Free Republic

Many pundits and campaign consultants are no doubt analyzing the election results across the country to try to decipher what lessons the Republican wave holds for candidates planning to run in 2016. But there are four easily seen lessons that both of the major political parties should take to heart: First, the manipulation of election rules and political trickery didn’t work. In Kansas, for example, the Democratic Party forced its U.S. Senate nominee to withdraw and refused to comply with a state law that required the party to name a replacement candidate for the ballot. Democrats were hoping that...

Made this earlier this year before the bottom really dropped out from under Obama, and now it's more true than ever

So who’s going to be in charge come January? New leadership means new committee chairs. Here is a list of the potential Senate Committee chairmen or chairwomen in the next session of Congress: ----- Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry: Pat Roberts (Kan.) Appropriations: Thad Cochran (Miss.) Armed Services: John McCain (Ariz.) Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs: Richard Shelby (Ala.) Budget: Jeff Sessions (Ala.) Commerce, Science, Transportation: John Thune (S.D.) Energy & Natural Resources: Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) Environment & Public Works: Jim Inhofe (Okla.) Finance: Orrin Hatch (Utah) Foreign Relations: Bob Corker (Tenn.) Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions: Mike Enzi (Wyo.) Homeland...

As Democrats take stock of their grievous losses in the 2014 elections, party leaders are confronting a challenge perhaps even more daunting than their defeats in the House and Senate: the virtual wipeout of the Democratic talent pool across the country. After the Republican waves of 2010 and 2014, the party is depleted not just in its major-league talent, but also in its triple-A recruitment prospects. It amounts to a setback, Democrats say, that will almost certainly require more than one election cycle to repair. At the start of the 2014 campaign, Democrats envisioned an election that would produce new...

With most of the results of the midterm elections now counted and confirmed (with a few notable exceptions in Alaska and Virginia), we can now take a look at the exit polls and see what they actually mean. Before and during the election, plenty of speculation arose as to the composition of the turnout and which demographics may have contributed more to Republican success. The Washington Post looked at a comparison between 2012 and 2014 and discovered that all demographics shifted toward the GOP, especially Asian-American voters:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Based on preliminary exit poll data Tuesday...

Another underreported fact from Tuesday's election is the extraordinary night Republicans had in winning state legislative seats. The GOP now controls two thirds of state legislative houses – 66 of 99 (Nebraska's legislature is unicameral).  They upped the number of states where they control both house and senate to 24 – one more than they had before the election.  And according to this article in Vox, they cut the number of Democratic-held legislatures from 14 to 7. Republicans made historic gains in state legislatures in 2010. They held on in many states in 2012, or made up for losses...

The magnitude of the GOP’s tidal wave in Tuesday’s election is just coming into focus. Just as in 1994’s landslide election that gave Newt Gingrich and the GOP control of the U.S. House for the first time in half a century, the media are underplaying the rout and portraying the 2014 midterm as a temper tantrum on the part of the electorate. NBC said that it was a bad night to be an incumbent. No: It was a miserable night to have a D next to your name. Only one major Republican, Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, lost. Here...

WESLACO, TX (KRGV/CBS) - Officials are investigating allegations of voting irregularities after legally blind resident Rodrigo Yrigoyen said he was forced to vote against his will. The 65-year-old said two women knocked on his door, dressed him and took him to a curbside voting center in his neighborhood last Monday. They told him he had to vote for one of the women's cousins that was running for office. "When they knocked on my door, I thought it was my nurse. That's why I opened the door," Yrigoyen said. Yrigoyen said he repeatedly told the women no, but they took him...

Map of Flyover Country

As an accompanying piece to my Midterm analysis located here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3223860/posts I wanted to maybe give some positive news to those real conservatives who, while happy the Dems have been kicked to the curb, are annoyed that the establishment seems to have 'won the day'. Yes, the establishment robbed us of many high profile primary races, with Mike Simpson hanging on in Idaho as the most liberal Republican of that delegation, Boehner stooge James Lankford winning the senate nod from Oklahoma, and of course the despicable ruination of Chris McDaniel in Mississippi to save the dribbling Cochran. But in the...

