From The Marston Chronicles
In 45 years of being heavily involved in politics, we have never seen anything like this. Having been hammered for two elections, the Republican Party was totally on the ropes with only 40 Senate seats and 178 House seats. This is down from 55 Senate seats and 232 House seats in just four years. Now just 15 months later, the Republicans are poised to regain control of both houses in Congress in November. We are projecting a 58 seat gain in the House which would give them four more seats than they lost in the last two elections. We were projecting only a 44 seat gain just three weeks ago.
The Senate has been considered totally out of reach by everyone, ourselves included, until the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. The reverberations of that election are still striking every nook and cranny of the American political world. Races that would have been considered totally hopeless are now in play. Since there were only 19 Democrat held seats in play, how could the Republicans possibly expect to pick up 11 more to regain control of the Senate? The seats in Hawaii, Vermont and Schumers's seat in New York were and still are totally out of reach.
Who would believe that the Republicans would have a snowball's chance in hell of picking up 11 of the remaining 16 seats? On top of this, three more seats in Connecticut, Maryland and Oregon are really long shots even now. For example, Senator Wyden in Oregon does not even have a Republican opponent and his seat is the best bet of the three. So that left the Republicans with having to pick up 11 of the remaining 13 seats to regain control. They have already picked up the Massachusetts seat with the election of Scott Brown so now they need 10 of 12 seats. You could have gotten odds of 100 to 1 that the Republicans could not do that. If we were in Las Vegas right now and had some money to spare, we sure would be placing a bet that the Republicans would regain control of both houses of Congress in November.
If you look at our table of vulnerable Democrat held seats in the Senate, you will see the latest polls for each seat where they have been taken so far. In those 12 seats, a possible or actual Republican candidate is ahead in 9 of them. This simply cannot be happening and since it is, the sky must really be falling. Of course, there are some problems in three of these good chance seats in that Pataki in New York, Thompson in Wisconsin and Rossi in Washington have not committed to run yet. Even unannounced, they are ahead of Gillibrand, Feingold and Murray. This is totally unbelievable. If these three run and the election were held today, there would be a tie in the Senate and Vice-President Biden would be casting the tie breaking vote for the Democrats.
But wait, we are not done yet. Let's look at the other three seats left out of the 12: Illinois, California and Indiana. We will not know about Illinois until a poll is taken after today's primary. In California, Boxer is only ahead of Campbell by 4 points and Bayh is only ahead of Hostettler by 3 in Indiana. It is entirely possible that the Republicans could pick up all 12 seats and that is just totally unreal. Things like this just do not happen in politics but then Republicans do not get elected in Massachusetts, the most Democrat state in the union, to fill a seat once held by two Kennedy brothers either.
How could this be happening? The only plausible answer is that there is a massive rejection by the voting public of the agenda being pushed by the Democrat trifecta of Obama, Reid and Pelosi. Trying to jam health care reform down our throats, trying terrorists as common criminals and spending money like a whole carrier full of drunken sailors on Uncle Sam's credit card is ringing up a massive no sale for the Democrats. No one likes rejection but the worst thing you can do is to pretend it is not happening. That is definitely whistling past the graveyard. In this case, the graveyard is where the far left agenda of the trifecta is being buried right now. The Democrats need to "straighten up and fly right", so to speak, or suffer the most disastrous defeat in the history of modern politics.
The Sky is Really Falling
What Are We to Make of the Brown Victory?
Clearly there was a huge message sent by the Massachusetts electorate but what exactly was the message? More importantly, what will Obama, Reid and Pelosi think it means? Our take is that the voters were telling the Democrat leadership that they totally misread the message that the voters sent them in 2008. They thought they had received a mandate to veer hard to the left and install socialism lite in this country. That was not the message at all as the Massachusetts voters have now made clear. The 2008 message was that we are tired of the GOP and its many mistakes and we want to try something else as we suggested here in Misjudging the Popular Mood on 1/11/09. The other big factor was the color of Obama's skin. If the Democrats had selected a white male, even McCain would have wiped up the floor with him. A black candidate energized the black community and the under 30 crowd to register and come out to vote, something they have never been known for doing previously.
