Posted on 05/21/2008 5:10:52 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Virtually all recent polling data for Senate races has carried a consistent theme—more bad news for the Republican Party. That’s the case in Colorado as well as Democrat Mark Udall has opened a six-point lead over Republican Bob Schaffer.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows Udall attracting 47% of the vote while Schaffer earns 41%. For Udall, that’s an improvement from a three-point lead a month ago and two months ago. It’s also the first time either candidate has enjoyed a significant lead in the race. In February, Schaffer had a statistically insignificant one point lead.
Udall and Schaffer are competing for the right to replace Republican Senator Wayne Allard.
Udall has gained ground among unaffiliated voters over the past month and now leads by twelve among them. A month ago, the candidates were even among those not affiliated with either major party. Partisan preferences have changed little during that time frame--Udall still attracts 84% of Democrats while Schaffer is supported by 78% of Republicans.
(Excerpt) Read more at rasmussenreports.com ...
Like manure in stables, the bad news continues to pile up.
Check my post in the MS thread. Virtually every Republican Senate incumbent and open seat is imperiled. This could be like 1958 all over again. It took 22 years to recover from those losses.
That’s a scary thought. I’m not thrilled with John McCain, but he’s seen as not a continuation of Bush/Cheney, and the GOP needs to capitalize on that.
We are going to end up with two new Udalls in the senate this election.
Time to send some more hard-earned dollars to Schaffer. I don’t trust the RNC to send money to the right people.
Colorado seems to be sliding left with all those Mexiforniastan people moving there. Utah is getting their share as is Idaho. Eventually those lefties will out number us in all stats.
And when that happens, the United States dies. It’s time for a revolution to overthrow the left.
The Colorado suburbs are turning to the rats. The major cities except for Colorado Springs are solidly rat country. The rats have also made in roads in the rural areas by promising payments to farmers to keep land undeveloped and fighting natural resource development. Obama has strong support in Colorado.
The rats are trying to fundamentally change Colorado through their draconian energy policies and large tax increases. They are trying to stop oil, natural gas, and uranium development. They are stopping every new coal plant in favor of much more expensive wind and solar plants. They are trying to shred the taxpayer bill of rights. They passed a huge increase in property taxes through rate freezing.
The rats are solidly opposed to middle class suburban living. The rats oppose sprawl, SUVs, oil, and Walmart but love unions. Colorado is relatively prosperous so people just forget the policies that support economic growth. It will take a strong recession to wake up the public. The rats will find the usual scapegoats to blame but perhaps the public can see through their show. It is odd that the public will vote for rat policies (high energy taxes, severe energy development restrictions, racial preferences, and force union membership) when economic times are tightening.
Possibly. But it doesn't help the the Republicans in the state have become complacent and nonresponse to constituents.
No, he’s not seen as a continuation . . . he’s a deterioration from Bush.
I don't know what the solution is, except that the GOP desperately needs an identity, and since the Dems have their, we would be wise to not be them. Take that identity, take those core values, and then begin fighting for them---not just cloaking them in Dem terms like Gingrich and McCain do ("we believe in Global Warming but we want to do it right").
Now, in the short term, yes, we might lose some. We're likely going to lose some anyway, so you might as well be RIGHT, then later you can, like Churchill, Reagan, and Thatcher, point to how right you were and earn the trust of the public.
No, it's not. People have not hurt enough, personally, yet. Times haven't gotten bad enough. For me, the best model is Britain in the 1970s. The Brits had a legacy of government support, the dole, featherbedded unions, subsidized everything, and their economy was absolutely crumbling. It took a horrible set of strikes in 1978-79, where garbage piled up and even the morticians went on strike, to get them to reverse course. We were in the same boat, really, with Nixon/Ford/Carter, all of whom had basically the same economic and environmental policies.
However, no matter how bad things get, Republicans will NOT be the solution until they stop parroting the Dems and adopt an entirely new language that does NOT accept "global warming," limits to America's oil production and consumption, and endless government handouts. The language needs to be blunt, and we need to NAME NAMES when saying "UDALL has caused your gas to be $4 a gallon. How's that working out for you?"
