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A dangerous mythology has gripped the Democratic Party. It holds that the reason Democrats took a shellacking in the midterm elections of 1994 was that their members failed to pass Bill Clinton's health care overhaul. The logic goes that if Congress had gone along with Clinton's $331 billion plan (who would have guessed it would end up seeming like a bargain?), Democrats wouldn't have lost 54 seats in the House. The Republicans could have won as many as 41 seats that year and remained in the minority, where they had been mired for 40 years. Democrats have developed an alternate...

The Republican party wonders why conservatives are so disappointed with it?Another glowing example of the problems confronting the Republican party occurred yesterday.  The Senate Republicans had the opportunity to force a full reading of the Senate's proposed health care bill so that every bit of the 2,200 pages would be made public by the reading, and so the people could become much better informed about its contents before it is passed...if it is passed.  It had the opportunity to really hold the Democrats' feet to the fire over this abominable excuse for legislation that is being crammed down the throats...

PHOENIX -- A new statewide poll suggests John McCain could get a fight in his bid for another term in the U.S. Senate. And it would come from his own party. A telephone survey of 570 likely Republican primary voters conducted by Rasmussen Reports found McCain the favorite of 45 percent of those questioned. But former Congressman and current radio talk show host J.D. Hayworth was backed by 43 percent, well within the 4 percentage point margin of error for the poll. Hayworth told Capitol Media Services late Friday he has not made a decision, saying he is in the...

Gov. Charlie Crist’s office is “looking into” the possibility of removing embattled attorney Scott Rothstein from the state’s Judicial Nominating Committee. Rothstein has offered to surrender his license to practice law. But, he may remain a member of JNC unless, or until, he’s charged with a felony crime. Gov. Charlie Crist named Rothstein to the JNC in August 2008. “Typically, the governor would only step in when felony charges are filed against a public official,” said Sterling Ivey, Crist’s spokesman. “Whether we will act before that point in this case is not clear yet. Our legal office is looking into...

Democrats are starting to worry that President Obama's "charge-and-spend" debt, new "cap-and-trade" tax and "apologize to the world" agendas are going to hurt them when they run for re-election, leaving the WorldNetDaily Freedom Index ticking up to 53.2 on a 100-point scale, despite a month of relatively few major controversies. "What I think is going on here is that Democrats are growing slightly more concerned that the Democratic initiatives in Washington may come with a steep political price tag outside the beltway," said Fritz Wenzel of Wenzel Strategies. "This is especially true after the Democratic election losses in deep blue...

Senator Landrieu and Senator Lincoln have announced they would give their vote to Senator Reid and the White House to allow ObamaCare to the Senate floor. For the group of U.S. Senators up in 2010 — the ones facing the independent voters that turned 2:1 against the Democrats in the New Jersey and Virginia elections — they will each be tagged all election cycle with providing the one vote needed for ObamaCare to come before the Senate. They could have stopped it, but they did not. The vote on cloture on the motion to proceed needs 60 votes, and therefore...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20--President Carter would easily defeat either former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California or former President Gerald R. Ford if the election were held today, according to the Gallup Poll.

Fascinating NYT articles from the late 70s about the same things we see today. The GOP needs to be more moderate, reach out to independents, they're too conservative, Reagan is bad news, too extreme, etc... Things never change. Here's some highlights: From 10/3/77: Mr. Ford drew a warm but not particularly enthusiastic response when he told the Republicans that their party's future lay in avoiding idealistic extremes and in attracting non-aligned voters..."In my judgment the radical liberal or idealistically pure conservative policies will not in the long run attract the independent voter". It was a remark that some listeners interpreted...

AUSTIN – Here's what I did not hear at the annual confab of Republican governors held here this week: The words socialist, extremist, or government takeover. With the focus on jobs, jobs and jobs, the only red meat was the Texas barbecue. And by design, there was no Obama-bashing. [snip] Barbour cautioned Republican candidates to refrain from attacking the president, period: "People want the president to succeed; good Lord, they want the country to succeed, and particularly the first African-American president has a lot of goodwill. . . . We need to be careful, we need to treat the president...

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Vote in Our Poll: What's Your Top 2010 Issue?

