Posted on 11/19/2009 7:49:17 AM PST by george76
Unaffiliated voters leaning toward GOP.
Less than a year from the 2010 elections, there's a chance for Cortez Republican Scott Tipton to pull a major upset over John Salazar, the incumbent Western Slope congressman, a respected pollster told Denver-area Republicans on Wednesday.
Floyd Ciruli... recent elections around the country show unaffiliated voters leaning toward Republicans, while Democratic voters tended to stay home.
He pointed to Tipton and Ryan Frazier of Aurora as two Republicans who might benefit.
"I think the Republican Party wisely saw that lightning could strike out there. This could be one of those exceptional years," Ciruli said.
Tipton has said he intends to run against the Democratic agenda, the health-reform bill and increased spending. That, however, will be hard to do, Ciruli said
"Salazar is not a national Democrat. Salazar is a very distinctive Western Democrat," Ciruli said.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by 81 in the House of Representatives. Ciruli thinks Republicans can reasonably expect to win back 20 of those seats next year, but if "lightning strikes" and the GOP wins the 41 seats it needs to take over the House, Tipton and Frazier could be part of that group.
(Excerpt) Read more at durangoherald.com ...
“Salazar has a voting record that is more or less indistinguishable from Barney Frank. How this qualifies as being a “Western Democrat” I don’t know. “
he probably wears a cowboy hat and boots when he is back in his district
I’m not going to dispute that John Salazar’s voting record is far more liberal than his talk back home, but there’s no way that he’s only 12% conservative while the moonbat Udall is at 13%. The 2008 ACU ratings were absurd, consistently underrating moderate-to-conservative Democrats through the votes they selected for consideration. Check out the 12 key votes looked at by Barone in his 2010 Almanac; you’ll see that Democrats that voted the conservative position in 6 of the 12 still got ACU scores in the teens or twenties when in prior years a member that voted conservative in half of the key votes had ACU scores in the 40s or 50s. Also check out the Family Research Group’s ratings; guys with FRG ratings over 90 like Lincoln Davis somehow got miniscule ACU scores in 2008. I look at 6 different ratings when measuring voting records—3 from liberal groups and 3 from conservative groups—and for 2008 the ACU scores were such outliers (almost entirely correlated to party ID instead of issue positions) that I considered excluding the ACU scores for such year.
Ryan Frazier? It would be great to add him to the House.
I’ve read complaints about the ACU ratings, similar to what you cited. Even if said ratings are (shall we say) “off”, it’s still fairly clear that there has been an overall lurch to the left (both amongst Democrats and RINOs). Centrist Democrats now as liberal as the far-left members were prior to the Dem takeover of Congress. Perhaps we need an overall new ratings system, though I still don’t think it’s going to show that dramatic a difference in the leanings. It’s frankly difficult even, with respect exclusively to House members, to claim a “centrist” (or even “Conservative”) lean when the first vote out of the chute is for Pelosi.
Oh, should also add, Salazar’s rating INCREASED over 2007. He scored an “8” that year. His lifetime is 27% (Udall’s an 8), but that’s based solely on his starting off with a 44 in both ‘05 and ‘06 and he just totally dropped off into moonbat territory. Clearly an example of moving hard-left (similar to what we saw with somewhat centrist or Conservative Democrats after Watergate).
I don’t have Barone’s ‘10 Almanac, yet. As much as I love those books (and I get hardcover), I can’t shell out $100 for a new issue, especially when I can wait 2 years and get it for more than 95% less (I just bought the ‘08 edition the other week, a former library copy that hasn’t apparently been touched, for just under $3).
Fantasy (Western Democrat)!
FYI John Salazar votes with Pelosi 98% of the time (as does Ed Perlmutter and the Boulder dem Jared Polis - our most liberal dem is Diana Degette of Denver who votes 99% with the party). He then comes home and claims he is a “Blue Dog” democrat. No he’s a “Lap Dog” democrat.
It would do my heart good to see both Salazar and Perlmutter (my rep) retired. Both these districts were held by Republicans, and can be retaken with decent candidates.
He's and up-and-comer in Republican politics. There's been buzz about him for a couple of years. I'm hoping he makes it. In 2008 I was a delegate to the 7th Cong. District Convention here in CO. It was like they just found some folks off the street to come in and be put in nomination to run. Once put on the ballot, the Republican nominee was never heard from again. It was awful.
That district held for McCain which surprised me. It should not be in rat hands. Even “distinct western” rat hands.
I probably rely too much on ACU ratings in ganging voting records too. Since the rats took congress ratings for both parties have headed so far south perhaps they don’t show enough nuance on the bottom end.
When you vote for Pelosi and to install people like Rangel into committee chairmanships though that makes you scum in my book even if you are pro-life and pro-gun.
I’ve never understood stats purported to reveal how often a member votes “with” a speaker, or U.S. president, for that matter. The Speaker very rarely votes, and the president never votes.
But you’re right that John Salazar is too liberal for his district and that he, like Perlmutter in the CO-07 and Markey in the CO-04. The CO-07 is the least Republican of the three districts, but Frazier sounds like a good candidate and Perlmuttee isn’t entrenched yet.
If the ACU drop-off began in 2007, then its more likely due to the fact that the types of bills that the Democrats allow on the floor will be voted in favor by Democrats whether liberal or moderate. To give an example, when the GOP controlled the House you’d get votes to ban partial-birth abortion and you could separate the moonbats from the non-moonbats; starting un 2007 you get votes on funding of embryonic stem-cell research which even many self-proclaimed pro-life Republicans supported. It’s not that everyone suddenly moved to the left, it’s that the types of bills changed. I also think that the ACU cherry-picked votes that show a partisan divide instead of votes that show a liberal-conservative divide (basically, ignoring many votes on social issues). Conservative vote raters that look at one particular type of issue (such as the Family Research Council or whatever it’s called) did not show such a large drop-off from 2005-2006 to 2007-2008.
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