Free Republic

CEDAR CREEK, Tex. –After four years of grappling with how to appeal to voters, a group of top Republicans believe they’ve found a winning formula for 2010. Call it the McDonnell Strategy. The shorthand: run on economic policy, downplay divisive cultural issues, present an upbeat tone, target independent voters and focus on Democratic-controlled Washington—all without attacking President Barack Obama personally. It’s an approach that elected Bob McDonnell to the Virginia governorship earlier this month. While Republicans posted two hard-fought gubernatorial victories on Nov. 3, McDonnell’s path to victory is the one that most encourages the GOP, a remarkable case of...

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...

Thrilled with twin victories this month, Republican governors are looking to lead a party-wide resurgence in 2010 and shape the GOP for years to come. Republicans boast of a strong crop of gubernatorial candidates who could be future party leaders, $25 million in the bank a year before the elections and a difficult environment for Democrats, particularly in financially ailing swing-voting states like Ohio and Iowa. "Next year's going to be a good year for Republican governors," predicted Haley Barbour, Mississippi's governor and chairman of the Republican Governors Association. "In states where there are Republican governors, people can see if...

Suburban Democrats are bracing to defend their recent gains amid unmistakable signs of volatility among an electorate that is impatient with the pace of economic recovery. Their concerns are coming into sharp focus amid ongoing developments in Nassau County, N.Y., where County Executive Tom Suozzi, a rising star in New York politics and a prominent suburban Democratic politician, might lose his seat in a recount. Suozzi’s predicament comes on the heels of other troubling developments in some of the nation’s largest suburban counties, including nearby Democratic Westchester County, where voters tossed out County Executive Andrew Spano in a startling...

Asian voters switching to Republicans? ... All this evidence strongly suggests that Republicans made gains and Democrats suffered significant losses among Asian, and specifically among Indian-American voters, in Middlesex County. This upscale group, ready enough to vote for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008, seems to have been repelled by New Jersey’s high taxes and big government under Jon Corzine. There should be some lessons here for Republicans generally—and for Democrats as well.

Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage. Following serious setbacks with independents in off-year elections earlier this month, White House officials attributed the defeats to local factors and said President Barack Obama sees no need to reposition his own image or the Democratic message. Since then, however, a flurry of new polls makes clear that Democrats are facing deeper problems with independents—the swing voters who swung dramatically toward the party in 2006 and 2008 but who now are...

Asian voters switching to Republicans? Prowling through the election returns in the governor races two weeks ago, I was surprised to find that Middlesex County, New Jersey, voted for Republican Chris Christie over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine by a 48%-44% margin, almost exactly the same as Christie’s 49%-45% statewide margin. Middlesex County has been a Democratic county for as long as I have been studying election returns (going back to the 1960 election). In close elections it voted 58%-42% for John Kennedy in 1960, 46%-43% for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 (when he failed to carry New Jersey), 51%-47% for Jimmy...

Prowling through the election returns in the governor races two weeks ago, I was surprised to find that Middlesex County, New Jersey, voted for Republican Christie over Democratic incumbent Corzine by a 48%-44% margin, almost exactly the same as Christie’s 49%-45% statewide margin. Middlesex County has been a Democratic county for as long as I have been studying election returns (going back to the 1960 election). In close elections it voted 58%-42% for John Kennedy in 1960, 46%-43% for Humphrey in 1968 (when he failed to carry New Jersey), 51%-47% for Carter in 1976, 46%-38% and 56%-32% for Bill Clinton...

If you were watching television on Tuesday night as the election returns came in showing Republicans capturing the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, you probably missed seeing the biggest losers of the evening. You may have caught the concession speech of Creigh Deeds, who ran 12% behind Barack Obama's winning percentage of the vote in Virginia, and that of Jon Corzine who, after spending over $100 million of his own money on three campaigns, ran 13% behind Obama's winning percentage in New Jersey and got evicted from Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton. But you missed seeing the guy...

Virginia Muslims are calling on McDonnell (R) to disavow comments made by the Virginia Beach religious broadcaster last week in response to the shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., in which Robertson asserted that Islam is "not a religion" but a "violent political system" and that those who practice it should be treated like members of a communist or fascist party.

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...