John McCain may have been the Republican Party's national standard bearer last year, but now it looks like he may have a hard time just hanging on to his Senate seat. A new Rasmussen Reports poll of likely 2010 GOP primary voters in Arizona finds the longtime incumbent in a virtual tie with potential challenger, J.D. Hayworth. McCain earns 45% of the vote, while Hayworth picks up 43%. Another candidate, anti-illegal immigration activist Chris Simcox, is picking up 4%. Hayworth, 51, a conservative former U.S. congressman who now is a popular radio talk show host in Phoenix, is reportedly interested...

With less than a year until Election Day, the stakes for this country could not be higher. Nancy Pelosi and her puppets have put our country on a path for bankruptcy and rationed healthcare.   With that in mind, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about an exciting project - Reverse the Vote. This site is a tool that allows concerned Americans to directly support the challengers of 24 vulnerable Democrats who voted to take your healthcare away and put it in the hands of federal bureaucrats.This project will hold these 24 Democrats’ feet to the fire for voting...

John McCain's problems inside his own party were hardly overcome by his place as its nominee, Rasmussen reports. The new poll shows McCain up just two points, 45% to 43%, in a hypothetical contest with former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, now a popular local radio talker, who's mulling a bid.

Hope and change hits 29 states, the sad thing is, Obama is just getting started...Chart from CNN..

Former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said Thursday he has read Sarah Palin's book and has no regrets about picking her as a running mate. (snip) He also said if Mrs. Palin decides to run for president in 2012 and becomes the Republican Party nominee he would vote for her. "I hope she has every success," Mr. McCain said. "She's still pretty popular."

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been working overtime to craft a climate bill that can attract significant GOP support. But they aren’t exactly scoring points with their mutual best friend in the Senate, John McCain. “Their start has been horrendous,” McCain said Thursday. “Obviously, they’re going nowhere.” McCain has emerged as a vocal opponent of the climate bill — a major reversal for the self-proclaimed maverick who once made defying his party on global warming a signature issue of his career. (snip) Former aides are mystified by what they see as a retreat on the issue, given McCain’s...

Sometimes a poll result slaps you in the face. That was the case for me when I saw Public Policy Polling’s results in the 2nd congressional district of Arkansas. PPP has the incumbent, Democrat Vic Snyder, leading three unknown Republicans (two-thirds to three-quarters of respondents could not describe their feelings toward them) by margins of 44%-43%, 44%-42% and 45%-42%. No, it doesn’t matter which Republican got the best score. The news here is that a seven-term Democratic incumbent, an intelligent man (he has earned an M.D.) with no disqualifying personal characteristics or accusations of scandal (so far as I know)...

Former State Representative Allen Quist announced Wednesday night that he will run against U.S. Representative Tim Walz for the First District Congressional Seat. In a press release, Quist said: "If people like what Congress is doing, they should vote for the incumbent. But if they believe, as I do, that Congress is headed in the wrong direction, then I will be the alternative." Quist had previously established a web site and Facebook page, so the formal announcement of his candidacy was not unexpected. A Republican, Quist served three terms in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1983 to 1988, runs...

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has decided not to run for governor next year - but will run for U.S. Senate instead, sources told the Daily News. A source familiar with Giuliani's thinking said the failed presidential candidate has been telling people he plans to run against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010 to fill out the remaining two years of Hillary Clinton's term. If elected, the source said, he could use that as a stepping stone to run for President in 2012 - rather than run for re-election to the Senate. A Giuliani spokeswoman downplayed the reports. "Rudy has a...

The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 24 Democrat House members who voted for passage of the Pelosi Death Care bill and is targeting those 24 Democrats for defeat in November 2010. The RCCC has set-up a website called Reverse the Vote! to raise money for a war chest specifically aimed at defeating these 24 individuals who voted for the Pelosi bill in opposition to the will of their constituencies. The list of 24 includes… Rep. Berry (D AR-01) Rep. Snyder (D AR-02). Rep. Giffords (D AZ-08). Rep. Salazar (D CO-03). Rep. Bean (D IL-08) Rep. Foster (D IL-14) Rep....

Officials tell ABC News so far, they found 700 mistaken Congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants. On Monday night, ABC reported on errors found on the website set up by the White House to track the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program. The website was riddled with reports of jobs in places that didn't even exist. That report prompted anger on Capitol Hill, and defensiveness at the White House. On Tuesday night's broadcast, ABC's Chief Congressional Correspondent Jon Karl took another look at the stimulus confusion (link) LINK White House Vows to...

