You again Karl ???
Bravo
Angle and COD cost us 2 very winnable seats. Not getting the majority in the Senate is a dissapointment to me, this should have been a 12-13 seat win
We went 24 wins and 11 losses in senate races with 2 pending.
That’s pretty darn good.
If that’s disappointing to you then your bar for success was set too unrealistically high.
McCain should have lost the primary. The only good thing about him “winning” is that he will be spending his last term in office in the minority intead of chairing any committee. Add to that the fact that he didn’t win by near the margin he’s used to winning by (to a dem who didn’t bother to campaign against him). It was a real hoot.
Prove it...
Interesting point of view, but the conclusion makes an assumption that doesn’t consider the all of the dynamics. Take CA for example - RINOs everywhere in a state that has been hit hard and people are hurting, and they lost after having a RINO governor. Is the reelection of Babbs not a lost opportunity? Or what about Schumer and Gillibrand in NY? Their opponents were RINOs. Two more lost opportunities right there.
I’d say that TEA candidaes not only had Democraps to fight off, but also the RINO establishment who stood on the sidelines and took potshots at them.
My 6 yr old was really mad at me for not letting her eat Halloween candy for breakfast. No matter that she got some in her lunchbox, and was promised a piece after dinner. No, she whined and stomped and huffed and puffed, convinced that not having that candy now, right this instant, made what she DID get less enjoyable.
Know what I mean?
Let’s face reality. Even with all three of those seats (NV, CO, and DE), the GOP still loses the Senate on a tiebreaker (Biden), so it’s not like these candidates cost the GOP the Senate.
Despite her large loss, O’Donnell at least prevented a “Republican” Castle from being elected, which would have given Obama the “bipartisan” cover he needs on Cap & Tax and other issues. Tellingly, O’Donnell won independents but didn’t get enough GOP votes to win. Remember that the next time a RINO demands “loyalty” after a primary win.
Reid likely would have stolen the election from anyone, so running Angle wasn’t a net loss, either.
Buck may not have been the best candidate, but like the others, losing (or more precisely, not picking up) a few seats here and there, when the balance of power isn’t at stake, is a small price to pay to send a message loud and clear to the establishment GOP that it’s not just the ‘rats who are being targeted. The RINOs had better be worried, too. The Maine twins, Lindsey Graham, and others had better play “tea party” if they want to keep their jobs in the next couple of cycles.
Under it’s rules conservatives now control the Senate...
and you’re unhappy!
Heck, it’s a waste of time pointing out how silly your post is.
Let’s be a little more measured about this. I originally didn’t want O’Donnell as the nominee and generally am someone who supports moderate Republicans in liberal states (at one point I supported Specter, a long time ago, and was a big Giuliani fan). Having said that, I have been frustrated during the Bush years that the “Republican” president and “Republican” Congress did nothing to advance conservatism and limited government. In fact, 2000-2006 were the warm-up for the Dem spending binge that we just had. Based on that, I’m a lot more willing to take risks on more conservative candidates if the choice is a Republican hack who has been in office for years vs. a raw but right on the issues conservative. Its still a balance though and you can’t put up any idiot just because he or she says the right things.
If the old-boy GOP had better candidates, then we wouldn’t have needed the O’Donnells and Angles.
The loses the Tea Party took was Rino doing and it will be their undoing. If they screw up over the next couple years and act as if nothing has changed, the GOP will die. Without voters, there is no GOP.
The main problem is the closer the GOP gets to 50 seats in the Senate, the more power it gives RINOs like the ladies from Maine and Juan McCain to sell us out to the left.
That was largely a "I want to vote for a woman" and "I hate mormons" vote.
As an add on to my last post, two races stand out as good examples of voting to win vs. voting for conservatism:
The obviously good example is Crist in Florida. If we had no Tea Party, Crist would have won and his lack of principle and rank opportunism would have come out after he was a senator. The Tea Party knocked him off and we now have a rising star in Rubio. A clear positive.
In other cases—O’Donnell and, to a lesser extent, Angle—you had people who were right on issues but who got out-campaigned and made amateur mistakes.
It comes down to the question we asked and debated a million times before. Do we want a majority if you have to have a bunch of Castles to get there? Can we get a majority of principled conservatives? The answer to the first question depends on the second, and the answer to the second is a lot harder than many conservatives think it is.
You are 100% correct and kudos to you for posting what should already be obvious to everyone.
That so many people here refuse to understand that ideological purity is useless if you can’t win is elections is very frustrating.
The Tea Party is a growing, powerful movement that has helped revive the Republican party and had a very positive impact on these elections, but its leaders and strategists will need to understand the importance of finding the most conservative candidate that CAN actually win. Backing candidates like COD who have absolutely no chance and damage conservatives down ballot is utterly foolish.
It takes GOOD candidates to win. Period. Conservatives have not only the very powerful Democratic party and its turnout machine arrayed against them, they also must deal with an incredibly hostile media. To overcome this, we will need to sometimes sacrifice ideological purity in favor of electability in many districts and states.
All this whining about Rove is silly. Rove was exactly right about COD. O’Donnell lost by 16 points - that has nothing to with anything Rove, Krauthammer, random forums posters or anyone else said or did. She lost because she was a terrible candidate to run statewide in Delaware.
The Democrats are more unified than the Republicans. Until the voting system is reformed, you’re going to see right-leaning voters divided, losing elections, and letting the leftists hold seats they shouldn’t be able to hold.
The only reason Republicans won seats this election is because they had much more energy than the Democrats. If it were a matter of that energy alone, the Republicans would have won the Senate. But unity plays a big part in winning. It was a lack of unity that doomed O’Donnell and I think the lack of unity on the right is going to make the 2012 elections more difficult than they should be.