Posted on 11/15/2016 1:36:56 PM PST by GilGil
Gowdy has been utterly incompetent in bringing the Butcheress of Benghazi to justice. Few people share your opinion that he’s done a good job in his capacity as chairman of the special committee. Attacking Cruz won’t change that fact.
Reagan had 53 GOP Senators in 1981. There hasn’t been 57 Republican Senators since 1921 when there was 59.
Thanks for the correction, dj; remember how surprising in that election that AL and GA elected their first Republican senators, but weren’t both one-termers?
Both had weak Dem incumbents going into 1980. Sen. Herman Talmadge had ethics issues and only cleared the Dem primary with just 42% and facing Zell Miller in the runoff, he won by an unimpressive 17% margin. Conversely, Mack Mattingly sailed through his primary and picked up disgruntled Miller supporters in the general, winning by just 1.74% (and outperforming Reagan, who didn’t win GA in 1980).
Mattingly turned out to be a weak incumbent and Atlanta’s Congressman Wyche Fowler beat him by the same margin as Mattingly defeated Talmadge, a mere 1.83%. The GOP was still incredibly weak as a party in GA in 1986, which was partly why Mattingly couldn’t hold on. Curiously, had Zell Miller beaten Talmadge in 1980, more than likely he might’ve been able to defeat Mattingly. You might remember that when Zell was appointed to the vacancy in 2000 when Paul Coverdell died, he handily beat Mattingly by 20% in the special election.
As for Alabama, that had been the seat occupied by Conservative Democrat Jim Allen who unexpectedly died in 1978. Governor Wallace appointed his widow, Maryon, who immediately declared her intention to run for the remainder of the term. Absent a runoff, she’d have taken it in the first primary (getting 45%), but she lost to the more left wing and young State Sen. Donald Stewart, getting 43%. In his second attempt at a political comeback after being shellacked by Mrs. Wallace in 1966 for Governor and losing the 1972 Senate primary against Nixon’s preferred candidate of PM General Red Blount, ex-Congressman Jim Martin held Stewart to an unimpressive (for a Democrat) general election win of 55-43%.
Sen. Stewart didn’t have much time to solidify his hold on the seat as then-PSC Commissioner “Little Jim” Folsom, Jr. jumped into the race for the full term and kept Stewart from winning the nomination outright in the 1980 Dem primary (Stewart got 48.6% to Folsom’s 35.7%). Folsom charged hard and beat Stewart in the runoff by the nail-biter of just 1.2%. That gave Admiral and former POW Jeremiah Denton an opening after he defeated ex-Democrat Congressman and Ambassador Armistead Selden, Jr. by a 2-to-1 margin. Denton prevailed by 3% over Folsom (there was almost no vote splitting in the Senate and Presidential races, Reagan got 654k votes and 48.75% of the vote, Denton got 650k votes and 50.2%).
When then-Congressman Dick Shelby ran against Sen. Denton in 1986, Shelby attacked the incumbent for being out of touch with Alabama voters because he owned a Mercedes-Benz. Shelby ended up prevailing by less than 7,000 votes, a mere fraction of a point. Not long after, Alabama would build a Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa, and that “attack” would’ve netted Denton a second term. Alas, not to be, and Shelby won his 6th term last week, but now as a Republican.
Which really means that Mitch is the guy blocking the best of Trump’s nominees.
OK, so they can’t nominate Giuliani for Attorney General because he’d never be confirmed in the Senate, but they think if they nominate him for Secretary of State he will be? That makes zero sense.
It would take 51 votes to remove the filibuster rule. I can think of at least 6 Republicans who would vote against the change right off the bat. Probably come up with more if I thought about it a bit.
And the members of the Senate can block who they want. It's been happening for years.
Alabama is as blue as they come. Sessions would be replaced by another Republican.
I don’t get it, Sec of State also needs Senate confirmation.
They didn’t block Obama’s radical nominees.
Except for Garland, it seems.
I agree. It makes no sense. And he is far more qualified to be AG.
They blocked more than you think. A lot of judges and a bunch of appointments in other areas. Basically the Republicans could block a nomination by not holding hearings, which they could do since they controlled the committees. The Democrats will have to either filibuster or put a hold on a nominee but it'll have the same effect.
Well it is possible that I don’t know about some blockages, I will admit.
Hopefully they end the filibuster, but if they don’t make them filibuster.
Don’t just say oh we can’t because the dems will filibuster, make them do it. Make them stand up there and talk until they fall over, and then confirm.
Right now I think that only Supreme Court nominees can be filibustered. But any senator can place a hold on a nominee.
I never heard that Mercedes Story. :(
As aside but did you notice the swing to Shillery in suburban Atlanta? Is it becoming NOVA? One of the most distressing results of the election.
Yes, I noticed. Seeing Cobb, Gwinnett and Henry go to the dark side was troubling. A lot of Black middle class are moving to the Atlanta & Metro, but carrying their self-destructive voting habits with them. Clayton County once was a GOP county in the ‘80s and it got transformed into a PG County, MD, Democrat hellhole in short order. I expect more and more White middle class Republicans will abandon these suburban counties to move further out to escape the cancerous Democrat spread. Still, Hillary only improved her overall margin on Zero’s by just 1/2% statewide and outside the Atlanta Metro, most of the rest of the state moved more GOP.
Of note: I think a number of rich White Atlanta elites preferred Hillary to Trump, because the RINO elitist Isakson carried those aforementioned 3 counties (and Isakson outperformed Trump in Fulton County by almost 10%). I have little hesitation now in calling Democrats the party of the rich, especially seeing the 2016 results.
I agree with you there. If there are enough Senate 'Rats to block Giuliani for AG, you would figure they would block him from getting SOS or any other cabinet level job.
I noticed Cobb and Gwinnett jogging over to Clinton, too, but it wasn’t confined to Georgia. There was a similar pro-Democratic move in a number of metro areas. Just look at Texas. Houston’s Harris County saw a big drop from Romney’s narrow loss with 49.31% to Trump’s 41.78%. In fact, it looked like there were sizable swings toward Clinton in all the big metro areas in Texas, both in the cities and the suburbs. Metro Phoenix, metro Jacksonville and Tampa, and metro Richmond are other examples. Even in my home area of metro New Orleans, Clinton did better than Obama (albeit by very little, she still lost my home of Jefferson Parish 40.54% to Trump’s 55.29%)
Given that Trump improved with Hispanics over Romney and there was no “Latinopocalypse” against him, I think the culprit is a lot of white suburbanites who don’t like Trump’s personality, bought into some of the controversies surrounding him, or perhaps aren’t fans of his more protectionist policies. You can see this effect in some of the states that Trump did win, where Republicans did better in the suburbs: Ron Johnson ran well ahead of Trump in the suburban Milwaukee counties, and Pat Toomey ran up bigger percentages than Trump in the Philly burbs. And as DJ mentioned, Isakson outperformed Trump in the Atlanta suburban counties.
The “swing” button is now operational on David Leip’s site, so if you check state by state, you can see where Trump improved on Romney’s numbers, as well as where he fell:
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2016&off=0&f=1
Swings (which are of course affected by 3rd party votes) aside it’s nice to see she only actually improved on Obama’s vote share in a few states.
Arizona, less than a point
Cali, more than a point
GA, less than half a point, and she was under his 2008%
MA, less than a point, and she was under his 2008%
TX, about 2 points, and she was slightly under his 2008%
Utah, about 3 points, and way under his 2008%
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