quite different.
Eleven months ago, after the Massachusetts Senate election, I was convinced that Democrats could not jam their health care bill through because voters had so clearly demanded they not do so. But Pelosi proved more determined and resourceful than I had imagined, and found enough House Democrats who were willing to risk electoral defeat to achieve what Democrats proclaimed was a historic accomplishment.
Pelosi and Barack Obama predicted that Obamacare would become more popular as voters learned more about it. Those predictions were based on the theory that in times of economic distress, Americans would be more supportive of or amenable to big government policies.
That theory has been disproved about as conclusively as any theory can be in the real world, and most of the Democrats who provided the key votes for Obamacare were defeated on Election Day.
Democratic congressional leaders did take note of the unpopularity of their policies when they chose not to pass budget resolutions last spring. Presumably they did so because they would have had a hard time rounding up the votes for the high spending and large deficits that would have ensued.
But had the House and Senate passed a budget resolution, Democrats might have been able to pass their preferred tax policy, raising taxes on high earners, under the budget reconciliation process. So the House vote Thursday night was a delayed consequence of the public's long-apparent rejection of their policies.
Obama told Joe the Plumber that he wanted to "spread the wealth around." November's vote, presaged by more than a year of polls, was, as political scientist James Ceasar has written, "the Great Repudiation" of that policy.
Republicans, having succeeded in holding down tax rates, clearly have a mandate to hack away at spending, and to defund and derail Obamacare, which is at or near new lows in the ABC/Washington Post and Rasmussen polls. And there does seem an opening, as Clinton White House staffer William Galston argues, for a 1986-style tax reform that eliminates tax preferences and cuts tax rates.
How effectively the 112th Congress will respond is unclear. But the outgoing 111th Congress, despite its big Democratic majorities, responded pretty clearly Thursday night.
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Saturday, November 13, 2010
GOP Freshmen Will Hold Boehner to His Big Promises
Just what we've been wanting to hear! This will be a very conservative congress!...T
For political junkies of a certain age, it was a given that the House of Representatives would always be controlled by Democrats. They won the chamber in 1954 and held on for 40 years -- more than twice as long as any party in American history had before.
When Sam Rayburn died at 79, more than 20 years after first becoming speaker, he was succeeded by John McCormack, 70, who was followed by Carl Albert, 68, and Tip O'Neill, an energetic 64. Every House elected from 1958 to 1992 had at least 242 Democrats, well above the 218 votes needed for a majority.
Now things are different. The Republicans won a majority in the House in 1994 and held on until 2006, the third longest period of Republican control in history; Democrats won two thumping victories in 2006 and 2008, but lost all their gains and more in the election last week. Alternation in power seems to be the new norm.
When John Boehner is elected speaker early in January, there will be more Republicans -- the exact number is not yet known, so let's say 240-plus -- than in any House since the one elected in 1946, before Boehner and most other members were born.
For a speaker, having a majority in the 240s or (as Nancy Pelosi has in the outgoing Congress) 250s is a sweet spot.
If you have 235 or fewer, as Republican Speakers Newt Gingrich and Denny Hastert did, it's hard to hold everyone in line on partisan roll calls -- some members will have districts or convictions that require them to dissent. And if you have more than 260, then just about everyone assumes he or she can go off the reservation, and without even letting the leadership know.
As Sam Rayburn said to Lyndon Johnson on election night 1958, when his party gained 50 seats: "Too many Democrats. Too many Democrats."
After the initial glow of the Gingrich revolution dimmed, the glue that Gingrich and Hastert used to hold their members together was money. They let Appropriations Committee members channel money to favored projects and members of Transportation and Infrastructure (the largest committee in Congress) earmark projects for their districts.
The bill came due in 2006. Disillusioned conservatives stayed home or voted Democratic. Most of the freshmen this year ran decrying the spending of Republican as well as Democratic Congresses and promising to do better. Boehner, who has never had an earmark, says the same thing.
Boehner has promised to do things differently, and the freshmen -- who make up one-third of Republican members -- will surely hold him to it. The size of his majority will strengthen his hand against the appropriators.
Boehner and incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor also sound grimly determined to cut government spending, and they have an able ally in incoming Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. And they don't seem to be backing off their promise to do whatever they can to repeal and hobble Obamacare.
That won't be easy, with Barack Obama's veto pen poised to strike. But Obamacare is not a self-propelling vehicle. It needs fuel and funding and fiddling from Congress. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Medicare agency head Donald Berwick had better plan on spending a lot of time on the south side of Capitol Hill over the next two years.