...two Catholic candidates won elections this year to state-wide office without compromising their pro-life, pro-family principles. The world didn't end, and once they are in office, they won't conduct witch hunts against those who disagree with them on these issues - but they will use their office to promote these central values, which transcend any one religion or political party. Catholics aren't pro-life and pro-family, after all, only because the Church tells them to be so, but rather, they are encouraged to hold true to these commonsense principles because of the witness and encouragement of their Catholic faith. You read...

As the most gifted orator of his generation, President Obama finds speechmaking perhaps his most potent political tool. It propelled him to national prominence in 2004 and to the White House in 2008. And whenever he needs to calm economic fears or revive stalled health care legislation, he takes to the lectern. It may be too soon to reach such conclusions. The Democrats who lost last week, after all, had fatal flaws all their own. But the results do suggest that Mr. Obama’s addresses these days may not resonate quite the way they did. Speeches that once set pulses racing...

CNSNews.com) – Virginia’s Governor-elect Bob McDonnell (R) said that his administration would not participate in a government-run health insurance plan, if one is passed by Congress and signed into law. He also urged other governors to “stand up” against federal proposals if they are not good for their states. McDonnell, who won election on Nov. 3 with 59 percent of the vote, said on the Nov. 8 edition of CNN’s “State of the Union” that a government-run public option would be bad for his recently red state. McDonnell also said that during the campaign he heard concerns from Virginia voters...

Fred Barnes: It's like Jimmy Carter never left town By: Fred Barnes OpEd ContributorNovember 9, 2009 Republican conservatives and moderates are at each other's throats. Tea party populists are furious at President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and aren't crazy about Republicans either. Democrats haven't got a clue. There's talk of a third party. The economy is stagnant as unemployment, now 10.2 percent, climbs. It's beginning to look like the late 1970s.This is good news for Republicans -- extremely good news. Today's struggles between conservatives and moderates are mere skirmishes compared with the titanic intraparty battle touched off by...

Obama said the main message he took from last week’s election results – with Republicans winning gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia – was that Americans are “nervous, and they’re worried and they’re anxious.” “I don't think there's any denying the fact that people are worried out there,” he said in an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper today. Obama said Democrat Bill Owens victory in the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, the one bright spot for the president’s party last Tuesday, “sent an important signal.”

Everyone and his brother has opinions about what happened on Tuesday, but not all assessments are equally correct, just as not all of the descriptions of the contests, while they were in progress, were equally on the mark. What were some of the mistakes and mischaracterizations during the campaigns and after the voting? One of the worst, I thought, was the widespread characterization of Dede Scozzafava, the Republican nominee in New York’s 23rd district, as a moderate. I realize that those of us in the media use that term to distinguish certain Republicans and Democrats from their more ideologically consistent...

Last Tuesday’s election in Virginia has been reported by some as a vote of no confidence in the Obama administration. Maybe it was – but a closer look indicates that seven of the nine incumbents who lost were caught flat footed on gun rights. . . . Philip Van Cleave, President of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. feels that "the results show that this election was open season on anti-gun incumbents. The antis have lost at least five reliable anti-gun votes in the already pro-gun House of Delegates, and their perennial bill to restrict private firearm sales at gun...

How’s that “hope and change” working out for you? I can’t speak for the Democrats, but Republicans - particularly New England ones - are loving it. After a year of defeat and dire predictions, Massachusetts conservatives have renewed hope for 2010. There’s definitely change on the way, and in a state whose legislators are about 90 percent Democrat, change can only be good for Republicans. And who can we thank for this new conservative spirit of hopeful-changeyness? The Republican Party’s new hero: Barack Obama. One year ago today, pundits were writing off the American right for the next election cycle,...

November 8 Megan Whittemore McDonnell's Winning Strategy Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell seems to have found a winning formula for unifying his party and delivering a clear message. During the campaign McDonnell focused on jobs, the economy, transportation and education while staying positive. "We kept it overwhelmingly positive, giving people an uplifting alternative for the future," McDonnell told Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday. "We, I think, tapped into some of the sentiment at the national level on the issues of card check, cap and trade, and some under-funded mandates and things like that that were not resonating well with Virginia...

