Posted on 10/29/2012 6:47:14 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Even if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan win on November 6, his agenda will be stymied if Republicans can't pick up at least three more seats than their current 47 and control the Senate. That's clear from the last two years, when Harry Reid's not-so-deliberative body became the graveyard for fiscal and other reform.
House Republicans won an historic midterm election in 2010, picking up 63 seats. They also gained six Senate seats, but a handful of weak GOP candidates (Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Christine O'Donnell) cost them control of the upper body. Back in charge in 2011, Mr. Reid proceeded to stop nearly everything that House Republicans passed. President Obama hasn't even had to sweat a veto fight because nothing escapes Mr. Reid's lost world.
Consider the record. In 2011 and 2012 the House passed more than three-dozen economic or jobs-related bills and with only a few exceptions they died in the Senate without a vote. The bills dealt with regulatory relief, tax reduction, domestic drilling for energy, offshore drilling, a jobs bill for veterans, repeal of ObamaCare and many more. Many passed the House with significant Democratic support, as the nearby list shows.
Then there is the Democratic failure on their constitutional obligation of passing a budget. House Republicans passed their budgets in each of the past two years in the spring. The latest one, crafted by Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, contained $4.5 trillion in deficit reduction—at least twice as much as Mr. Obama's budget proposal.
By contrast, the Senate failed to pass any budget in 2012. Or 2011. Or 2010. The Senate hasn't passed a budget in more than 1,200 days. Sorry, Harry, you can't blame that on a Republican filibuster, because it takes only 51 votes to pass a Senate budget resolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
What are GOP Senate prospects in 2014?
You mean that Angle, Buck and O’Donnell ran such tight, pro races that they couldn’t win? It seems that each one shot themselves in the foot at one point or another.
If conservatives want to win they have to learn how to play the game. It’s done by pros. We can learn how:
http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/training/
Sign up yourself, your kids, anybody, but let’s learn how to win. We should be working every campaign we can to learn how to win, over and over again.
Naah, they ultimately were not the best of what we could’ve put up. O’Donnell was mainly to take out the execrable Mike Castle, whom I believe would’ve switched to the Democrats in time had he been elected and then resigned so ‘Tard Joe’s progeny could take over the seat. Buck was a flaky candidate who lost to a nobody Dem seatwarmer (and not helped by the CO GOP meltdown surrounding their incompetence with nominating a decent Gubernatorial candidate).
As for Angle, she was pure, unadulterated fail. She was a nut, made unfounded allegations of voter fraud against Dean Heller, and alienated the very people she needed to win, and she already had 2 losses under her belt. ANY other nominee would’ve taken out Dingy Harry, but Angle was the only one who could lose. Danny Tarkanian, who should’ve been the nominee, is currently in the lead for the new 4th NV House seat. If he does well in the House, hopefully he will take out Reid in ‘16, unless Reid exits feet first before then.
“A handful of WEAK GOP CANDIDATES...”
Yeah, right. And they got such WONDERFUL support from the Karl Rove’s of the Party, didn’t they! Move the Rep Party’s liberal leadership to the Dem Party and at least one of these candidates might have won!
All those 2008 seats won by Democrats are up. We’d have to have a complete disaster not to pick up more than a few...
AK... Begich (fluke) - easy pickup
AR... Pryor (retiring ?) - pickup
CO... Mark Udall - competitive
IL... Durbin - competitive with the right candidate
IA... Harkin - (retiring ?) - should beat him anyway
LA... Landrieu - (retiring ?) - very weak, pickup for us
MA... Kerry (retiring ?) - if Brown loses, he could run again
MI... Levin (retiring ?) - 36 yr incumbent, should take down
MN... Al Franken (fluke) - stolen election, should win (Pawlenty may run)
MT... Baucus (retiring ?) - 36-yr incumbent (40 including prior House service), should face strong challenger
NH... Shaheen (competitive) possible rematch against Sununu
NJ... Lautenberg (retiring ?), open seat could give us a shot
NM... Tom Udall (whispers might retire after 1 term, though he should be favored unless the GOP has a strong candidate)
NC... Hagan (fluke) - weak incumbent, GOP should take it back
OR... Merkley - depends on challenger, he upset Gordon Smith
RI... Jack Reed - invisible incumbent, but GOP never challenges him
SC... Graham - replacing him with a Conservative in the primary would be a “pickup”
SD... Tim Johnson (retiring ?) - ex-Gov. Mike Rounds may run, and will be a pickup
VA... Mark Warner - if strong challenger runs like Gov. Bob McDonnell, he is beatable
WV... Rockefeller (retiring ?) - with open seat, we should finally pick this one up after more than a half-century
So, all in all, if we don’t grab at least 10 of those contests, that would be a poor performance on our part (although whom is elected President will tilt it — if Zero wins, I think we get a dozen... if the GOP wins, a lesser amount).