There were generally individual reasons why many of them lost. Blackwell carried the baggage of an ugly primary where the establishment didn't want him AND having Taft's party label hung around his neck (and it sank EVERY other statewide, non-judicial candidate, save for one office, Auditor). DeWine was not regarded as a Conservative, and he managed to piss off a lot of people. Conrad Burns was slimed by the media regarding Abramoff, and it turned out that he was telling the truth and cleared -- but conveniently AFTER he lost a heartbreakingly close election. Hayworth's loss was a puzzlement to me. Santorum had the problem of pissing off the base with his endorsement of Specter and a name candidate that more than a few old timers thought was his dad. Allen lost because he ran a weak campaign and the macaca nonsense (nevermind his opponent was absolutely vile and had a mountain of baggage that was NEVER used against him, ranging from his violent streak, racism, anti-Semitism, his authorship of books featuring pedophelia, etc., etc.). It's just that 2006 was the perfect storm for us to be wiped out.
"I don't know what the solution is, except that the GOP desperately needs an identity, and since the Dems have their, we would be wise to not be them."
Here's the problem... right now, the Dems only identity is that they AREN'T the GOP, and that's pretty much how they're winning elections. They actually don't care if they elect semi-Conservatives, they just want to pack the seats to pad their majorities. That in itself will cause problems for them in the long run, especially if a large group of them from Republican districts can't vote for radical initiatives. But one thing is clear, we're not going to win by going leftwards. I've discovered that the Democrats can effectively cover the entire ideological spectrum and get their candidates elected (at least below the Presidential level, they'd never nominate anyone other than a far-left moonbat), but the Republicans can't. If we all of a sudden started nominating far-left liberals in urban districts, they wouldn't win. The GOP can only get away with one segment of the ideological rainbow, because its voters are far more discerning with higher standards. To support leftist Republicans would run counter to those standards. In every part of the country that decided to go that direction, the GOP simply died. Because the Dems' lust for power means they'd sell out their values for majorities, is the one reason why they can get away with their stunts of winning seats as they have in these heavily Conservative GOP areas (benefitting from the anti-GOP anger).
The problem is that Republicans have a mixed message. John McCain is the rat-lite part of the party. His message is not much different than the rats on energy and immigration. He would be an improvment but perhaps not a great improvement in those areas. It will be up to individual candidates and the conservative wing of the party to fire back against the rats.
The rats are reasonably united. They have blocked a good deal of Bush's initiatives on energy, litigation reform, and entitlement reform. They will probably come apart after taking complete control.
I don’t know about your second thesis. Have to think about that. But I disagree with your first thesis that it was “individual issues/state races” that doomed the conservatives in 06. That’s still part of our problem, in that we aren’t yet willing to admit that there are times that conservatism will BE A LOSER. And that’s ok. That’s history. Nobody wins all the time, and face it, conservatism imposes self-discipline and market discipline, and when possible, people want to be as undisciplined as they can. I think blaming the 06 losses on a galaxy of unsupportable individual race things does not get us closer to solving the problem.
I agree with this. Lacking an FDR and his staff, who were ruthless about keeping power, regardless of ideology (as was Clinton), I think a Dem party driven by leftist ideology, as it is now, will come apart at the seams.
But it's gonna be really painful for the rest of us while this happens.
BTW, where do you teach?
No, no. I’m saying Conservatism did NOT lose in 2006. The Republican party did. When I saw Democrat candidates running that year AS IF they were Conservative Republicans, I knew that it wasn’t the ideology that was unappealing. Very few were running as unabashed liberals. In my state of TN, Junior Ford in his race for the Senate ran to the RIGHT of the RINO nominee. Indeed, if I wasn’t aware of his voting record and party label, I’d have though Ford was a Black Republican.
Ultimately, as I cited, the individual incumbents had differing reasons for their losses that ultimately added up to the anti-GOP tidal wave, but as I said, it had nothing to do with a repudiation of Conservatism (even if we know now the Dems had no intention of implementing policies for the right), indeed, it was an affirmation. It was singular disgust for the GOP. Now we’re seeing a repeat this year, anti-GOP, not anti-Conservative.
I’m not sold on that interpretation. If it was one guy, yes. But Santorum, Burns, Hayworth, one of the IN House guys, Talent, Allen-—that’s just way too many “exceptions.” And I’m not sure how “conservative” the dems were who ran, or how conservatively they portrayed themselves. Webb, for ex., certainly didn’t portray himself as “conservative” on the war; and in OH, DeWine was beaten by a vastly more lib candidate.
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