The Talk Shows Sunday, November 8th, 2009 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell; Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent; Reps. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Mike Pence, R-Ind.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Govs. Haley Barbour, R-Miss., and Ed Rendell, D-Pa.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.; former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.THIS WEEK (ABC): Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine and Republican National Chairman Michael Steele; Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Army chief of staff Casey; Virginia...

In November 2008, 658,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 782,000 did so in Virginia. In November 2009, 212,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 198,000 did so in Virginia. In other words, young voter turnout this year was down two-thirds in New Jersey and three-quarters in Virginia

U.S. Rep. Glenn Nye announced Saturday that he will vote no on the House health care reform bill. He cited costs to small businesses and cuts to hospitals as primary reasons the bill will not get his support. Though he says the latest version of the bill does achieve many health care reform goals, he believes it will not reduce the cost of health care for families, taxpayers and small businesses. A provision in the bill that Nye believes could lead to nearly $20 million in cuts for the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD) was also grounds for...

Dear xxxx, The results of Tuesday's elections in Maine, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and Washington were a mixed bag but there are some clear lessons we can learn. Voters rejected right-wing radicalism. Democrats who fail to stand up for Democratic and progressive principles fail in elections. The Right's lies still work. Despite the stinging loss for marriage equality in Maine, evidence elsewhere shows voters moving towards support of equality for all Americans. The Far Right strengthened its grip on the Republican Party. We have a lot of work to do to educate people, expose right-wing lies and counter the...

A New Grassroots Political Organization Makes Its Mark by Deal W. Hudson    11/06/09 The election results of November 2 were not merely the spontaneous reaction of Republicans to the bad economy and liberal excesses of the Obama administration. The four pro-life, conservative GOP candidates in Virginia and New Jersey were elected in a groundswell of religious and social conservatives, many of them independent voters who had voted for Obama only a year ago. A new grassroots organization played a major role in getting these voters to the polls -- the Faith & Freedom Coalition was founded by Ralph...

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Despite the best efforts of the White House and much of the media to portray this week’s elections as a meaningless barometer of the public’s mood toward the Obama administration, the results were clear. The voters were communicating buyers’ remorse. One year after reaching its zenith, the Democratic Party is now grappling with what could be the beginning of the end of the Obama era. In Virginia, former Attorney General Bob McDonnell, a solid pro-family, pro-life conservative, won a landslide victory, as did down-ticket conservative candidates. Repeated Obama visits to his own backyard did...

It's now 31-0 in state marriage elections in favor of normalcy. (Are we starting to see a pattern here?) This was the big one! A win here was crucial and for a while it looked very shaky. But the pro-family forces pulled it off by 53%-47% -- a major loss for the homosexual lobbies that put an enormous amount of money and energy into this. A short time after the polls closed it became clear that our side would probably win by about six percentage points. After the liberal coastal cities quickly posted their numbers, one could calculate that they...

The Lesson of Bob McDonnellby Charlie SpieringA week before the election, Virginia candidate for governor Bob McDonnell was asked in a radio interview if he would veto state funding for Planned Parenthood.“We shouldn't be doing that (funding Planned Parenthood) in Virginia,” answered O’Donnell. “That's common sense I think, and that will be part of what we get done.”Pro-choice activists were furious and quick to condemn his remarks. To them it was one more reason why McDonnell was “out of step and out of touch with voters.” But McDonnell, with his common sense approach to politics, proved that you can still...

Liberals and conservatives each have their own intellectual food chains. They have their own think tanks to provide arguments, politicians and pundits to amplify them, and news media outlets to deliver streams of prejudice-affirming stories. Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don’t have any of this... --snip-- The most telling races this year were the suburban rebellions across the country. For example, in Westchester and Nassau counties in New York, Republican candidates came from nowhere to defeat entrenched Democratic county officials. In blue Pennsylvania, the G.O.P. won six out of seven statewide offices... --snip-- The percentage of...

Tuesday, Bob McDonnell was elected to serve as the 71st Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, defeating state Sen. Creigh Deeds by a margin of 59 – 41 percent. By comparison, President Barack Obama received 53 percent of the vote for in 2008. Sen. Deeds had made clear during the campaign his willingness to raise taxes. On September 23, in a Washington Post Op-Ed entitled “My Transportation Plan”, Deeds said, “As a legislator, I have voted for a number of mechanisms to fund transportation, including a gas tax. And I’ll sign a bipartisan bill with a dedicated funding mechanism for...