In the end, there was no Republican wave. Indeed, ideologically it was barely a ripple. Unlike 2010, with the Tea Party, or 2006, when the Democrats took over, there was no all-encompassing agenda or over-arching theme. The Republicans won the US midterms – there’s no denying that – but they didn’t win as big as it first seems. This election cycle included not only conservative-friendly states but a disproportionate number of competitive states in which incumbent Democrats were stepping down. Democrats have not won Louisiana or Arkansas in a presidential election since 1996, Georgia since 1992 and Alaska since 1964....

You got to give the people, now Give the people what they want-- The O'Jays Now that Republicans have control of both houses of Congress, they are going to have to do better -- and do right by all Americans, not just their fringe conservative base. In the first days of the newly minted 112th Congress, after the 2010 midterms gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives, the American people were clamoring for action on jobs and the economy. What did the new Republican House give them? One of the first laws introduced was the No Taxpayer Funding for...

The results of the midterm elections are not yet fully known, but it is safe to say at this point that Republicans won a historic victory. As of this writing, the Republicans have won a 52-seat Senate majority outright. Republican candidates are expected to take seats in Alaska and Louisiana, resulting no less than a 54-seat Senate majority in the 115th Congress. NBC News projects that the GOP will hold a 250-seat majority in the next Congress, among the largest Republican majorities in generations. On the gubernatorial level, where Republicans were expected to lose ground, the GOP defied expectations...

In the following post, I am going to go through what happened last night for those finding it hard to follow, perhaps because they don't know who is who etc. I will go systematically through the highlights and lowlights of the governor's races, US Senate races, US House races, and state legislature makeup, picking out the ones I was watching out for in particular. I will then state the big winners and losers of the night in general Finally, my opinion on where we should go next, how to improve on successes and not repeat failures. Without further ado, and...

The president’s skill set didn’t match up well with an election that prized extremes over nuance. He paid the price. As his party lost seats in epic fashion Tuesday in both the House and Senate, the world's most famous Democrat sat on the sidelines—like a player ejected early from a championship game. But while there will be second-guessing, teeth-gnashing, and blame flying in the wake of the results, the plain truth is that President Obama was never the kind of man who could ride to his party's rescue in a midterm cycle like this. As he's made clear over the...

Since 2007, I’ve been saying that Obama isn’t a mere narcissist but is, instead, a malignant narcissist. He worships at his own altar and is, in his own mind at least, infallible. The manifests itself most obviously in the fact that, once he’s set himself on an intellectual or behavioral path, he is incapable of change — or at least, incapable of change based upon external critique and criticism. To a narcissist, any such external input must either be ignored or twisted so that it conforms to the narcissists own immutable infallibility.Everything that I just wrote is highly abstract. If...

Wow! Obama went off on National Journal reporter Major Garrett today during his press conference after the thumping he received in the midtern elections. “OK, let’s see. See, they may… OK, medical device tax… I’ve already answered, uh-uh, the question. We are going to take a look at whatever ideas… Let me take a look comprehensively at the ideas that they present. Let’s give em time to tell me… I’d rather hear it from them than from you. Major, you know, uh… conceivably I could cancel my meeting on Friday because I’ve heard everything from you. I think I’d rather...

Democrats thought Tuesday might go well for them. It really didn't.

Check out these two tables, both courtesy of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight's fascinating live blog. First, check out the Democratic bias in the senate polling: Next, here are the gubernatorial numbers: That's a striking contrast between predictions and reality. As they say in sports, "that's why you play the game." That's why we hold elections. In this election at least, the "experts" were confident America was more blue than it wanted to be.David French is Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Advocacy at the American Center for Law and Justice.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday said the “skunking” of Democrats in the midterm elections has given Republicans an “incredible” mandate to oppose President Obama. "The Republican Party now has one of the most important and unquestionable mandates a political party has ever had," Limbaugh said on his radio show. "The national Republican brand or image didn't say a word — which makes the mandate that they have all the more incredible,” he added. The popular conservative radio host slammed Republicans who say voters want them to govern and look for compromises with Democrats. "This election was about stopping...