Seven different indicators suggest that 2010 will be a very tough year for the Obama Administration's plans to turn America into a Socialist People's Republic. If some of these indicators pointed one way and others pointed the other way, projections might be murkier. But all the winds seem to be blowing in the same direction and the result may be for Republicans the Perfect Storm. What are these seven different indicators? 1) Public opinion polls, led by the very accurate Rasmussen Poll, have shown in the summer a clear line in the "strong approve" and "strongly disapprove" of Obama. Although...

I’ve read some misguided partisan ranting before, but the piece, “Gone Rogue” (how original) by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas is in a class by itself. That it passes for a news story is telling of how detached the elitists in media really are. Nothing exceptionally newsworthy is going on (a book tour!), yet we are witnessing a foaming hysteria from all fronts of the liberal establishment. And, we must ask: Why? Sarah Palin is merely promoting her book. The degree to which the left fears Palin is astonishing. The former governor isn’t even talking about running for office and yet Newsweek...

<p>Although most conventional wisdom rates Gerald E. Connolly of Fairfax County as the safest of three freshmen Democrats elected to Congress in Virginia last year, that wisdom rests on a rematch with Republican Keith S. Fimian in next year's midterm elections.</p>

(snip) There’s a list of issues being hammered out, but at the top is finding money for South Florida’s cash-strapped Tri-Rail. Republicans are targeting a $2 fee on rental cars as the source and discussing whether to let county commissions approve the charge or require a referendum.“That’s sort of one of the issues we’re dealing with,” Crist said. Florida’s Republican leaders believe they need to settle funding issues for Tri-Rail and a host of insurance and money issues for a proposed Central Florida line known as SunRail before the state has any chance at securing $2.5 billion in federal stimulus...

It was a moment of unintentional comedy earlier this year when newly appointed U.S. Sen. George LeMieux called himself a " Charlie Crist Republican." No doubt LeMieux spoke in earnest about the man who appointed him to the Senate, and who is now running to succeed him in it. But the joke was that nobody knew what he meant. What is a "Charlie Crist Republican" anyway? Honestly, do you know how Charlie Crist would vote on a federal takeover of health care, on a cap-and-trade energy tax, on massive new spending bills, or on another stimulus boondoggle?

Rand Paul, the son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), has surprised a lot of people by surging in polls and fundraising to quasi-frontrunner status in next year’s U.S. Senate race in Kentucky. But Chris Cillizza reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is weighing in against Paul and hosting a fundraiser for Trey Grayson, the young secretary of state, whose “establishment” candidate credentials have been a little banged up by Paul’s campaign.

Please FReep this Poll: Will legislation such as the Health Care Bill or Cap & Trade affect the way you vote in 2010? Yes, I will support the incumbant Democrats. Yes, I will support the incumbant Republicans. No. I will vote for a new Democrat in the primaries. No, I will vote for a new Republican in the primaries. No, I will vote for a third party candidate. I will vote whatever way is necessary to change my Congressional representation. I don't vote.

“After 2010 you can have a polite conversation about who should be president in 2012,” Norquist continued. “But until then the only thing you’re doing is sucking oxygen out of the room. And you’re not being helpful. If you’re the governor of Indiana and you want to be presidential, don’t send me a press release about how you didn’t raise taxes. Beat [Sen.] Evan Bayh [D-Ind.]. Then I’d say, ‘Hey, there’s a guy to talk to.’” But Norquist also had an equally strong message for conservative activists — warning that they should not look to enforce ideological purity tests on...

Blogger Jordan Carmon catches Marco Rubio’s upstart Senate campaign putting together an ad against Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.)–his opponent in the 2010 GOP primary–that looks and sounds exactly like a hard-hitting ad then-presidential candidate Barack Obama ran against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008. Check out the ads. First, Rubio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghjqOw3CBs Now, Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6reQLzgywzk Notice that the equivalent of the picture with Bush is a picture of Crist with Obama.

Today is November 16, 2009. Our country is in deep trouble. We have a President who is demonstrably anti-American. His background and history remain a mystery. His goals and programs are the antithesis of traditional American values of freedom, capitalism, and representative democracy. He is anti-military, tying their hands with inappropriate and dangerous rules of engagement on the battlefield, and prolonging the inability to make a timely decision to send requested manpower to the front lines of the War on Terror in Afghanistan. This President cannot even utter the phrase “War on Terror”, and he is uncomfortable with the term...

