Posted on 11/03/2010 3:34:12 AM PDT by grey_whiskers
Suitable for litterboxes, birdcages, and kleenex.
*PING* to be added to or dropped from the list.
This is a great analysis. This belongs in the FReeper Hall of Fame.
Nice post. I will celebrate taking the House.
Now that we’ve identified our second opponent, i.e. the Establishment Republicans, we can further tighten our aim next time. Could you add me to your ping list?
Cheers!
I truly feel bad for you man, I got that as a kid where it felt like an ice pick on the eardrum every time my heart would beat. Thank the Lord for decongestants.
I use menthol afrin for such things.
Also a good ENT can give you some good stuff.
Excellent analysis. Sarah has no problem taking on the PTB (Powers that Be) and she’s taken plenty of heat for it. But we know what she’s done, and thank her.
IMHO, Sarah and Beck are the leaders of this landslide. And the proof is in the flak they take.
John Dingell (D-MI)*
118,117 Votes
Winner
57%
Sorry but he hung on.
Ach, sorry about the plugged tube, Grey Whiskers. Had that happen a couple times when I was little and it is no fun at all (not that you need me to tell you that, of course).
As for the analysis...great job! I think you really nailed it.
Sorry, just saw off one of my antlers for inaccuracy then.
I can't find what happened between Lollar and Hoyer -- have you heard?
Cheers!
I’ve been up all night..so I haven’t the energy..LOL
I will check but I think Hoyer hung on, too.
Second, while we should not blame "Tea Party" candidates too much, neither should we pretend that many (O'Donnell, Miller, Angle) didn't have serious flaws as candidates. This is not something you can't overcome, but it is something that typically the PARTY helps you overcome, and if you're going to run against the Dem AND the Republican, well, you have to be just about perfect, as Rubio was.
Third, some of the winners, let's face it, were NOT "Tea Party" backed candidates. Portman in OH, a great guy and someone who will be a good senator, did not have exceptional support from the Tea Party; neither did DeWine for SoS, who appears to be winning. Neither did Kasich, who had a lot of conservative opposition but won anyway.
The message of this election is, if anything, that CONSERVATISM tended to do pretty well. Rubio, Toomey, Paul, Johnson, Portman---they are ALL orders of magnitude to the right of the person they replaced, Dem or Republican. That cannot be overstated. Pretty much across the board we ran conservative candidates. So we can't pretend that conservatism always wins, but we do know that when you combine conservatism with a really good candidate, DING DING DING you have a winner!!
House districts are usually more homogeneous, allowing the candidate to focus more. I think in a lot of the senate races, the inexperience (yes, there's that word) of the Tea Party candidates probably hurt them. Like it or not, there is a certain amount of polish---learning how to avoid gaffes, for example---that comes with holding office a couple of times. We saw it with Toomey, who won in a blue state. Portman made NO serious errors in OH. On the other side, you had Linda McMahon, who ran a closer race than anyone thought in a deep blue state, but who nevertheless had that WWF baggage.
Now, if our side wants to crush the Dems in 2012, it must not only nominate conservative candidates, but GOOD conservatives with some experience. And it helps if the damn party elites get on board with the candidates.
Did you notice that (in general) the races which garnered the most laser-like, focused, media interest, actually *became* over time the most personal, and focused on the candidate, instead of nationalized?
In fact, ---
in those races, the Alinskyite technique of pick your target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it was actually allowed to work.
Because in those races -- the GOP allowed the Dems and the MSM to do that to their candidate, instead of the GOP candidate forcing the press to do it to Obama.
And doing that to Obama is how we need to win a landslide in 2012.
Cheers!
Steny Hoyer (D-MD5)*
143,620 Votes
Winner
64%
Charles Lollar (R-MD5)
79,122 Votes
35%
Make yourself a bowl of soup, chicken noodle is best, and load it up with black pepper. Lots and lots black pepper. Or, tomato soup loaded with a heavy dose of Tabasco; several table spoons. Trust me, your sinus will open, drain and your ear with open too. Sip a little milk to cool your tongue.
Hope you feel better soon.
(BTW, I was 19 before I learned one didn’t have to be sick to eat chicken noodle soup. It was my momma’s homemade penicillin.)
Yes, the state houses look even better this morning. (Update: Dingell ended up pulling out a narrow victory in Michigan, still leaving him as the longest serving Democrat in the House.)
I told the GOP two years ago they ALL needed to read Alinsky. I tell every Tea Party group they need to read Alinsky.
The powers that be, the Establishment types, the RINOS, and the MSM are eager to spin this election as a "refudiation" of both the Tea Party and of its erstwhile goddess / figurehead, Sarah Palin. They are doing this from what appear to be mixed motives; they would say that they want the GOP to win, but only if the prospect does not require them to vote for any of the great unwashed... And so the lesson which they are taking care to imprint on our collective minds, while impressions are fluid, and in order that it becomes the accepted wisdom on which way to go in the future, is that "Tea Partiers are all well and good, but they can't deliver." So far, at the national level, the GOP picked up at least 60 seats in the house -- larger than Gingrich's famed 1994 campaign on the back of the Congressional check-kiting scandal publicized by Rush Limbaugh; and 6 or 7 seats in the Senate. So far, if one just looks at the raw numbers, one would consider this a monumental achievement. That is, unless expectations have been carefully guided to view these results as a failure.
Snow -- thanks for your continual updates thru last night... I was with you until about 3:30ET, then I realized that pain I felt was my head nodding off onto my monitor. LOL.... swore I wasn't going to put myself through it again, but... ah, well...
Feel better and get some rest - great post!
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