“Yep, if the Repubs take back the senate, dingy harry’s threats don’t mean spit.”
Wrong.
The Pubbies aren’t going to win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That can’t happen (at least not this time).
What this means is that from the get-go of the incoming Romney administration, we are going to see a level of obstruction by the ‘rats in the Senate as has not been seen in decades, perhaps within this century.
The ‘rats will try to wage obstruction on a national scale, as they tried to do to Wisconsin goverment against the Scott Walker administration.
Financial bills may get through, because they cannot be filibustered and require only a 51-vote majority for passage.
But expect EVERYTHING else to run up against the wall, including judicial nominations.
Of course, the Pubbies have an “out”, and that is to use the nuclear option to end the requirement of 60 votes to achive cloture and overcome a filibuster. It was discussed in the past (by both sides), but never used.
The Pubbies could do this.
But they won’t.
Result:
Obstruction!
Amen.
I will grant you that Sharon Angle wasn’t the strongest candidte.
In Nevada, it is hard to get people to run against Dirty Harry Reid & to go into debt to do so.
He has a stranglehold on the Clark County & Las Vegas voters.
On Monday night, Angle showed a 4 point lead in the polls. Tuesday night, she had lost by 6 points.
That is a 10 point swing.
I don’t think the pollsters are that bad at doing their job.
I think the difference was massive ACORN fraudulent voters.
ACORN was caught with over 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations.....in a state that had 1.22 Million voters...tht is about 1/3 of all the registered voters!!
Their fine—after 2 years of ‘investigation’? $5000.
That is about 1 1/4 CENTS for each voter card.
Not nearly enough of a deterrent, IMO.
I will grant you that Sharon Angle wasn’t the strongest candidte.
In Nevada, it is hard to get people to run against Dirty Harry Reid & to go into debt to do so.
He has a stranglehold on the Clark County & Las Vegas voters.
On Monday night, Angle showed a 4 point lead in the polls. Tuesday night, she had lost by 6 points.
That is a 10 point swing.
I don’t think the pollsters are that bad at doing their job.
I think the difference was massive ACORN fraudulent voters.
ACORN was caught with over 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations.....in a state that had 1.22 Million voters...tht is about 1/3 of all the registered voters!!
Their fine—after 2 years of ‘investigation’? $5000.
That is about 1 1/4 CENTS for each voter card.
Not nearly enough of a deterrent, IMO.
The dims did away with the simple majority rule on just about everything proposed by Bush. With maneuvering they got super majorities required for most bills they didn't like. Wasn't it called the 'nuclear option'?
They'll do the same to Romney.
The repubs need about 60 seats. Not likely.
The dims will hate Romney as much as they hated Bush and any Romney idea that he will be able to work with them is a dream.
The only way the dims will work with Romney is for Romney to cave to their demands.
There’s a twist. Each house of congress creates its own rules, and no particular house can bind future houses as to what its rules must be. So a 60-vote majority, the filibuster, senate “holds”, etc., can be voted out when the Republicans are in power.
Just like Reid has threatened to do to them if the Democrats keep power.
O'Donnell and Angle were . . . colorful. I think there's an opportunity for the GOP establishment to deal with that before the primary. Once the primary voters have spoken, I think it's poor form for the GOP elite to campaign against them in television appearances during the general election, as Mr. Rove and others did. Trying to make friends by selling out your allies is treason.
The Democrats seem to have no problem lining up behind whatever candidate struggles across the finish line in the primary, unless he's already been indicted.
It looks excellent, should be a net gain even if we have a Prez Romney with 47% approval.
But we haven’t cleaned up like that since 1980.
As I’ve often mentioned we’ve never beat more than 2 incumbents in any cycle since.
Pryor Jr. might retire?
Winning 8 of 11 won't be easy. I hope the GOP has been doing the right stuff in the background to get this done (since the Senate race has been utterly under the radar thus far)
The Republican shift in Arkansas has been dramatic (as I surmised more than a few years ago, it was Huckster’s reign as Governor that stopped the realignment dead in its tracks). Pryor has a huge target on his back (as does Landrieu in LA), and I suspect he may retire rather than get carried out like Blanche Lincoln did. By 2014, it will have been 12 years since Pryor ran a bonafide campaign (then against incumbent Tim Hutchinson), since the GOP gave him and most of the other races a pass in 2008. That’s a long time in a changing state.
The only truly formidable Democrat left in Arkansas is Gov. Beebe, and even he hasn’t been able to stop the slide against the Dems on his watch. If Pryor retires, the Dems will apply heavy pressure to Beebe to run. The question is whether Beebe would want to serve in a GOP majority Senate as a minority party backbencher.
In any event, it appears Little Rock Congressman Tim Griffin wants the seat, and he may get it (the downside, that district could go back to the Dems again as long as they don’t nominate a Black leftist as they did in 2010).
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