There is no way that this was a mandate to turn the United States into Sweden. Since the Democrat leadership totally misread the election result, they began a journey of one huge mistake after another. Whatever made them so naive that they could come to such an unwarranted conclusion? The answer is what we wrote here last September called Ideologues Make Poor Politicians. That article is worth a reread. The Democrat leadership is composed of ideologues first and politicians second. That is a very bad idea. They will always read any situation through the rose colored glasses of their own ideology.
They are doing that today once again. Obama plans to double down and be more combative then ever. Reid promises to press ahead on health care. Pelosi promises that they will move forward on health care. Now most people will read these comments and wonder to themselves whether these folks have lost their pea picking minds. What is there about the word "No" that you do not understand? Their next thought is that these people are really stupid because any fool can see that doing this guarantees they will lose control of the House and maybe even the Senate if they do not wise up. They are not stupid but rather they are blinded by their ideology.
They have convinced themselves that they know better what is good for America than the hoi polloi out there. That is what makes them seem so elitist to many Americans. Their obsession is such that they think that once they force their ideas on the "rabble" and they get used to it, the common folk will love it. After all, don't they love Social Security and Medicare now? Of course, such entitlement programs always come with the downside that the government gains more control over your life. To these ideologues, that is a minor detail since the masses are too stupid to make their own decisions anyway. Their problem is that the electorate does see this downside and they do not like it.
America is the last country on earth where you want to try to force people to accept what they have decided they do not want. That may work in Europe but not here. Americans are too fiercely independent to put up with this. The country started out that way with the American Revolution and the "do not tread on me" motto. While a distinct minority of the populace is willing to sell their birthright for a security blanket, the majority are not. As diluted as that feeling is in the most Democratic state in the union, it is not totally lost as 51.94% of the voters in Massachusetts just made clear. They are willing to put up with a lot in Massachusetts but there are limits and those limits have been breached. If that is true in the most Democrat state in the union, you can just manage what the percentage is in Utah, the most Republican state in the union.
That is why it is so ironic that Massachusetts has once again fired the shot heard around the world. That the folks in Massachusetts would decide to fill the seat once held by the liberal Ted Kennedy with a Republican is a repudiation of the Democrat's agenda in the strongest possible terms. The Democrats would do well to hear the real message they were sent and tack back to the right as Bill Clinton did after the 1994 election. Any failure to do that will come to haunt them when the chickens come home to roost next November.
How to Stop Obama Care Now
Even a lot of Conservative activists have not yet realized that if Obama care passes, we are stuck with it until at least 2013. Why is that you ask? Why can't we just repeal the thing after the 2010 elections? As we just found out if we did not already know, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to get anything big done. That not only includes passing legislation but repealing it as well. The Republicans only have 40 votes so they need to gain 20 seats to undo this beast if it passes. There are only 19 Democrat seats in the Senate up for election in 2010. Thus there is no way to get 20 more votes until 2012. Even if we won a lot of seats and managed to get a repeal passed, Obama would veto it and then you need 67 votes in the Senate and 290 in the House.
On top of that, there is no way to gain 19 seats in the Senate. Three of them are lost causes (Schumer, Leahy and Inouye). We have a real chance in Washington and Wisconsin, but there is no viable Republican running and you cannot beat someone with nobody. The bottom line is that Conservatives are royally screwed if Obama care passes because by the time we have enough votes to repeal it, the benefits will be kicking in. Once that happens, it is all over because no one can repeal an entitlement program once the benefits start. Could you repeal Medicare? That right there tells you what we are up against.
The Democrats understand this very well and that is why they are willing to take huge losses in 2010 to get Obama care through. Our only hope is to prevent Obama care from passing in the first place. How can we possibly make sure that it does not pass? The answer is to take the 60th vote away from the Democrats so that the final bill cannot get through the Senate. Apparently lost on just about everyone, including the leadership of the Republican Party, that 60th vote is up for grabs in less than a month from now.
There is a special election being held on January 19th to fill the old Ted Kennedy seat. Ordinarily, a Senate seat in Massachusetts would be a lost cause, but not in a special election. Scott Brown is a viable candidate and he has a real chance to win because special elections have low voter turnout which strongly favors Republicans. Yet no one is getting on board to help this guy because they just assume it is a lost cause. Instead of bitching about how screwed we are, how about doing something about it?
