Free Republic

As was the case when we launched the forecast a month ago, the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s midterm model still rates the battle for control of the Senate as a “toss-up.” But within that category there’s been modest, but consistent movement toward Democrats. Their chances of winning the Senate now stand at 55 percent. That’s up from 47 percent from forecast launch on June 30. It’s also up from 40 percent in a retroactive forecast dated back to June 1.

Michigan Freepers.....I have been looking at some of the polling lately in Michigan, it shows suburban Rep. Mike Bishop, MI GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Schuette and MI GOP Senate candidate John James losing to their Democratic rivals. Michigan a battleground state has a lot of Independents. A lot of them voted for Trump-Pence. Are they the apathetic, apolitical types that were inspired by Trump's message but are apathetic or indifferent to regular, traditional politics as usual. Is Trump's coattails able to help the MI GOP, or is it suburban white women lashing out on the MI GOP and other Midwestern...

After a Supreme Court term that saw one conservative victory after another, the final blow fell on Wednesday afternoon: Justice Anthony Kennedy (who has been the median vote on the Supreme Court since the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor in 2006) announced his retirement. It is almost impossible to overstate the significance of this. Anthony Kennedy’s legacy could have been as a conservative respected for providing key votes to uphold a woman’s right to choose and the right-to-same sex marriage. Instead, he shall be remembered as one of the most important allies of Donald Trump’s pro-business white nationalism. What’s particularly...

CNN host Chris Cuomo said Wednesday that Democrats will have to learn from their recent failures if they're going to ever capture any House seats from Republicans. "They teach you in campaign school ... that you've gotta learn from failure, otherwise you're doomed to repeated it," Cuomo said. "And there's an acronym for 'fail': the Future Always Involves Learning. And that's going to be the test ... for Democrats, right?" he asked. .@ChrisCuomo questions what Dems will do after GA loss, says "FAIL" stands for "the Future Always Involves Learning" https://t.co/3N2zuyH8me— New Day (@NewDay) June 21, 2017 "It ain't a...

Donald Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin appears to be shrinking even before the state’s recount gets underway, according to a new report that cites a number of precincts padding the vote count in Trump’s favor. According to the Palmer Report, some precincts realized the numbers were padded to benefit Trump and had to revise their numbers. As a result, 5,000 votes were essentially wiped out of Trump’s column in an instant. What’s particularly puzzling, the report noted, is that Clinton’s numbers remained virtually unchanged, despite Trump losing thousands of votes from his total.

Some Republicans Try Out a New Campaign Theme: Bipartisanship By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMAN September 15, 2012 WASHINGTON — A woman who appears in an advertisement supporting Representative Jon Runyan, a New Jersey Republican, boasts about how he works “with both parties.” Richard E. Mourdock of Indiana, whose Senate campaign has been most notable for his derision of legislative compromise as feckless, now says he would “work with anyone.” While out and about on the campaign trail, Representative Bobby Schilling, Republican of Illinois, talks so much about all the great things he has done with Representative Dave Loebsack, a...

Following the Sarah Palin playbook of never admitting error, the ex-governor’s minions are busy flooding the Internet with ’proof’ that Palin did not misspeak when suggesting that Paul Revere warned the British that they would not be taking arms from the colonists during his ride where he, apparently, rung bells and fired muskets. The effort to back up Palin is based on taking bits and pieces of facts surrounding the historic event that, when cut and pasted together, work to make Palin look a little less befuddled than her actual statement would indicate. While I give them credit for the...

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.” “I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit. “My point about the op-ed was not that you ran...

The politician who once best exemplified the idea of a "maverick" independent has shifted so far to the right that he is now tied for the title of the Senate's most conservative member, according to National Journal's 2010 vote ratings. According to a comprehensive examination of 96 Senate votes taken in 2010, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., along with seven of his colleagues, voted most often on the conservative side. His 89.7 composite conservative score ties him with stalwarts like Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and gives him a more conservative score than Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. (snip)...

