Posted on 08/22/2006 5:55:48 AM PDT by teddyballgame
And just as I reported earlier today on the problems with the Gallup poll and other surveys showing a bias for Democrats, the Gallup poll suddenly reports a dramatic drop in the Democrat lead in the US House race to only two points.
In a poll taken over the weekend, the poll of registered voters shows that Democrats now lead only 47%-45% which is down from a nine percentage point lead earlier in August. This is well within the poll's margin of error (+-4%) so the race is essentially even. It is the best showing for Republicans in this poll since just before the 2004 November election when Democrats were ahead by four points among registered voters, but Republicans still won the popular U.S. vote and a 232-203 lead in House seats.
According to the poll, the sudden focus on the war on terror has greatly helped the GOP. The poll states that "President Bush's approval rating has topped 40% for the first time since February...Behind the movements: In the wake of the terror plot that British authorities say they broke up, Bush seems to have gotten a boost. Some of that may have reflected positively on Republican candidates as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
Didn't Charlie Rangel promise to resign if the Dems failed to take the House?
You want to hammer the Dems on the anti-war front? That's easy to do. You simply trot out the biggest loudmouths and expose their war records. I'll gibe you three to begin with (easy ones):
- John Kerry received four draft deferments, bowed to the inevetible and then volunteered for duty that would keep him away from Vietnam for another year or so while he trained. Once he got there, he spent four months having hmslef trailed by a movie camera and collecting enough (or inventing them)self-inflicted wounds to be sent home.
-Al Gore wasn't even a front line soldier, having been a war correspondant, and he got that assignment after his daddy the Senator pulled strings. Dig out whatever it was that Gore wrote for Stars and Stripes and I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut it was mostly about field hygiene and how to avoid the clap while in Saigon.
- Max Cleland (who you've mentioned) was another REMF who blew off his own limbs with his own grenade while repairing telephone lines. Yep, just the kind of military expert I want to hear from.
That's just to begin with.
You then stress the point that this is the Vietnam Generation, and that the whole of their military experience was gained in a LOSING cause. If I wanted to win a war, the last people I would go to are those who lost one. Usually, there is more to be learned from failure than success, but this group's experience didn't result in a "we'll get them next time" mentality, but rather a "never again" one. All they know is demoralizing defeat, so all they can offer is demoralizing defeatist talk and ideas.
P.S. This goes for McCain,too. The next-to-last person I want war advice from is someone who spent six years in a POW camp.
No, he backpedaled the very next day on Hannity & Colmes.
I'm okay with listing Conservatives, but I'm not okay with listing Conservatives with either no chance or no risk to them. That dilutes our resources.
The focus is better on the at-risk seats -- but I see scrolling through your list that there is overlap between the two lists so better we celebrate the similarity than decry the difference.
Closure my eyeball. Although you're right as rain.
Hey look, during non-election years people will say anything when phoned by a pollster. Heck I'd hesitate if asked if I was exactly and perfectly pleased by how things are going in Iraq.
This does NOT translate into votes and I'd argue this indefinitely. For when push comes to its brother shove, when people have to put their money where their polled mouths are, they're not going to pull that lever for an unknown group of politicos who have nothing to offer but foaming at the mouth. Perhaps I give the American public too much credit?
It's the kind of thing raw, dried and reported polls don't report. We all know out here in la-la land that there hasn't been a major terror attack in this country since 9/11. We all know that there's a grueling, slow and steady fight in Iraq and hey, Americans are known for their impatience. But those same polls ask if the U.S. should pull out of Iraq and occassionaly it is reported that the majority of the American people do NOT support this. Though, again, those polled express that famous American impatience to the pollster and this goes in the "negative" column.
Bush is going to take hits on this because every American who has a bone to pick with Iraq is going to beat on the President. It's part of the President's job. Doesn't matter what the bone is...perhaps the Saddam trial joke gets dreary, perhaps yet another report of an IED killing a soldier causes concern, perhaps we're all just sick and tired of cartoon-rioting and war-starting terrorist groups and we lash out at those who dare to telephonically poll us.
Not to mention a media so desperate for attention they publish fake photographs and feature foaming pundits and opposition politicians constantly.
Give those same polled Americans a voting booth and with the common sense we all posess, as we are, heh, the "common" people, we're not going to pull the lever for those unknowns such as Ned Lament.
They are once again trying to change reality. It's what the Lamestream does. Makes them faux important.
We carry this country on our collective backs, us ordinary Americans. Indeed we carry this entire PLANET on our backs. An ounce of common sense-and we've TONS of that out here in la-la land-surely stipulates that we're on the best, albeit slow and frustrating, course we can be on in this war on terror.
I don't believe for a minute that the average American, beyond the Koz Kidz, is going to change horses swimming steady and strong, perhaps a bit slow, in mid-stream.
It's my story and I'm sticking to it.
After the Dems Lieberman debacle, the lib judge trying to control a President's war powers, and a foiled terror plot that could have killed as many as 9/11 did, the Dems are in trouble.
AS THEY SHOULD BE!
Refusing to contribute resources because a seat isn't "winnable" only strengthens the gerrymandering effect spoken of earlier.
You don't think steadily moving from consistent double-digit deficits to a statistical tie is closure? Or am I not understanding your point?
Add to this list:
Murtha who claimed our Marines are cold blooded murderers, Reid who boasted that "we killed the Patriot Act", and all the left-wing nuts Lament, Pelosi, et al who are clamoring for an immediate withdrawl.
I guess I'm considering the word "closure" as if things are "changing" or coming to an end. I don't believe things ever changed. I believe the American people, well as I've handily written, were really NEVER going to overthrow the Repub majority although individual seats may vary.
At least not over the Iraq war of all things. I think your analysis is right as rain, as I've said. I just really don't think those so-called double-digit deficits meant a damn thing.
Am I explaining this phrase as I saw it? No offense to you, of course. I know you got a grip on what's going on.
Okay, you were taking "closure" in its more philosphical sense (I think), while I was merely referring to a shrinking of the gap.
And when John Q public starts paying attention, they are going to see the Ned Lamonts and Nancy Pelosi wing of the Dummycrap party.
See my post #73 on this thread.
No, no, I understand what you're saying here, it's just that races are obviously won individually. The generics can only show an overall positive/negative attitude towards the party nationwide, but I'm just not much of a fan of those types of polls. They always tend to be a masturbatory fantasy for 'Rats, since they are more often than not, leading the GOP.
MSM will quitely go into panic spin mode from now on.
NY times email from the editors to staff writers today
"We must now raise our quotas on these:
1) More stories about how republicans are going to lose the elections to help discourage republican and swing voters from going to vote.
2) More negative stories about republicans.
3) More positive stories about democrats.
4) Triple the amount of positive stories on Hillary
Yeah, it's not a great measure, but they insist on using it. So who am I to fight it? :-)
Did the GOP pick up 7% in the generic congressional ballot in August 1974 to trail by only 2% before Labor Day? The latest generic congressional ballot looks almost exactly as it looked in August of 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004. I think the *most likely* (albeit not certain) result of the House elections is somewhere between a net gain of 5 for the Democrats and a net gain of 2 for the GOP, and in Senate elections between a net gain of 2 for the Democrats and a net gain of 1 for the GOP.
I think the MSM/DBM has already started to panic. They are in a full court press for Hillary as of yesterday (Time cover piece, Newsweak editorial and Today show puff piece). Watch for more graphic coverage in Iraq, unhappy soldier stories, Katrina reduex, and they'll continue they're "country is less safe" BS mantra.
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