No he isn't. "Independence" in the dem party only lasts until a visit from the Whip's staff. Unless Critz is granted a cosmetic "no" vote to save his a$$ at election time, he'll be like the other "conservative" dems.. just holding out for a juicy, earmark-packed deal.
This is a classic socially conservative, economically liberal district. Perfect territory for a Blue Dog. The people there are church going and God fearing and strongly pro-Second Amendment. Yes that it is all true.
But...they are also Democrat by a 2:1 margin and strongly addicted to all the pork Murtha and now Critz bring into the district.
The only chance for a Republican to take the district in November is to forcefully argue that a vote for Critz is a vote for Pelousy. But even that is problematic as most voters select candidates on their own individual merits.
But at the end of the day he'll vote to keep her as speaker. And when all is said and done he'll vote for Obama's agenda more often than not.
I would call the win by Critz disappointing rather than bad. It is a strong Democratic seat and it would have been nice to pick it up but it was never a sure thing. The bigger disappointment by my way of thinking would be the margin of victory. An 8 point win is a lot bigger than I'd hoped it would be.
I don’t see how it’s bad for the GOP.
Critz ran as a total conservative, obviously afraid to let the liberal ID get out there.
It was 2 to 1 Dems so any other result would have been a statistical miracle.
And finally, we can’t win them all. It would have been different if we’d had anything in this race going for us but we didn’t.
They are forgetting about Scott Brown in Massachusetts. That was a lot more significant.
Disappointed in the results, but it is not surprising. It is a Dem district, there was a hot Senate primary on the Dem side, and there was the weirdity of Burns being in two elections on the same day...the primary against Russell and the Murtha open seat. Would love to see a win, but this has little to do with November nationally.
I agree with many who say that the Democrat primary greatly improved Democrat turnout.
And the Democrat should not have been allowed to out flank the Republican on the right. In almost every Congress, the most important vote by far cast by any member is who they support for leadership. If a member votes for Pelosi as House leader, that sets the whole agenda.
It sounds very noble to say one “votes for the candidate, not the party.” But it’s foolhardy in the extreme to ignore the fact that a Democrat votes to keep Democrat leadership in power.
Just my two cents.
What we NEED is to clean house of RINOs(follow Rab's and other's leads.) . What we NEED is to pick up enough seats to make democrats job of passing things impossible. That will allow us to beat Obama in 2012. Don't be fooled into joining the MSMs horse-race on love-hate Obama here. There is a bigger long term picture to worry about. You can't put out a fire with more gasoline (bailout big government Republican leadership can't undo democrat socialism.)
In two years this new congressman will have a record supporting Obama too. If Obama still owns the economy and deficit democrats will have another big loss. Let's see what the Republican’s record is like then. I always said, just opposing things (especially stuff you were for when you were in power) is not enough to win a majority. Rab's has it right, take out the RINOs. Don't get discouraged by letting the MSM set taking over congress 2010 as being our low bar for victory and Obama's defeat.
Why 2010 should be the year of the conservative, and to dump the RINOS
I disagree. A vote for Critz was a vote for Pelosi & Ob0z0 the commie pig, and an endorsement of their agenda to destroy & bankrupt the U.S. If Burns hit Critz hard on his support for Pelosi & socialist 0b0z0, and still lost, then I am not optimistic that the House or Senate will shift from demoRAT to Repub in Nov 2010. There are just too many unbelieveably stupid voters in the U.S.
Re. Critz's supposed "pro-life & pro-gun" credentials, as we already know from Bart Stupak, there really is no such thing as a pro-life demoRAT or pro-gun. A demoRAT is a left-wing idealogue who will ALWAYS do whatever is necessary to advance the socialist-marxist agenda. This is another heartbreak for those of us who wished & prayed & contributed financially to the PA-12 election in hopes that the demoRATS would lose a House seat. Just like we hoped & prayed & still lost in NY-23. Sadly we are now 0-2 in House elections that should have been won by Repubs. The level of stupidity & dumb ass ignorance in American voters is mind-boggling. I know...I have a boss who is a liberal Phd from U of W-Madison, and he would vote for demoRATs including 0b0z0 the commie pig, even if 0bozo raped & pillaged 10 yr old girls on stage in front of a national audience. My younger brother & his fat ugly liberal wife are the same way. Such is the stupidity of liberals to vote forever in support of demoRATs & their evil agenda.
BS.
Hawaii on Friday ???
They’ve got to milk this D victory for all it’s worth before they lose the Hawaii seat.
“
The PA-12 Results Are Bad For the GOP. Just How Bad?
“
Not bad.
After Murtha spent DECADES of bringing pork home to his district...
the parasites, er, voters can’t be expected to jettison their identification
with the welfare party (D).
Pennsylvania: Castle Doctrine Self-Defense Bill to be Considered on Tuesday, May 25!
NRO failed to mention the effect of the Specter/Sestak primary on PA-12. If "Fast Eddie" vetoes the Castle Doctrine bill, that will probably help in November, IMHO.
So the guy that won, won by putting as much distance between himself and The Kenyan as possible. And this is a setback?
Look at the Armstrong County numbers. There is clearly something wrong. If I were auditing it I’d have to say it looks like someone altered numbers except they didn’t bother to be consistent about it because the primary numbers reflect what was suspected but the special election numbers suggest a sizable number of Republicans crossed over and voted for Crtiz. Republican Turnout was significantly higher in this county than Democrat turnout as normal yet Critz pulled out a victory? McCain Won this county, Russell won this county, even Murtha in 2006 never amassed the percentage win that Critz did in this county against Diana Irey and if tonight had been the general election for Senate the Republican would have easily won. It may be explainable because of the Russell Burns conflict but it just looks strange.
I believe that this is the most important post of the day and it needs to be put up as a vanity.
I thought about this for a few hours and this is an operation chaos move that went wrong. Folks wanting Burns to lose the Special Election and Russell to win the primary and run against Critz. So, they voted for Russell and Critz.
Now in the cold like of day.. this tactic sucked but at the time it may very well have seemed smart.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2516417/posts?page=4#4
Besides, Critz had to run almost to the right of Burns to win. It's not like he ran on an authentic Dem platform. I'm sure he'll toe the Pelosi line if he makes it in there this Fall.
It's just not that simple, and it's certainly not a legitimate excuse for the Burns defeat.
Geraghty is clueless, just like so many other pontificating pundits, Republican establishment hacks and Tim Burns apologists.
These clowns drank the Burns kool-aid and now they're trying to spin their way out of it by impugning the integrity of the voters or the Russell campaign.
In reality, which eludes Geraghty and others, more votes were cast in the PA-12 special election than the PA-12 R and D primaries combined. The roughly 8,000 "extra" votes represent independents, who were allowed to vote in the special but not in the primaries. Republicans who voted for Russell in the primary also voted for Burns in the special election, even Bill Russell himself told his supporters that's exactly what he wanted them to do.