Free Republic

Nice maps and colors at the site. http://uselectionatlas.org/2014.php

Let the soul-searching begin. “Our party has a problem,” says Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Broward County congresswoman and Democratic National Committee chairwoman, in a new video responding to her party’s midterm shellacking by the GOP. **SNIP** “We know we’re right on the issues. The American people believe in the causes we’re fighting for. But the electoral success we have when our presidential nominee is able to make the case to the country as a whole doesn’t translate in other elections. That’s why we lost in 2010. And it’s why we lost on Tuesday. We’ve got to do better.”

Hadn't watched the McLaughlin Group in quite some time as they had lost or jettisoned some of the more interesting panelists (and no, Jay Carney wasn't one of them!). The lineup seems to have stabilized although these poor folks are looking O-L-D...perhaps because they are. Felt bad for McLaughlin who apparently was wearing someone else's suit, so baggy was it on his frame. I'm not condemning anyone for aging or illness but it was a bit alarming. In the days before cable news and the internet, the McLaughlin Group were one of the few doses of political candor and a...

WASHINGTON — As most Republicans were taking a victory lap the morning after the elections, a group of conservatives huddled anxiously in a conference room not far from Capitol Hill and agreed that now is the time for confrontation, not compromise and conciliation. Despite Republicans’ ascension to Senate control and an expanded House majority, many conservatives from the party’s activist wing fear that congressional leaders are already being too timid with President Obama. They do not want to hear that government shutdowns are off the table or that repealing the Affordable Care Act is impossible — two things Republican leaders...

For the first time, the number of women in Congress has hit triple digits. Alma Adams, a Democrat from North Carolina, was elected representative for the 12th Congressional District on Tuesday. Because it was a special election, she will be sworn in immediately and join the 113th Congress. Before Adams’s election, there were 20 female senators and 79 female representatives in Congress, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

**SNIP** At that point, the liberal host held little back in showing her disapproval for Democrats falling remarkably short at the state level: Complete Republican legislative control in 30 states and we've only got 50 states. Elections, consequences. Democrats, do you guys have a catch-up plan for the states here or what? Because the trend here is obliterating. Earlier, Maddow erroneously put the measly number of state legislatures run by Democrats at eight – “Oregon, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware” when it’s really nine as Maryland’s legislatures remains controlled by Democrats (but will have a Republican Governor...

As his presidency once again teeters on the brink, it's time to look seriously at how it became undone. For reasons largely beyond his control, Barack Obama has experienced more adversity and upheaval during his five-plus years as president than most of his predecessors. (In fact, when it comes to governing during crisis, you could argue that only a few others, like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, had it worse.) Still, even though the president has already had more than his fair share of bad weeks, the past seven days or so have to rank among the administration’s very worst....

John 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. So America has woken up to the fact that the President has no clothes. They finally realize he was a figment of the Three Pillars of Marxism (the media, academia and the DNC) imagination and ran his Party out on a rail. The only ones too arrogant to realize it are Odumbo and the Three Pillars. They seem to think after America has two years of capitalistic oppression they will gladly turn their lives back over to their Marxist overlords, good luck with that plan as...

Joni Ernst's feat this week was one that many thought was impossible: a Republican victory in a blue state that Obama won twice, and the first woman ever elected to Congress from Iowa. Not only did Ernst win a U.S. Senate seat, she clobbered her Democratic opponent by an 8-point margin.. So how did she pull it off in a state that has so long resisted making women its top leaders? A weak opponent, a breakthrough ad in the hog barn that went viral, and a carefully cultivated image that female politicians from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Sarah Palin have...

For the American people, voting in the 2014 election was like choosing whether they'd rather get Democrat Ebola or the Republican flu. Just because they chose the flu doesn't mean that Republicans should start assuming that people love them. They don't. Hell, I'm a conservative and even I don't love the Republican Party. Our leadership teams in the House and Senate are comprised of inarticulate country club Republicans who are to politics what the Waffle House is to fine dining. Many of the Capitol Hill staffers and consultants are out-of-touch lickspittles who hold flyover country conservatives in contempt because they’ve...

Retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness is joining forces with Rep. Bill Cassidy in an effort to seal a win for Republicans over Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. Maness will formally endorse Cassidy during a star-studded Republican rally in Baton Rouge on Monday that will feature presumed presidential candidates Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Gov. Bobby Jindal. U.S. Sen. David Vitter, state Sen. Elbert Guillory, state Rep. Paul Hollis, 6th Congressional District candidate Garret Graves, former U.S. Rep. Jeff Landry, and LAGOP chairman Roger Villere will also attend the "Unity Rally." Maness finished third behind Landrieu and Cassidy in Tuesday's primary. He...

Neither the Alaska Senate race nor the Alaska gubernatorial race have been called -- and both may take a while. ...we may not have an answer to the questions of who is the new Senator and Governor from the Last Frontier for weeks because there are still votes to be counted and that won’t start until next week....there are 23,271 early and absentee ballots deemed eligible for counting. These are already received and reviewed as eligible. They sent out another 12,541 absentee ballots and if postmarked by November 4th, ballots can arrive legally 15 days after the election and still...

It is a fairly safe bet that next to the Koch brothers, Heritage Foundation, Senate Conservative Fund, and the Club for Growth, no-one in Washington was as excited with the results of the midterm elections as corrupt Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. It is also likely that McConnell has yearned to be Majority Leader throughout his political career, and although he may end up winning that coveted title, he will be Majority Leader in name only because pure conservatives at Heritage Action, Club for Growth, and the Senate Conservative Fund already have anointed Texas Ted Cruz as de facto leader of...

---SNIP-- In “real time” terms, Maher’s flip-a-district gimmick flopped as Kline coasted to his seventh term in the US House of Representatives. True, Maher wasn’t on the ballot in Kline’s race, but then neither was President Obama. Just the same, Kline doubled his victory margin over challenger Mike Obermueller in a rematch of the 2012 race—an 18 percent win compared to 8 percent last time.

Politically, are labor unions finished? It appears that might be the case. Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker once again humiliated organized labor with his comfortable re-election last Tuesday. While polls showed a close race, Walker beat his Democratic opponent, Mary Burke, by a 6-point margin 52/46. Labor unions had put Walker in the cross hairs ever since his 2010 gubernatorial victory, failed to oust him in the 2012 recall (Walker received more votes in this election than in the 2010 race), and came up short again in this contest. Walker is now a definite 2016 contender, with a reputation...

I was prepared to offer a sympathetic interpretation of the White House’s preemptive attempts to assuage liberal anxiety ahead of the midterms by dismissing them as mere bravado. The administration’s claim that it would mount a “counter offensive” in the wake of likely midterm losses struck me as posturing – the president, I reasoned, surely could not be so self-absorbed that he believes he will poses enough political capital after the midterms to press for, much less enact, his agenda. This was surely a message aimed at a particularly narrow audience. But the president’s post-shellacking presser on Wednesday was a...

Staggering statistics that show nearly a half-million people were caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally -- and more than half were not Mexican, a number far higher than in 2013 -- reportedly were posted on a U.S. government website for just a few hours last month before being taken down. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the numbers were posted on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website on Oct. 10 for roughly five hours. The dramatic numbers raised questions over whether they were yanked to protect the administration before key midterm elections. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told...

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis was steamrolled in her bid to become the state's next governor, and it appears that her staff believes Ebola has something to do with the failure of her campaign. Speaking on behalf of Davis' campaign, Communications Director Zac Petkanas told the Wall Street Journal, "The losses that you are seeing in very blue states are simply amplified in states like Texas where there is already a structural advantage for Republicans," he said. The Journal added that, "Another challenge, [Petkanas] said, was that Texas was at the center of two issues — immigration and the Ebola...

-- Republican Ed Gillespie conceded the Virginia Senate race Friday to incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. Gillespie said at a Friday afternoon news conference that he had called Warner "congratulating him on his re-election" in a race that turned out to be one of the midterm election's biggest surprises. Polls had shown Warner, a popular former governor who'd been endorsed by his Republican predecessor, ex-Sen. John Warner, with a hefty lead. But Gillespie led Warner for much of the night as returns trickled in Tuesday -- and ultimately ended up trailing by less than one percentage point. Get ready: 2016...

All the conventional wisdom you'll hear tonight is wrong: Republican gains are really proof of age-old ugliness. In 1964, there were five black members of the House of Representatives — barely over 1 percent — compared to the 11 percent of the population who were black. But the American people were evenly split, 30 to 31 percent, on whether blacks should have more or less influence, with 28 percent saying things were “about right” as they stood. What’s more, those opposed to government social spending programs were three times more likely to say blacks should have less influence compared to...