Posted on 10/20/2013 1:03:05 PM PDT by neverdem
The 2010 midterm election that swept Republicans into power in the U.S. House of Representatives was a mandate to put the brakes on President Obama and his agenda.
Aside from voters also hoping that Republicans would do something — anything — to boost the economy, restraining Obama was pretty much the issue of that election.
It was the second “wave” election in four years (Republicans were dumped from the majority in 2006). And it had less to do with voters finding Republicans appealing once again and more to do with putting a halt to the Democrats' overreach.
At the center of that overreach was the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare — which is why many of those elected to office in that cycle and re-elected last year have been adamant about repealing it, even at the cost of a government shutdown.
Or even at the cost of losing their seats, which has led to talk of a Democrat-wave election cycle. It is a possibility pushed by paid pundits as reality, but the facts do not support it.
That does not mean a wave election isn't brewing out on Main Street. In fact, early polling indicates the 2014 midterm might produce another electoral shift, but not one that shoves Republicans out of power.
First of all, the playing field of vulnerable GOP seats is too narrow for Republicans to lose their majority, barring a massive wave. (Think 1894, when 107 Democrats were swept out of the House.)
Second, major waves historically have not happened concurrent with the “six-year itch” — the election held in the sixth year of a president's tenure, in which the party holding the White House typically loses a substantial number of House and Senate seats.
And remember that, in the 1996 midterm election of the Clinton era, Republicans lost 18 incumbents but kicked the Democrats' butts in the open-seat races. The Republicans' losses were mostly “wave seats” that they unexpectedly won two years earlier, during their first sweep back into power after 40 years in the political wilderness.
Coincidentally, all of that occurred in the year of another government shutdown — that one over the funding of Medicare, which is a heck of a lot more popular with voters than ObamaCare.
Today, every member of Congress, along with the White House and President Obama, is getting battered in the polls over how they've handled the shutdown, with Republicans taking a slim lead on the voter-anger index.
Kyle Kondik, a House analyst for the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, says that if (and he stresses it's a big “if”) Republicans eventually suffer because of the shutdown, it will not be tea partyers who are hurt.
“While the Republican brand is poor, the president isn't particularly popular — his approval is only in the low to mid-40s, according to polling averages,” said Kondik. “There would have to be an incredible amount of revulsion with the Republicans to deliver the House to the Democrats.”
Plus, historically, there's basically no precedent for the president's party to capture control of the House in a midterm year. Many presidents have held the House in a midterm, but they haven't taken control of it in a midterm.
Kondik pointed to a couple of other things that could keep Republicans from making any big gains. Most significantly, the Democrat targets aren't all that great; before the GOP's historic 2010 sweep, Democrats held 31 of the 150 districts where John McCain beat Obama in 2008 — which gave Republicans a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick off.
“Now, Republicans hold only one of Obama's 150 best districts,” Kondik said. Bottom line: It's almost always better to be the “out” party in a midterm year.
Presidential parties have lost ground in the House in 35 of the 38 post-Civil War midterms, according to Kondik: “Granted, two of the exceptions were recent — Clinton gained seats in 1998, and Bush did in 2002.”
One variable to watch is retirements; it's a lot easier to win an open seat than to beat an incumbent. If Republicans in marginal districts start retiring, that will be a very good sign for Democrats.
So far, that's not really happening.
Salena Zito covers politics for Trib Total Media (412-320-7879 or szito@tribweb.com).
Parker is not running as far as I can tell. It’s a shame. He’s a good guy really, but he ran a bad campaign. Sinema should have been easy to beat. She was the Ashley Judd of Arizona.
Atheist carpet muncher and proud of it.
I really want her ass kicked out.
Parker is listed as an active candidate on Politics1, though I checked his website and it’s down.
Argh, they say that God creates babies through sex, even through rape. Well that used to be a theological truism. If Democrats want to make asses out of themselves because they won’t believe the truth, fie on them.
I guess yer right, his campaign site is defunct.
By the way, on the rape scandal. GOP should not have shied away but robustly defended the intent using the scriptures. What hurt them was not the statement, but the fact that they were subsequently cowed into acting ashamed of it. For the Lord’s sake, never apologize for truth, even politically awkward truth.
Look at this... posted on October 7:
http://www.americanfreedombybarbara.com/2013/10/arizona-vernon-parker-running-for.html
“Why re-invent the wheel! It’s a conservative brand and we need to take it back.”