Boehner seems likely to prevail, in the lame duck session or as speaker next year, on extension of all the George W. Bush tax cuts, including those for high earners. Pelosi lacked the votes to let the latter expire before the election, and Obama seemed to be conceding the issue in his post-election press conference.
But Boehner will have his headaches when he has to rally votes to raise the national debt ceiling early next year. Freshmen don't want to vote for that, but it's irresponsible to let the government go without funding.
There's a tension as well between Boehner's hard line on issues and his pledge, in a pre-election speech at the American Enterprise Institute, to allow more open votes on amendments and to encourage committees to operate bipartisanly (as Boehner did on the 2001 education bill). We'll see how that goes.
Boehner is not likely to become as prominent a figure as Gingrich or Pelosi. But he'll start off with a larger majority than either of them did.
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Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Republicans put 99 Democrat-held House seats in danger
“It’s thermonuclear,” ...this is from a democrat congressman in New York...New York! Where republicans may gain up to 9 seats. Dick Morris may be correct after all that republicans could conceivably gain as many as 100 house seats and with them, an veto proof majority. Believe me, everyone, if we gain over 50 seats the Senate WILL fall as well. It always has, when a wave election of such magnitude has occurred historically. HEIL OSAMA!
With two weeks remaining until Election Day, the political map has expanded to put Democrats on the run across the country — with 99 Democratic-held House seats now in play, according to a POLITICO analysis, and Republicans well in reach of retaking the House.
It’s a dramatic departure from the outlook one year ago — and a broader landscape than even just prior to the summer congressional recess. As recently as early September, many Republicans were hesitant to talk about winning a majority for fear of overreaching.
Today, however, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report predicts a GOP net gain of at least 40 House seats, with 90 Democratic seats in total rated as competitive or likely Republican.
"When Chairman [Pete] Sessions and Leader [John] Boehner said that 100 House seats were in play, Democrats scoffed,” said Ken Spain, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s communications director. “Today, they aren't laughing anymore."
The number of Democrats in danger is more than double the 39 seats Republicans need to seize control of the House. It reflects an elastic electoral environment that favors the GOP by every measure: money, momentum and mood of the country — in this case, sour on Democratic incumbents.
For Democrats, a deteriorating political environment — unemployment high, President Barack Obama’s approval ratings low — has been exacerbated by the presence of cash-flush, independent conservative groups that have poured huge sums of money into races.
The groups, including American Crossroads, have combined with the National Republican Congressional Committee to stretch the boundaries of the 2010 map into races where there’s even a scent of Democratic vulnerability.
“This year is shaping up to be something of a repeat of the 52-seat House and eight-seat Senate rout of Democrats in 1994,” handicapper Charlie Cook wrote last week. “Sure, the circumstances and dynamics are different from then, but the outcome seems to be shaping up along the same lines.”
At one time, there was serious doubt the GOP would have the financial resources to compete effectively for the House majority. The thinking was that scores of potential opportunities could go unexplored due to the cash disparity between the NRCC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
While the NRCC still trails in cash on hand, its fundraising has picked up — the September total was the committee’s largest one-month take since 2006 — and independent groups have helped fill the void. And with anti-incumbent, anti-Obama and anti-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sentiment running so high in many districts, even a relative pittance has been enough to push a few Democrats onto thin ice.
The assessment by POLITICO is based on a review of TV media-buy information from those independent groups and the party committees in more than 80 districts; internal and public polling in individual races; Federal Election Commission fundraising data for incumbents and challengers; and reporting on the districts. ( See: More photos from the campaign trail)
While the level of competitiveness among the 99 seats varies widely, they share a common denominator: all of them show some serious sign of vulnerability to takeover by the GOP. Factors included a Democratic incumbent’s unpopular legislative votes, the quality of opposition, the partisan breakdown of the districts or the huge sums of money dedicated to Democratic defeat — or some combination of all those factors — to place them “in play” ahead of Nov. 2. (See: Candidates take the debate stage)
The subjectivity of those factors have led to varying interpretations of just how many seats are actually at risk for Democrats. The Rothenberg Report, another political handicapper, lists 91 Democratic-held seats as in play, and predicts the “extremely large field of competitive races” will produce a “likely Republican gain of 40-50 seats, with 60 seats possible.”