A Video Tour Of The Virginia Governor's Mansion

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008...

Contrary to some reports, the Republican sweep of Tuesday's governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia is not a direct rebuke of President Obama, according to Leo Hindery, managing partner of InterMedia Partners. Indeed, a Democrat won New York's 23rd Congresional District for the first time since 1872. (Yes, 1872.) But even Hindery, a former advisor to President Obama and John Edwards' senior economic policy advisor, can't deny the Democrats have stumbled. "The lesson is simple: It's the economy, stupid," Hindery says. "Healthcare reform is an important issue...but the priority was misguided. I'm a strong advocate of universal healthcare but...

As Santayana said, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it." Congressional Democrats take note! Are the elections of 2009 precursors of the same kind of massive partisan upheaval in Congress that we experienced in 1994? The historical data says yes, they are. In Virginia, the outcomes in 1993 and 2009 were almost identical. In 1993, after the Democratic incumbent, Doug Wilder, could not seek re-election, the governor's race pitted Republican George Allen against Democrat Mary Sue Terry. Allen won handily, 58 to 41 — virtually the same margin by which McDonnell defeated Deeds this week. And...

In Ohio, citizens marched to the polls on Tuesday and voted to allow gambling casinos in the state. This was obviously a message to President Obama that independent voters are not happy with the way the health care bill is going. Really, I don’t see how else you can interpret it. Ohioans were looking forward to the lower insurance costs that would come with a robust public option, and if the president can’t deliver, they’re planning to pay their future medical bills with their winnings at the roulette wheel. Also, people here in Cincinnati rejected a proposal that would have...

Democrats have some thinking to do after Tuesday's elections, but Republicans don't have time to think. They're too busy trying to survive the party's internal purge and avoid being shipped off to political Siberia. Will loyal members inform on others for harboring suspiciously moderate views? Will anyone judged guilty have to wear a sign saying "Republican In Name Only" as penance? Will there be re-education camps? Will deviationists face the Enhanced Interrogation Technique of being forced to listen to the wit and wisdom of Glenn Beck, at ear-splitting volume, for days on end? Or worse: When Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going...

With independent voters favoring GOP candidates in New Jersey and Virginia, many in Congress wonder whether they'll lose electoral support themselves if they stick with Obama on controversial issues. Reporting from Washington and Madison, Wis. Even before voters went to the polls this week, moderate congressional Democrats were anxious. Would the swing voters who coalesced around Barack Obama almost exactly one year ago stay with the Democrats or defect to the Republicans? The answer came Tuesday night as Republican gubernatorial candidates swept to power in New Jersey and Virginia, with the help of large packs of self-described independents. Exit polls...

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of ObamaCare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008. In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future. One...

WASHINGTON -- What strikes me about politics over the past couple of years is how obvious it all has been. In 2008, as the junior senator from Illinois campaigned across the country, demonstrating his gifts as a motivational speaker and community organizer, all one had to do was review his recent life to know that he was about to bring down on the country -- ever so incompetently -- the most left-wing government in American history. And so he has -- with the utmost incompetence. Think of the paucity of swine flu vaccine, in large part the consequence of his...

WASHINGTON -- Bob McDonnell's decisive victory is even more impressive if one stops to acknowledge that it came in the face of incredibly daunting opposition, misleading and low-brow campaign commercials, and a "news" organization which often advocates for left-of-center candidates and causes. To win the election, McDonnell had to defeat not only the Deeds campaign, but the DNC, the White House, and The Washington Post. Lest we forget, this is not the first time this "take no prisoners" strategy was employed by the Democrats and The Washington Post against a Virginia Republican. In fact, three years ago, not only was...

As the final votes were being counted, it was possible to draw some lessons from Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia and the close, three-way governor's race in New Jersey, never mind that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has taken to saying that the elections don't mean much. The odd-year elections -- held in the first year of a presidency -- have been meaningful over the last two decades. In 1993, New Jersey voters rejected tax-raising Democratic Gov. James Florio, despite the best efforts of Bill Clinton's consultant James Carville -- a harbinger of the losses congressional Democrats suffered...