It’s a brand but a toxic one. When conservatives dislike the brand almost as much as libs do, it’s time to find something else.
I know two congressional candidates, Diane Harris, who is running in the 3rd District; and Fred White, who is running in the 5th District.
Yes, it appears that Vernon Parker is running again, but that he’s no longer using his old website. His new campaign website does not yet have any info, just sign-ups to receive campaign e-mails and a link to make donations to the campaign: http://vernonparkerforcongress.com/
Some people don’t get it, new party=vote split ala 1912=democrat supermajorites=game over, we’re France.
And what makes them think they can undertake the mammoth effort of starting a new party and driving the GOP to extinction when they can’t even get enough people to nominate conservative Republicans? Which one of those things sounds 500 times harder than the other? And guess what, the new party would become the Republicans with a new name. What a silly waste of time.
I say we should stop whining about the GOPE and keep primarying them, it’s the only thing to do in our voting system. Want to try and change that system? Maybe a good idea, but good luck making that happen.
So, who to prefer, him or Rogers? Did he indeed run a poor race as Viennacon thinks?
+2 would still keep the Senate in Reid's control.
-PJ
Judging by the results, Mayor Parker must have run a fairly good campaign. Obama carried the new AZ-09 by 51.1%-46.6% over Romney, yet the bisexual Marxist Sinema won by only 48.3%-45.2% over Parker, with the Libertarian taking 6.4%. 2014 turnout will be a lot different than in an election year with Obama on the ballot, so Parker or whoever our nominee is should have better odds of winning.
Powell Gammill was the spoiler, and Parker didn’t anticipate it or do anything to try and claw back the votes he lost to the libertarian.
It’s like Rehberg in Montana. He would have beaten that goon Tester, but the libertarian was able to successfully bleed voters from him.
Our guys need to go into races like this with a plan in place in case of a third party contender.
I absolutely agree that Sinema is an easy nut to crack in an off-year election. Especially a second midterm for the incumbent. Rogers or Parker could do it, but from what I can tell, Parker has no intention to run.
>> It can only be done by replacing RINOs and Dems with TEA Party conservative
That might not be possible in every district.
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Vote out the RINOs in 2014!
If Parker has no intention of running, then his 2014 website is there just to collect donations to pay off old campaign debt. And did you see the link that DJ provided? If Parker isn’t running, he sure is fooling a lot of people.
I would posit that anyone who would cast a vote for the Libertarian candidate, when it was clear that the Libertarian wouldn’t come close to winning and when the other two candidates were a bisexual, pro-open-borders Marxist and a conservative Republican, was a very tough vote for Parker to get. What could Parker have done to convince such masochistic voters, offered them free pot? They voted for some useful idiot for the Democrats, and now they’re stuck with Sinema in Congress. Someone who can’t understand the difference between Sinema and Parker is just not rational enough to be convinceable.
Big-L Libertarians should understand that their voting habits are helping liberal Democrats get elected. Our elections are first past the post. We have primaries. There is no excuse for a conservative voter to withhold his vote from a conservative candidate just because such candidate is not perfect (and, believe me, the Libertarian candidate likely is far more imperfect than the Republican). Don’t like the guy? Vote him out in the primary. But don’t let the libera Democrat win, for crying out loud. Noses are for holding in the general when the guy you supported lost the primary, not for cutting off to spite one’s face.
Just saw it. Apologies. The site does not come up when you Google “Vernon Parker for Congress”.
If Vernon is running again, then I don’t mind who wins between Rogers and Parker in the primary. Both would likely beat Sinema by 5 points this time round, and both seem solidly conservative.
For the record, Rogers ran in 2010 against Democrat David Schapira in a state senate district and lost, so both her and Parker have lost before.
Whatever the case, we should try to keep libertarians from fielding another doofus.
(Query, can Jan Brewer not shake up the districts a little more to put Sinema and the other dems at an even worse disadvantage?)
Oh, and just a heads up, guys. Sinema is being flooded with money from the DNC. She got $300,000 from out of state just in the third quarter. Pelosi wants her token carpet chaser for special favors no doubt.
While Libertarians are usually pro Second Amendment, voting for them or another third party nominee is almost as bad as voting for a rat since the rats have resumed active gun grabbing policies again.
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