POLITICO’s list of 99 seats — some of which have only recently emerged — places GOP pickup opportunities across the political map, stretching from regions of Republican strength such as the South to Democratic states such as California, where three incumbent Democrats face competitive challengers.
In deep-blue New York, Republicans have a shot at as many as nine Democrats. “It’s thermonuclear,” said two-term Rep. Michael Arcuri, in describing the campaign against him to The New York Times.
The list doesn’t include several Republican-oriented seats that Democrats have all but ceded to Republicans, including districts in southeastern Louisiana, Upstate New York and Middle Tennessee.
Some Democrats are clearly facing more difficult challenges than others. The DCCC, which is charged with protecting the party’s 39-seat majority, has already pulled TV ad reservations in at least six contests — a sign that Democratic hopes of retaining those seats are diminishing.
There are dramatic differences in the competitiveness of races even within states. In California, Reps. Jim Costa and Loretta Sanchez appear to have easier paths to reelection than fellow Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney. In New York, Upstate Rep. Bill Owens has a higher degree of reelection difficulty than Long Island-based Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. In Texas, Rep. Solomon Ortiz — who typically wins by wide margins —- is far likelier to win than Rep. Chet Edwards, who is regularly faces stiff opposition in his solidly Republican district.
What does an endangered Democrat look like? Take your pick.
Freshman Democrats make up a large share — more than a quarter — of those facing competitive races. Of the 38 Democrats serving their first full terms in the House, POLITICO rates 29 as at-risk. Some — such as Reps. Bobby Bright of Alabama, Betsy Markey of Colorado, Alan Grayson of Florida and Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland — hail from GOP-friendly districts, where they have been in the cross hairs almost since the moment they were elected.
But legislative vets are under fire too. Nine-term New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey and four-term Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva until recently were considered near-locks to win, before their campaigns hit unexpected turbulence. Hinchey attracted unflattering attention this weekend after a videotaped confrontation with a reporter at the same time American Crossroads and other GOP groups are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads in his district.
Grijalva, who called for an economic boycott of his own state amid a housing crisis and record unemployment, has also been hit by outside spending right after an automated poll unexpectedly showed him in a dead heat with his GOP opponent.
The list also includes a handful of veteran Democrats who typically enjoy the benefits of seniority on Capitol Hill and cruise to reelection but this year find themselves locked in competitive races. Among those Democrats are Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina. (Join Arena debate: Which candidates should Dems try to save using limited resources?)
Getting outhustled in fundraising is another way for candidates to find themselves on the bubble.
In a sign of GOP momentum — and of the breadth of the competitive landscape — at least 40 Democratic incumbents were outraised by their GOP challengers in the most recent quarter, according to FEC filings. Reps. Ron Klein of Florida and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, both stellar fundraisers, were among those outraised in the latest reporting period.
Not all Democratic districts in play are held by incumbents: The party is trying to retain open seats in states including Pennsylvania, Indiana and Washington.
If there is a particular trouble spot for Democrats, it is the Midwest, where 31 seats are at risk. Democrats are trying to defend incumbents including Reps. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, Bill Foster of Illinois and Leonard Boswell of Iowa, as well as several open seats.
In the South, where many Democrats occupy conservative-oriented districts, Republicans are making a play for 24 seats.
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010
GINGRICH: 80% CHANCE OBAMA LOSES -- GOP COULD GAIN 70 HOUSE SEATS, TAKE SENATE
As I have been saying, this november will see the greatest sweep in modern electoral history. And again in 2012...T
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gives President Barack Obama only a 20 percent chance of being reelected — and says he might be the one to give Obama the boot.
Gingrich, who this week published a book called “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” said he thinks Obama has “about one chance in five of getting reelected.” and called him “the closest thing to Jimmy Carter I’ve seen.”
“Because he’s so radical, you’re now going to have, I think, the most consequential campaign since 1932,” when Franklin D. Roosevelt clobbered President Herbert Hoover, Gingrich said.
Giving predictions for November’s midterms, Gingrich said House Republicans will pick up “somewhere between 40 and 65 or 70 seats” — enough to gain control of the House. “I believe John Boehner will be speaker in January,” he said.
Gingrich said he even sees a chance of Republican control of the Senate. “If they can beat Barbara Boxer [in California], I think that [Mitch] McConnell is going to be the Senate majority leader.”