While we’re all focusing on picking Charlie Crist off in the Florida Senate Primary, I think if conservatives really want to send the GOP establishment a message, target number one a high priority should actually be Bob Bennett of Utah. Just to clarify for those of you freaking out that I said target number one should be Bennett: the Bennett race happens before the Florida race. That said, we should be targeting more than just Florida. Bennett is worth picking off because he is an incumbent troublemaker. Granted, it was a poor choice of words on my part, but I...

Despite his recent request for help from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and renouncing his past support of prominent environmental legislation, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk on Wednesday denied he is moving to the right to try to coalesce support in the Feb. 2 primary election. "I think I am who I am," Kirk, a member of the Naval Reserve, told reporters after a Veterans Day ceremony at the Jesse Brown Veterans Administration Medical Center in Chicago. "I am a social moderate, fiscal conservative. But this is a big race, and we are building a broad coalition, and it...

Matthew Berry, a former Clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, has launched an exploratory committee into a possible run against Democratic Congressman Jim Moran in Virginia's 8th congressional district. Matthew Berry, a strong Conservative Republican on most issues, would be challenging a radical leftist who has compared Republicans to the "Taliban", and just yesterday called those who oppose bringing terrorists into the country for civilian trials "un-american". While Mr.Berry is not officially a declared candidate for the Republican nomination, he has agreed to answer some questions for a brief email interview, however, I felt it would be proper to include you...

This week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, told reporters the GOP offers a "back-of-the-hand treatment to women." Later she said two conservative female representatives only serve to further "repulse women." You see, Schultz said on MSNBC, Republicans "don't really get very many women when it comes to elections." The week before, in Virginia, the Republican gubernatorial candidate won women. And in blue New Jersey, the Republican lost women but won white women by 18 percentage points. Last year, John McCain won a majority of the white female vote. They sum to more than 25 million women. Democrats, so...

Despite already having seven candidates who have filed to run against U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the Republican Party continues to hunt for a prominent challenger for the controversial Orlando Democrat. And state Rep. Kurt Kelly is ready to assume the mantle - if no other big-name Republican is willing to do so. The Ocala Republican said in an interview Wednesday that he's waiting to see how the GOP search for a candidate in Grayson's 8th District shakes out before deciding to enter the race. But he would "seriously consider" challenging Grayson under the right circumstances.

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo appears to be inching closer to getting into the Colorado gubernatorial race. While he has yet to formally declare his candidacy or fill out paperwork with the secretary of state's office, the Littleton Republican on Thursday told a Westword reporter he "fully intends to run."

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) said Thursday that House Democrats should brace for challenging races in 2010, but he dismissed the idea that next year’s mid-term elections would be an all-out sweep for Republicans. “People who think this is a redux of 1994 are totally misreading the current situation,” said Van Hollen, a speaker at Bloomberg’s Washington Summit. Democrats are in a situation for a historically “very tough cycle” given the party’s major victories in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, said Van Hollen, who is also assistant to the Speaker. “I set these expectations back...

Looking at the Cook Political Report’s latest competitive race chart is in itself informative - the short version is that of the top 108 competitive races, the following ratios apply: Dem GOP Likely D 45 0 Leans D 23 1 Toss-up D 12 0 Toss-up R 0 3 Leans R 1 8 Likely R 0 15 Total 81 27 …but there’s some interesting things that can be seen with a little sorting. Below is a chart of competitive seats, sorted by Cook Partisan Rating: TX-17 Chet Edwards R+20 ID-1 Walter Minnick R+18 AL-2 Bobby Bright R+16 MO-4 Ike Skelton R+14...

Could Sen.Chris Dodd, senior US Senator from CT REALLY BE IN TROUBLE? Things will come out in the wash. It’s just one poll, it’s still a year away, but the time is running shorter and the poll is running in the wrong direction for the senior Senator from Connecticut. Former Connecticut Congressman Rob Simmons has an early lead in the Republican primary race for the 2010 U.S. Senate contest and runs better than any other challenger against Sen. Christopher Dodd, topping the Democratic incumbent 49 – 38 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Cleveland automobile dealer Tom Ganley (R) is airing a statewide television ad to introduce himself to the primary voters who will decide whether he or former Rep. Rob Portman should be the party’s nominee in a key open-seat Senate race next year. The 60-second ad touts Ganley’s business background and takes an anti-Washington tone, with a narrator saying that Ganley’s 47-year career of creating jobs and balancing budgets amounts to “hard work the Washington politicians don’t understand.” Ganley speaks only at the end of the ad, in a required disclaimer approving the commercial. “To help create jobs for Ohio, Tom...

