Posted on 12/14/2009 3:21:31 AM PST by rabscuttle385
Conventional political wisdom pegs Republicans as the most threatened by pollster Scott Rasmussen's shocking finding that a Tea Party party would draw more support today than the GOP, but Democrats have even more to fear.
Consider the situation facing Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., an incumbent representing one of her party's most reliable congressional districts in the country, thanks to the 18 point registration advantage Democrats enjoy over Republicans.
Her district is so solidly Democratic that Titus has voted with the liberal Democratic majority on all three of the major issues before Congress this year, including President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade, anti-global warming energy bill, and the House version of Obamacare.
In normal circumstances, Titus should cruise to re-election because her voting on the big issues of the day appears to match the views of her constituents. But guess what -- the latest Mason-Dixon poll finds Titus in a dead heat with Joe Heck, a relatively unknown Republican.
Titus' poor showing can't be ascribed to ethics problems. As RedState.com's Leon Wolfe notes, "Titus does not have any major corruption or personal issues driving up her unfavorables like Jon Corzine did or like Chris Dodd does."
And, as Wolfe further notes, "it also can't be that voters are punishing Titus for the failure of the Democratic legislative agenda in general; the House passed all three measures and Titus was a contributing factor to all three."
The fact is that most of Titus constituents in a heavily Democratic district oppose what she is voting for in Congress. The Mason-Dixon survey found voters in the district oppose Obamacare 47-41 percent.
Now let's look at Rasmussen's numbers. Most of the media coverage focused on the fact 36 percent of the respondents picking Democrats for congressional voting, compared with 23 percent going for a Tea Party-endorsed candidate, and a mere 18 percent opting for the GOP candidate.
That's significant news to be sure, as it shows just how sorry a state into which the Republican Party has fallen since the 2004 election. Frankly, it looks like the GOP is permanently branded as the party that promised but failed to get Washington spending and corruption under control.
The GOP now has the same problem faced by General Motors and Chrysler ever since American cars and trucks became indelibly branded among consumers as having less quality than Japanese vehicles.
GM -- and Chrysler to a lesser extent -- closed the quality gap years ago, but the second-rate image remains among the biggest threats to the two firms' prospects for ever regaining buyers' confidence. That both had to be bailed out by government and are now effectively controlled by Washington bureaucrats and the United Auto Workers union only makes it worse.
But wait, it gets worse for the Democrats, too, thanks to the abandonment of the Obama Democrats by independents. The Tea Party candidate gets the nod by 33 percent of independents, compared with 25 percent for the Democrat and only 12 percent for the Republican.
Most significantly, Rasmussen found 41 percent of his respondents overall saying the Democrats and Republicans are so much alike that a new party is required to represent the American people. Among independents, 60 percent say a new party is needed.
We are witnessing a widening, cross-partisan voter rebellion against Washington deficits, taxes, spending, regulation, and cronyism incited by two major factors. First came the earmark-powered spending splurge and congressional corruption under George Bush and the Republican congressional majority.
Voters threw the GOP out of power in Congress in 2006 and out of the White House in 2008. But then the second factor came into focus when the Obamacrats got it exactly backward by concluding those elections proved voters wanted to turn America into a European welfare state.
Voters wanted "change," to be sure, but that meant lower spending and taxes, less bureaucratic meddling in their lives, fewer federal boondoggles, and no more corruption or coddling of special interests. Obamacrats are instead giving them monumentally more of everything they don't want.
That is why the worst thing that can be said of a Washington politician these days isn't "Democrat" or "Republican," it's "incumbent."
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott's Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.
I didn't like that one letter either... it's a "G", but I fixed it now.
I would have used just the word "Denier", but the left-wingers have made it sound like a "Holocaust Denier" and I wanted it to be clear exactly who I was referring to.
Honestly, I hope Holder does follow through on this. If he does it will prove to be the catalyst that finally drives the "undecideds" off the fence.
“I have no sympathy for people who voted for Obama...”
Same here. They thought they were brilliant because they listened to the mainstream media tout Obama as the saviour whhile characterizing Republicans as knuckle-dragging, bible-thumping, gun-toting chumps.
Now, they have a president-elect who surrounds himself with those who want to ban guns, remove relious faith from the public square (except Islam), and hire a bunch of knuckle draggers as a new “civilian security force”.
Can all those “Independents” who lean left still consider themselves to be “brilliant” and above the fray? (They’re nothing but a bunch of maroons. They should expand their reading lists and exclude the Democrat-propaganda-organs
that parrot the Democrat party line.)
IMHO
Rasmussen found 41 percent of his respondents overall saying the Democrats and Republicans are so much alike that a new party is required to represent the American people. Among independents, 60 percent say a new party is needed.
Well stated.
” The Public is a jackass” Mark Twain to reporter.
Tea Partiers more dangerous to Democrats than GOP
It’s all about principles, and The GOP’s lack of them.
When someone talks about “which party” the Tea Party movement is “dangerous” to,
they’re showing that they just don’t get it.
The Tea Party movement is all about ousting elitism and the self-styled “ruling class” that infests both parties.
Many elitists don’t understand how much their attitudes are DESPISED by the people of America. We are VERY “anti-aristocrat”.
You can VERBALLY “punch them in the teeth”.
“It’s not as if you didn’t have the information necessary to know what he was about. You purposefully CHOSE to ignore it. Now, YOU LIVE WITH IT, and stop acting like you can “change your mind” and make it all better.”
Well done!
She's a 'Rat. Of course she's corrupt. Her corruption just hasn't been discovered yet. It always comes out, it just comes out ten years later than it would if we had real journalists in the State Run Media (Thank you Rush for that term - it perfectly describes them).
Conservatives, who comprise a majority in the GOP, are now organized. It's time for the Murphys, maddens and Frums to sit down and shut up.
Many elitists dont understand how much their attitudes are DESPISED by the people of America. We are VERY anti-aristocrat.
I think you're right, MrB.
I draw the same conclusions, and I have only my personal observations as “supporting facts.”
It’s an opinion piece.
“..editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.”
That these words came from the pen of the MSM is news indeed!!!
No, I disagree. They understand, but they cloak it in the term of “anti-intellectual” (their favorite pejorative against Sarah Palin).
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems to me that “insiders” and MSM are trying to cast the Tea Parties as a political party, pushing the idea, actually—thereby making them a threat to Republicans. In point of fact, there is NO “Tea Party” party, nor is there likely to be one. No one is pushing a third party, as far as I know (except for a very few). The idea is to transform the parties we have into parties that will support this great country.
Sounds like denial to me.
Sounds like they’re still trying to hold onto their self defined superiority by defining all those that are telling them that they are NOT superior as “too dumb to understand”.
We don’t have any problem with elites and achievement.
We have BIG problems with people using that “status”, real or self-defined, as an excuse to force their decisions on us.
W's real legacy.
Yep, I despise the fact that W considered it beneath the office to actually defend himself and his policies from the lies of the left.
He and this attitude are 80% responsible for the election of 0bama.
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