The former speaker said there is “more of a possibility now” that he’ll run for president than when he was considering the idea ahead of the 2008 election. He said he’ll decide in February or March of next year and will base the decision partly on whether there is “a potential to raise the resources to be a serious, major candidate.”
Gingrich said he and his wife, Callista, will base the decision on two top factors: “Is the case for basic change clear enough, and powerful enough, that articulating it and carrying it is a legitimate part of my role as a citizen?” and “Is there a potential to raise the resources to be a serious, major candidate.”
“This is a decision that will change the entire rest of our lives, and I think we're taking it with our daughters and our son-in-laws and our grandchildren,” he said. “We're taking this very methodically and very seriously. It's very daunting. … The whole point of my book is to say: We have to have a decade of really profound, deep, change, and it has to be in the right direction to compete with China and India and to defeat terrorism. And if we don't get those, we are in deep trouble. …
“The movement that would achieve that can't just be the presidency—that's where Obama didn't get it. It can't even just be the Congress. It's got to be school boards, city council, state legislature, county commission, governorships. I mean, you have to have a wave of change in this country for us to be able to compete with China and India. … There are thousands of people around the country who walk up and say: ‘We have to have leadership that will get this done.’”
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Tuesday, June 02, 2009
GOP Should Run Against the Power of the Center
We have the Colin Powell types demanding we draw and quarter the Rush Limbaugh's and abandon conservatism. It's just not fashionable, you see! We should just manage big government better than the democrooks.
Then there are the purists. Preferably start a new party, but at the very least, kick all the RINO's and McCain's to the curb! The republicans are worse than the democrats and must all lose, so that we can then win.
I've always thought both of these schools of thought were self defeating, for yes, we need to stand for limited government and constitutional jurisprudence, but there will never be enough of us to form a lasting majority. We must get better at teaching, explaining, and finding thoughtful, principled candidates, as well as finding some answer to the leftist, statist media monopoly that feeds the cancer of socialism that has befallen us. Reagan is the prototype. Idealistic, educated, dedicated to a purpose, not to a career, and yet appealing to centrists and democrats because he could explain conservatism in simple ways that people are instinctively drawn to and can't ignore.
Mr. Barone has hit on a perfect message to which we can only hope the GOP is listening!...T
"So I think Republicans today should be less interested in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center. Here I mean a different "center" -- not a midpoint on an opinion spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets.
...To govern is to choose, as John F. Kennedy said, and those in charge of these new centralized institutions are making choices that inevitably favor some and hurt others. Unsurprisingly, the politically well connected tend to get the favors. Banks forced to take government money are now blocked from paying it back and in the meantime must direct funds where the government wants them to go...when government gets this intertwined with the private sector, when it makes decisions not based on neutral economic criteria but by what is at best guesswork about the allocation and valuation of vast amounts of capital, bailout favoritism and crony capitalism are inevitable.
...It's arguably good policy as well as good politics to run against this over-powerful center. Bailout favoritism and crony capitalism not only misallocate economic resources, they also sap faith in the fairness of our institutions. After World War II, Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls -- all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans ran in 1946 on the theme of "Had enough?" and won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.
The 1946 Republicans didn't move to the center. They ran against the power of the center and permanently redefined where the center of the political spectrum was. That's a path today's Republicans might want to consider.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Dreaming of a Giuliani/Petraeus Ticket in 2012 and an American Surge
By 2012 republican divisions should be gone thanks to Osama, Pelosi, and Reid, oh my! Yes, and Giuliani would be a great president in his own right. He is much more conservative than given credit for, even on social issues, where he has pledged a strict constructionist court, and especially an economics and libertarian issues. Yes, and he is the only American Pol with the intellectual stamina to tame the executive branch and impose his will on congress.
So it's early, I know! Here, anyway, is to Rudy/David in 2012!...T
Signs of our collective weakness emerged after 9/11 when only part of the American population took seriously that we were at war with an evil and motivated enemy determined to destroy our way of life. Since then, al Qaeda has refused to quit despite debilitating losses.
Clearly, our national will is wilting away.
Following the tragic lead of Europe, too many Americans no longer want to engage our external threats head-on. And on the domestic front, we are confronting the economic crisis of our lifetime with the same full-steam-ahead spending-spree mind-set that got us into the mess to begin with.
We say: Let's create more government dependency, reward the incompetent and print more money.
That's doubling down on stupidity.