Has this been a trying decade for the average American, or what? It's bad enough that we've have had to cope with stagnant wages and tax increases at just about every level. But in the months ahead, we may have to deal with yet another nightmare: surging gasoline prices. Factors are lining up that could end up pushing gas prices back over $4 per gallon sometime next year. If you're already exasperated about prices at the pump, you're not the only one. Gasoline demand in 2009 has been comparatively low -- take 7.6 million Americans out of the workforce through...

Independent political observers and Democrats themselves have been saying for months that 2010 is shaping up as a bad year for Democratic candidates, and the latest Gallup generic congressional ballot test only reinforces the point. Not only do Republicans lead 48 percent to 44 percent, but independents now favor the GOP by 52 percent to 30 percent. Although generic Republican candidates hold just a 4-point lead, the GOP's perpetual turnout advantage means their lead would likely be higher if the midterm elections were today. Even a single-digit lead for Democrats in Gallup's testing often only means the two parties will...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — Former NFL player Jon Runyan says he's considering running for Congress. In a statement issued Wednesday by the Burlington County Republican Committee, Runyan says he believes the country is being taken in the wrong direction by career politicians. Runyan, an offensive lineman, played 13 seasons in the NFL, the last nine with the Philadelphia Eagles. The 36-year-old is out of football this season, though he's talked to the Eagles and other teams about coming back. If he runs for Congress, it would be in New Jersey's 3rd District, which stretches from the Philadelphia suburbs to central...

[T]he narrative Obama White House officials are writing about themselves is that they are uncompromising, ungracious, and ready to run roughshod over popular opinion. They have mastered the Chicago way of politics: reward friends, punish enemies, and jam the opposition. Voters have a tendency to quickly grow tired of pugnacious governance. That's only the beginning of Mr. Axelrod's problems. If the 2010 midterms are nationalized, they will be a referendum on Mr. Obama's increasingly unpopular policies. For example, in the newest Gallup survey released on Monday, only 29% say they'd advise their congressman to vote for the health-care bill. This...

Smiling after the latest WHAS11 Survey USA poll gave him a slight lead over Secretary of State Trey Grayson in the Republican U.S. Senate primary, Rand Paul tells WHAS11's Joe Arnold that he made an offer over the weekend to meet with Kentucky's senior senator, Mitch McConnell. "I will work with Senator Mcconnell, and I've already made the first step of calling him," Paul said. It comes three months after McConnell and twenty other Republican incumbent senators hosted a fundraiser for Grayson in Washington D.C., which has been interpreted as an endorsement for Grayson. But, when pressed whether he would...

State Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, took off from Conway’s Cantrell Field Thursday morning en route to media appearances in Little Rock, Jonesboro, Texarkana, Fort Smith and Fayetteville as part of his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by incumbent Democrat Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Baker was speaking during stops in these cities on health care reform and his opinion that government-administered health care will lead to “higher costs, reduced quality and limited patient choice.” On. Nov. 19 Baker is scheduled to hold a $1,000-per-person fundraiser at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"Should the liberals succeed in passing the intergenerational theft act (aka healthcare 'reform'), elect a GOP majority in the House and Senate. "The first order of business of this Republican Congress -- no matter how difficult it is, no matter how many hours and days and weeks it might take -- will be to overturn and eliminate any trace of this unconstitutional socialist abomination, which has as its design one ultimate end: POWER for government and enslavement of American citizens. "The second order of business will be to institute REAL healthcare legislation : tort reform, portability, and getting government OUT...

Now that the gubernatorial election is over, Republicans in Burlington, Ocean and Camden Counties are starting to focus on recruiting someone to take on freshman U.S. Rep. John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) next year. There is a deep bench of potential candidates, but some Republicans have one in mind who could clear the field: Philadelphia Eagles legend Jon Runyan, a Mount Laurel resident. Sources tell PolitickerNJ.com that Assemblywoman Dawn Addiego (R-Evesham) - who knows Runyan because their children attend school together - has talked to him about running. Runyan, who is not currently active in the NFL but has not retired,...