Posted on 11/01/2014 6:43:31 AM PDT by massmike
It's become the mother of all political clichés: Every election, we are told, is the most important of our lifetime. If our side doesn't win, it's 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, rivers and seas boiling, human-sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria – or worse.
While it's hard to rank these biennial slug-fests, given the rot that's eating away at the soul of our nation, 2014 is right up there.
Will there be any break on Obama's increasingly despotic reign during his last two years in office, or will Harry Reid and his cohorts continue to provide cover for the presidential putsch?
Most analysts are predicting the 2014 election will give Republicans a slight majority in the Senate next year. The New York Times gives the GOP a 64% chance of taking the Senate.
But nothing is guaranteed. The outcome could depend on last-minute spending, which party has the better ground game, and how much fraud the party of illegal aliens and the graveyard vote can get away with.
Starting with 45 seats, Republicans need to pick up six more to gain a bare majority. Two open seats currently held by Democrats are considered likely pick-ups. The Democratic incumbent in Louisiana will probably lose. Of the nine toss-ups, three are currently Republican seats. If Republicans hold those and take the three they're slated to win, they'll need only one of six toss-ups.
That only sounds easy. In Colorado, Republican Cory Gardner has a one-point lead over incumbent Senator Mark Udall. In Iowa, Republican Joni Ernst leads her opponent by 2.2 points. In Arkansas, the Republican challenger leads the incumbent Democrat by 2 points – all within the margin of error.
With so much at stake this year, the toss-ups could well be squeakers. In the meantime, we're getting lectures from conservatives castigating 2012 stay-at-homes.
"Why did we lose in 2012?" asks the typical e-mail I get at least daily. "Because millions of delusional, self-defeating conservatives, who were disappointed by Romney, were AWOL on Election Day, they helped to re-elect the man who's destroying our Republic.'"
This argument relieves the Republican establishment from all responsibility for nominating a clunk like Romney, and Mitt from practically throwing away the nomination by running an abysmal campaign.
Still, this year at least, voting Republican as the default position makes sense.
Unless the GOP candidate has you running for the toilet bowl (like Charlie Baker, RINO candidate for Massachusetts governor, whose bucket list includes performing a partial-birth abortion while simultaneously presiding over a same-sex wedding), conservatives should vote Republican, even if it hurts. I did in 2008 and 2012, though the experience was excruciating, I can assure you.
Let's start with a hard case – Scott Brown, former Massachusetts Senator now running for the Senate as a Republican in New Hampshire.
During his two years in the Senate, Brown (who won a special election in 2010 with Tea Party support) was a huge disappointment. His rating from the American Conservative Union was 50% – one of the lowest for any Republican Senator.
On the other hand, according to the Congressional Quarterly, his opponent, incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, voted with the president 98% of the time. She is Obama's Topo Gigio. ("Oh, Barack, I love you!") The latest CNN poll has them in a statistical dead-heat – Shaheen 49%, Brown 47%, with a margin of error plus or minus 4.
The choice isn't between an authentic conservative and a typical Democrat, but a 50% conservative and a 98% hard-core leftist. Representing conservative New Hampshire, Brown would probably have a better voting record than he did as the junior senator from the Bay State.
More importantly, he'll be part of the Republican Senate majority. That means the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee passes from Patrick Leahy (lifetime ACU rating 6%) to Charles Grassley (lifetime ACU rating 83%).
It also means no more rubber-stamping of Obama's judicial mutants – no more Sonia ("wise Latina woman") Sotomayors. Ruth Bader Ginsberg – 81, ailing and having an unnatural relationship with the Constitution – won't wait to see who's elected president in 2016, but will likely retire next year. Only a Republican Senate will stop Obama from filling the vacancy with a Ginsberg-clone 30 years her junior.
Grassley is eager to launch investigations to compliment House inquiries – including Fast and Furious and the IRS harassment of conservatives.
Conservative hero Jeff Sessions will chair the powerful Budget Committee. Expect renewed attacks on ObamaCare and proposals for a sweeping overhaul of the federal tax system.
Bob Corker (the kindest thing he can say about Obama is that he's an "unreliable ally") gets the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and John McCain will chair Armed Services. Besides a push for new weapons systems, look for hearings on Obama's blunders which helped to foster the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
With both houses in Republican hands, Obama will get writer's cramp using his veto pen. If contested programs are riders on appropriations bills, the president will have to explain why he risked shutting down the government over the Keystone Pipeline – because it's crucial to maintain our dependence on Middle East oil?
Here's how the Deadites view the prospect of a Republican Senate.
In an opinion column in the October 21 Washington Post ("The Catastrophe that a GOP-controlled Congress would bring") Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, sputters:
"What happens when they (the Republican majority in Congress) send him a bill to prevent a default on our debt at the 11th. hour, attached to a bill that ravages (reforms) Social Security? The Republican Party will gain the power to force the president to choose between impossible options."