We are a trust-fund nation (picture Tori Spelling in the Lifetime Channel role of her career) whose BMW has run out of gas in the middle of the Mojave Desert after a pointless 115-miles-per-hour joy ride. The credit cards are maxed out. We're out of cell phone range. And dad, who just got taken by Uncle Bernie Madoff, wouldn't take the call anyway.
The silent generation, which learned valuable lessons from the Depression and World War II, is not here to guide us through these difficult times. The narcissistic baby boomers, who probably think this song is about them, are now firmly in charge. And that's the rub.
What is scaring us - even though many of us won't admit it - is that we elected a president who wants more than anything to be liked. What else explains his headlong rush to persuade foreign governments - even enemy regimes - to embrace us? And what else justifies his infatuation with Hollywood?
And even that he doesn't quite get right. I still can't believe that the president of the United States traveled across the country - without his teleprompter crutch - and made fun of the Special Olympics on national television.
When the going gets tough, the weak go on Leno.
I can't get out of my head that the leader of the free world gave the British prime minister 25 films on DVD that don't even work in U.K. machines.
I can't wrap my head around the fact that the commander in chief tried (for a minute anyway) to require injured warriors to pay to have private insurers take care of their treatment.
I can't believe the president would allow the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to dictate the terms of his budget - and Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, the symbols of government kowtowing to Wall Street - to be spokesmen for his financial bailout.
And did President Obama really produce a YouTube video to appease President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Iran?
Yes, he did.
These aren't beginner's mistakes. These are his core incompetencies.
The media that got him elected knows it is responsible for the gathering debacle, and so Jon Stewart, a so-called comedian and exemplar of the groupthink of the governing elite, is desperately hunting for scapegoats. Now that their secular savior is in charge, the "Dissent is Patriotic" bumper-sticker crowd is figuring out ways to stamp out criticism.
I admit, I am now officially freaking out.
The last time I felt this hopeless was when the Democratic Party and its cohorts in the media sold us on the false premise that we lost the war in Iraq. In the process, they also sought to demonize the very man that led us out of our peril.
His name is Gen. David H. Petraeus.
Less than two months into the Obama presidency, which appears to be lost somewhere in the Mojave Desert, I have decided to try to soothe my anxieties by placing my hope in a political surge.
In the election of 2010, Republicans should run heroic veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom who exhibited the will and fortitude to defeat the enemy and to rebuild a torn nation, even while too many of their fellow countrymen wrote them off.
And in 2012, the man President Obama's staunchest allies called "General Betray Us" should come in with guns blazing and defeat the man whose only weapon to lead us to victory is a teleprompter.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Lyndon Baines Obama
Welcome home Pat. Welcome back to the movement you, and many others, watched burn as you fiddled. Welcome home because we need your voice now to sound the clarion call: "This guy Obama is a fanatic!"
Speak loudly, clearly and with passion republicans, before it is too late: "Mr. Obama sir, you have no mandate to destroy the liberty of the american people to provide for themselves, and you shall be opposed, and ultimately defeated!"...T
It was the winter of conservative discontent.
Barry Goldwater had gotten only 38 percent of the vote, and his party had suffered its worst thrashing since Alf Landon fell to FDR in 1936.
Democrats held 295 House seats, Republicans 140. They held 68 Senate seats to Republicans' 32, and 33 governors to the GOP's 17.
Democratic registration was twice that of the GOP. The liberal press was gleefully writing the obituary of "The Party That Lost Its Head."
Decades might pass, it was said, before the GOP recovered from its fatal embrace of right-wing radicalism and foolish rejection of the leadership of Govs. Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton.
Wrote Robert Donovan in the opening lines of his book, "The Future of the Republican Party":
"The devastating defeat of Barry Goldwater at the hands of voters in all sections of the country but the Deep South has damaged, weakened and tarnished the party. For years to come ... the two-party system will be crippled."
Donovan and all the rest were wrong. The GOP came roaring back in 1966 to capture 47 House seats and eight new governorships. In 1968, Nixon led the party out of the wilderness and into a White House it would hold for 20 of the next 24 years.
Full of hubris in 1965, Lyndon Johnson had seized his moment. He had launched a Great Society that would outdo his beloved patron FDR. He would dispatch 500,000 troops to Vietnam to "bring the coonskin home on the wall" and create a "Great Society on the Mekong." Those were heady days of "guns-and-butter."
By 1968, LBJ's coalition was shredded. Gov. George Wallace had torn away the populist right. Sens. Gene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert Kennedy had rallied the antiwar left against him. LBJ and Hubert Humphrey were left to preside over a shrinking center.