In an RV swing through Northern Virginia in late August, there wasn't really time for Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican candidate for governor, to stop in West Springfield. But an urgent memo awaited from his senior advisers in Richmond...A 20-year-old academic thesis -- in which McDonnell had presented a deeply conservative vision of government and criticized working women, single mothers and homosexuals -- had surfaced. McDonnell needed to sign off on the campaign's response, and then he needed to race to a rally...That moment brought the greatest test of McDonnell's disciplined campaign. Would he be able to maintain his focus...

After losing Virginia's governorship for the first time in eight years, some Democrats are trying to console themselves that Virginia is at its core a "red" state. This ignores not only that they won back-to-back governorships but also that Democrats defeated a sitting senator in 2006, took control of the state Senate in 2007 and won an open Republican Senate seat and three House seats in 2008 while carrying Virginia's electoral college votes for the first time since 1964. Some in the White House are trying to deflect blame for the defeat by saying that Sen. Creigh Deeds lost because...

*break* Bob McDonnell yesterday announced his transition committee leaders, including Tom Farrell, chairman and CEO of the state's largest utility, Dominion Resources. The transition committee also will include Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling; Attorney General Bill Mims; Bobbie Kilberg, president of the Northern Virginia Technology Council; and Kay Coles James, a Cabinet official under Gov. George Allen. *break* James, who served as director for the Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush, also is a former dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, where McDonnell received his law degree. *break* He said the...

President Barack Obama has brushed aside a sharp rebuke at the polls on the first anniversary of his historic election, saying his administration had saved the nation from economic ruin. Just hours after rival Republicans gleefully ousted Democratic candidates in two key gubernatorial races, the White House dismissed suggestions that the results were a referendum on Obama and his policies. Republicans trumpeted Tuesday's victories in New Jersey and Virginia as a conservative comeback one year to the day after Obama vowed before a tumultuous crowd in Chicago that change had come to America. But Obama reminded a school audience in...

My Wednesday Examiner column, written as the 2009 election returns were coming in, stands up pretty well. But let me add some observations written as the course of the elections became clearer. First, in the governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidate ran far behind Barack Obama’s percentages in 2008 and the Republican candidates ran ahead of George W. Bush’s percentages in 2004. The numbers are pretty daunting. In Virginia Creigh Deeds won 41% of the votes, way behind Barack Obama’s 53% in 2008. And in New Jersey Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine won 45% of the votes,...

ELECTION 2009: CHANGE I CAN BELIEVE IN! -- MSNBC, Aug. 31, 2009, Keith Olbermann on Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia: "In [McDonnell's master's thesis], he described women having jobs as detrimental to the family, called legalized use of contraception illogical, pushed to make divorce more difficult, and insisted government should favor married couples over, quote, 'cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.' Wow. When did he write this? 1875? No, 1989. Wow, 1989. "Goodbye, Mr. McDonnell." -- MSNBC, Sept. 22, 2009, Rachel Maddow also on McDonnell: "And here's where the conservative movement and the Republican establishment smash into each...

Unsurprisingly, Michael Barone has an interesting and incisive roundup of numbers from last night that go deeper than the top-line results. Some nuggets: * Bergen County, New Jersey, a 56%-42% Corzine constituency in 2005, came within a point or two of voting for Christie. * Westchester County, New York, voted 58%-42% for a Republican county executive after voting almost exactly the opposite way, in a race involving the same two candidates, four years before. * The Virginia Board of Elections has results by CD showing that three Dems who captured seats in 2008 by very narrow margins (the 2nd, 5th,...

Krauthammer on Foxnews Special Report responds to what the House Democrats reaction to the election results are...

Yesterday's election showed many cracks developing in the alliance that put the Democrats into power just one year ago. Independent voters were the most obvious but there were others, while still voting democratic young and urban voters were not motivated to come out for Obama's candidates, especially in New Jersey the state where the POTUS invested the most time and political capital. The other group shifting away from the Obama coalition is suburbia. Already facing growing property taxes, they see a federal government with no inclination to curb spending and the higher taxes the deficits will bring. According to Karl...