According to a post at DUmmieland, The Democratic National Committee just e-mailed reporters: "We’re continuing to see high turnout across the East Coast and moving into the plain states ahead of the lunch time voter rush. Reports of higher than expected turnout in highly Democratic areas continue to come in. Across the country, volunteers are hitting the doors and making phone calls, reaching out to voters and getting them to the polls."

Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as the elections are over: Stop Sarah Palin. Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns. There is rising expectation among GOP elites that Palin will probably run for president in 2012 and could win the...

Surviving the Tea Party’s takeover of the GOP: One of the more profound changes in American politics is how much more conservative the nominees inside the Republican Party have become. The Tea Party and Jim DeMint are now closer to the representing the center of the GOP, not George W. Bush and his “compassionate conservatism.” This has presented longtime Republican moderates/centrists with a dilemma of what to do, and we’ve seen three different responses so far, which were on display in some form this past Tuesday. One path was demonstrated by John McCain, who decided to shift his positions (on...

A RINO can be extremely dangerous when he uses Moral Equivalency to advance his political schemes, and a discerning conservative should know how to identify a RINO by his tactics. According to Websters Online Dictionary, Moral Equivalence is: “…a term used in political debate, usually to criticize any denial that a moral hierarchy can be assessed of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides. It could be considered a form of the rhetorical fallacy of equivocation.” In plain terms, when a politician uses Moral Equivalency he is attempting to equate an immoral position...

If I had my druthers, the never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine would be but a small news brief in American newspapers. But since we police the world, we must always monitor our global police scanner, where not only Israel's conflicts, but those of North and South Korea, the nation of Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, and pretty much everywhere else is the United States' business because we insist on making it so. What many Americans bizarrely consider national "defense" is actually an aggressive and enduring offense, and yet we are always surprised when other nations get offended. Last week,...

At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they're bad. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 74 percent of respondents said illegal immigrants weakened the economy, compared to only 17% who said they strengthened it. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower prices of everything from produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets....

For true conservative victory, simply voting Republican won’t do Barack Obama is the most socialist president in American history. Before Obama, George W. Bush was the most socialist president in American history. Before Dubya, it was Bill Clinton, then Bush Sr., Reagan, and so on. Each successive administration, by and large, has presided over a federal government that has assumed more power and spent more money than the last. [...] Conservatives who continue to make the case that Obama is worse than Bush are right, but the fact that Rush and like-minded pundits and politicians are unable to find fault...

PREVENTING MORE BAILOUTS * Objective: Lawmakers want to squash the idea that some financial firms are "too big to fail" and avert anymore bailouts like AIG's (AIG.N) and Citigroup's (C.N). PROTECTING CONSUMERS * Objective: Democrats want to put a stop to abusive home mortgages and deceptive credit cards. Objective: Obama wants to ban risky trading unrelated to customers' needs at banks that enjoy a competitive edge in the market because they have some form of taxpayer support.

I recently read a member post that argued that one must sometimes support the lesser of two evils. The author explained it with a metaphor, by saying that, on the one hand, if offered two unhealthful foods, one could refuse to eat either of them, but if being forced to choose between an unhealthful food and poison, one would have to take the unhealthful food to avoid the poison. Likewise, he argued, having no choice but John McCain or Barack Obama, he should have voted for John McCain rather than the third-party candidate. It is a popular, understandable belief; an...

Oliver Willis notices Scott Brown defending the Massachusetts health care plan -- which he supported -- and trying to make the case that it's really quite different from the federal plan with which it shares key features. "They're two different programs. What we have here is a free-market enterprise where we're providing insurance in various levels to people in Massachusetts. The plans in Washington are a one-size-fits-all plan," he said.

WASHINGTON – Budget deficits are in the stratosphere. Unemployment has hit 10 percent. The health care overhaul is incomplete. Still, Americans appear to like President Barack Obama and the way he's doing his job. The latest Associated Press-Gfk poll shows the president's popularity holding steady, with 56 percent of those polled approving of the way he's taking care of the country's business. His marks for handling the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan have jumped by double digits, with more than half now approving, since he capped a three-month strategy review by announcing a big troop increase.