Why did LBJ fail? He overloaded the circuits. He tried to do it all. He misread a national desire for continuity after Kennedy's death as a mandate for a lunge to the left and a great leap forward with the largest expansion of government since the New Deal.
By 1968, racial riots had torn apart almost every great city. The most prestigious campuses had been rocked by student violence. Thousands of antiwar demonstrators had taken to the streets. And 100 to 200 body bags were coming home from Vietnam every week.
By the winter of 1968, Lyndon Johnson was a broken president.
History never repeats itself exactly. But Barack Obama is making the same mistakes today that LBJ made in 1965.
He has ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, as the situation deteriorates and the NATO allies pull out. He has no exit strategy. He has read a repudiation of George Bush as a mandate for a government seizure of wealth and power that exceeds anything attempted in the Great Society.
Fully half of the $3.55 trillion in spending Obama will preside over this year will not be covered by tax revenue but by red ink. The money will have to be borrowed from abroad or printed by the Fed.
Not only is Barack running a deficit four times as large as Bush's largest, he has called for $1 trillion in new taxes on America's most successful, who have already seen their savings and pensions ravaged.
He wants a cap-and-trade system to deal with a global-warming or climate-change crisis many scientists believe is a hoax. He is going to provide health care for all, including immigrants, millions of whom arrive uninsured every year. He is going to plunge scores of billions more into education, though education has eaten up the wealth of an empire, as SAT scores sink further and further below the apogee of 1964, before LBJ and the feds barged in. He is going to ask Congress for authority to spend another $750 billion rescuing the banks.
He is going to find the cure for cancer. He is going to ensure every kid gets a college education. He is going to drop half of all wage-earners off the tax rolls, while the top 2 percent, who already pay 40 percent of all income taxes, are forced to cough up more.
Obama is misreading the election returns. When America voted to cancel the White House lease of Mr. Bush, it did not vote Barack Obama a blank check.
By misinterpreting his mandate, Obama has accomplished something John McCain could not -- unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps. For the Obama budget is an insult to the core belief of the party -- that free people, not coercive government, should shape the character of society.
By daring Republicans to fight on the issue of a $1.75 trillion deficit, Obama has liberated the GOP from any obligation to him. He has come out of the closet as a radical liberal spoiling for a fight over an agenda of radical change.
Sooner than any might have thought, we have clarity.
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Monday, January 26, 2009
Limbaugh Responds to Obama
We can only hope that he, as Byron speculates, does become the leader of our party of last resort, and not the likes of our feckless congressional leaders...T
According to an account in the New York Post, President Barack Obama yesterday told Republican leaders, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." With George W. Bush now off the stage, it may be that Obama and some of his fellow Democrats view Limbaugh, and not John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or any other elected official, as the true leader of the Republican opposition. This morning I asked Rush for his thoughts on all this, and here is his response:
Secondly, here is a combo quote from the meeting:
"If we don't get this done we (the Democrats) could lose seats and I could lose re-election. But we can't let people like Rush Limbaugh stall this. That's how things don't get done in this town."
To make the argument about me instead of his plan makes sense from his perspective. Obama's plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR's New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule, and it would also simultaneously seriously damage any hope of future tax cuts. It would allow a majority of American voters to guarantee no taxes for themselves going forward. It would burden the private sector and put the public sector in permanent and firm control of the economy. Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing "eternal" power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy. If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of this TRILLION dollar debacle.
Obama was angry that Merrill Lynch used $1.2 million of TARP money to remodel an executive suite. Excuse me, but didn't Merrill have to hire a decorator and contractor? Didn't they have to buy the new furnishings? What's the difference in that and Merrill loaning that money to a decorator, contractor and goods supplier to remodel Warren Buffet's office? Either way, stimulus in the private sector occurs. Are we really at the point where the bad PR of Merrill getting a redecorated office in the process is reason to smear them? How much money will the Obamas spend redecorating the White House residence? Whose money will be spent? I have no problem with the Obamas redoing the place. It is tradition. 600 private jets flown by rich Democrats flew into the Inauguration. That's fine but the auto execs using theirs is a crime? In both instances, the people on those jets arrived in Washington wanting something from Washington, not just good will.
If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of the trillion dollar debacle.
One more thing, Byron. Your publication and website have documented Obama's ties to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy's Rules for Radicals:
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
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