Even though self-styled progressives think Obama hasn't moved far enough toward a Soviet America, Vanden Heuvel writes: "It is madness to suggest that little will change if Republicans take the Senate. A lot will change, and the change will be the worse for women, immigrants, workers and the environment" (feminists, illegal aliens and global-warming cultists). "A Republican Senate, working with a Republican House, will be a wrecking crew."
If only.
Still, the alternative to a GOP victory in this year's Senate elections is more judicial nominations from Hell, the continued implementation of ObamaCare (millions more losing their private insurance), a sweeping amnesty (with crime, disease, unemployment and terrorism for all), taking a civil-liberties approach to containing Ebola, and accelerating attacks on Israel by the Grand Mufti of D.C.
It will also mean that Democrats will have won three of the last four elections – sending the GOP into 2016 dispirited and disorganized.
Winston Churchill said of England's victories over the Nazis in 1942: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
I've been disappointed too often by the GOP to expect much from a Republican Congress. But the end of the beginning is better than the alternative—the unimpeded march toward the abyss of hope and change.
May I suggest you quit personalizing everything. It is not about them being punished or you being rewarded. This is about the other team in this particular election.
The thread title personalizes this.
RCC? As in Roman Catholic? I am a generic Christian, and I try to stay out of sectarian battles. I know many upstanding Catholics who I consider brothers and sisters, though we cannot share the table. In my view, the excesses of Rome pale in comparison to the true evil gripping our nation.
The rest of the world understands evil and those who are called can see the light. Yes, the true church always flourishes in persecution, and we are blessed to see the spread.
Stop backstabbing your conservative base and do something about the democratic party's enormous election fraud machine.
We, the rank and file control the nominating process. Romney was hated until perfectionist conservatives shot holes in every alternative candidate, one by one.
The inability to coalesce around a half decent conservative is OUR fault....not the party’s fault.
BULL S***!!!
The GOPe goes out of their way to torpedo any conservative with half a chance, even when they win the primary. Your master, Comrade Karl Rove went on full attack mode when his perfumed princes lost back in 12’. Look at the way your GOPe treat Ted Cruz!
The bastards whose feet you lick paid for adds and robo-calls demonizing McDaniel in the Mississippi race. They distributed leaflets calling the TEA Party “Racist.”
Screw You and your GOP-progressive sucking friends!
Drag Cochran, Cornyn and McConnel into the street covered in tar and feathers; then we’ll talk!
I voted for candidates, not parties. Cornyn did NOT get my vote!
They may be imperfect but they are not dems.
With them constantly on their knees with their faces buried in the laps of their “friends across the aisle,” how can you tell?
Wasn’t speaking of Christendom in America. Was speaking only of the Christians in China and a few other repressed nations.
Just not inclined or encouraged on FR lately to get all fuzzy warm and ecumenically with the RCC.
What I posted is factual.
“An R beside one’s name does not assure moral clarity or personal integrity.”
No but a D by ones name stands absolutely for depravity and dependence on the beast.
Irrelevant non sequitur of a question
Here's a different question.
How dare these douche bag backstabbers demand my support?
If a man knew a flood was coming but only had 70% of the sandbags he needed he should:
A. Pick up his shovel and fill the bags he has.
B. Demonstrate his indignation over his less-than optimal number of sandbags by staying home.
I know what I would do.
What if you’ve helped him fill sand bags in the past and he rewarded you by bludgeoning you on the back of the head with his shovel and helped the enemy steal from you?
See, we can both play this game!
Your masters shouldn’t have screwed us over. We’ll vote candidate but not party.
McDaniel is history. Give it up.
The Country Club Republicans said the same thing about Ronald Reagan.
Lol
A couple weeks ago, I mistakenly posted what I thought to be an innocent remark on one of “those threads.” God is gracious, but his followers are still fallen.
Took a few days for the bruises to fade...
Yea, and we here at FreeRepublic are treated to the same insane, unprincipled nonsense, passed off as “wisdom” you and others spew each and every election cycle in an attempt to prop up the GOP-E candidates who become less and less Republican and more and more Progressive Liberal and antagonistic to conservatives and their principles each election cycle.
These jokers would tell a woman to stay with a spouse who beats her half to death because he only does it every other month.
No, it doesn't - the title invites folks to put infantile emotion aside and think.
Great Terry Goodkind reference!
What would Richard Raul do?
What? I don't think you have the adult intellectual constitution to vote. You don't have the foggiest what a vote is about apparently. And who is "demanding" you vote? You act like the result only effects them. Grow TF UP
stay unhappy. go away. Your negativity is so damned boring. I’m so glad I woke up today ME and NOT you. And will tomorrow.
Vote for conservatives in the primaries, republicans in the general.
Is this how you would handle Mississippi?
If and when the GOPe leadership truly shows sincerity in changing their post-Reagan ways, conservatives may THEN sit down with the GOPe for a pitcher of iced tea or cider.
Don’t forget the GOP did NOT want Reagan in office. He won IN SPITE of their efforts!
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