Go to: www.brownforussenate.com and donate every cent you can spare. We can take that 60th vote away from Reid and then health care will never pass. If we do not do this and send the Democrats a real message, we really are screwed. If you live in Massachusetts or even in New Hampshire near the border, volunteer to get the Republican vote out on January 19th. All you need are a list of the voters who are Republicans and their phone number. The Scott campaign should be able to supply that. You just get the phone numbers added to the voter files by a commercial service. I do it for clients all the time. You can do this from your home even if you live somewhere else and have a cell phone with free long distance.
Please listen to a long time political strategist and believe me when I tell you that this is our only chance to stop Obama care dead in its tracks. If you are dead set against Obama care and the takeover of a sixth of our economy by the government, this is how you can do something about it. While I live in Arizona, I was born and raised in Massachusetts. This is doable if everyone will just get busy and help Scott Brown.
The Lieberman Reid shoot out on Thursday
As posted on the Weekly Standard Blog and Roll Call: Lieberman will meet Reid.
A lot of Democrats were not happy with Lieberman's endorsement of McCain and want to penalize Lieberman.
What's at stake?
His chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and his place in the Democratic Conference.
Roll Call states:"A growing number of Senate Democrats have been pressuring Reid to penalize Lieberman for aggressively backing Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in this year’s presidential contest. At stake for Lieberman is his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and his place in the Democratic Conference.
It remains unclear what Reid will say in his upcoming meeting with Lieberman, but Democrats believe he is inching toward at least wresting the Homeland Security gavel from him. Lieberman, who sides with Democrats on most issues except the war in Iraq, became one of McCain’s most ardent allies and one of President-elect Obama’s vocal critics this presidential season.
Senate Democrats were particularly incensed with their Connecticut colleague after his bruising speech during the GOP presidential convention, during which Lieberman went on the attack against Obama."
Why is that important?
Well supposedly Barack Obama is talking about unifying the nation, but if Lieberman gets the boot, we already get a taste for what we really can expect from this administration.
Weekly Standard Blog says:
"Harry Reid said last night that the election results are 'not a mandate for a political party or an ideology." He'd seem quite the hypocrite if he said that at the same time he was planning to eject Lieberman from the conference."
Lieberman said in a statement this morning "now that the election is over, it is time to put partisan considerations aside and come together as a nation to solve the difficult challenges we face and make our blessed land stronger and safer. I pledge to work with President-elect Obama and his incoming administration in their efforts to reinvigorate our economy and keep our nation secure and free."
Probably we are talking here about a new phenomenon. BPMA - Bi-Partisanship-My-Ass.
The Alien Patriot
Mitch McConnell will again set the Left spending agenda right
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, won the fierce battle for his senate seat. Many say that he will have the most crucial job for Conservatives in the Obama administration
Harry Reid would have loved to see Mitch McConnell go. McConnell is a big challenge for Reid's liberal agenda and that is what we really need right now.
Chris Wallace said on FoxNews Studio B, that McConnell is a "master of parlamentary maneuvering", in that he understand which battles to fight and which to let go.
FoxNews reports in McConnell expects to keep Senate leadership post: "McConnell also pledged his cooperation for speedy confirmation of President-elect Obama's Cabinet choices _ as long as Obama offers "qualified candidates."
Politico.com says in McConnell: The most powerful Republican "In his victory speech Tuesday night, McConnell would say only that “the time to legislate will come,” and he asserted that his party’s priorities would be energy independence, lower spending and strong national security."
But McConnell already hears criticism from his own party:"Yet McConnell is already being challenged from the right. Moments after Obama was declared the victor, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a fiery conservative, declared, “Our party must start today to admit our mistakes, fight for our convictions and encourage new conservatives to run for office.”
McConnell is a clear strong arm in terms of fiscal conservatism, but he usually does not feel that comfortable in the realm of social conservative issues.
Maybe that's not enough for many republicans, but right now the possible spending sprees on the left might be considered the most important issue. And I say this even though social conservative issues are very important to me personally.
The Alien Patriot
