Posted on 11/18/2013 4:27:24 PM PST by ConservativeInPA
The facts
1. There are 21 US Senate seats held by Democrats in the 2014 election.
2. There are nine US Senate seats held by Democrats in the 2016 election. This is likely to be 10 due to a special election in HI in 2014.
3. Republicans need to pick up six senate seats to have a majority.
The Analysis
The failures of ObamaCare and broken promises by Democrat senators create a target rich environment in 2014. This is a year Republicans have to do well. Winning a majority in the senate by only one seat or maintaining the status quo is not the definition of doing well. It would be a four year setback to 2018 because there just are not that many Democrat senators to beat in 2016. Please read the following list and choose seats that Republicans are likely to win in 2016:
CA - Barbara Boxer (D)
CO - Michael Bennet (D)
CT - Richard Blumenthal (D)
HI - TBD in 2014 special (D)
MD - Barbara Mikulski (D)
NV - Harry Reid (D)
NY - Chuck Schumer (D)
OR - Ron Wyden (D)
VT - Patrick Leahy (D)
WA - Patty Murray (D)
I don’t find this too encouraging, although I’d love to see Dingy Harry and Chucky Schumer lose. I just don’t think most of these seats are in reach given the states involved. 2014 is a different story, hence the title of this post, “14 in ’14”.
I know that a 14 seat pick up is really not exactly realistic, but I like challenging goals and I think the political climate across America is ripe for such Republican success. Here’s a list of 2014 Democrats seats:
AK - Mark Begich (D)
AR - Mark Pryor (D)
CO - Mark Udall (D)
DE - Chris Coons (D)
HI - Brian Schatz (D)
IA - Tom Harkin (D) - Retiring
IL - Dick Durbin (D)
LA - Mary Landrieu (D)
MA - Ed Markey (D)
ME - Susan Collins (R)
MI - Carl Levin (D)
MN - Al Franken (D)
MT - Max Baucus (D) - Retiring
NC - Kay Hagan (D)
NH - Jeanne Shaheen (D)
NJ - Cory Booker (D)
NM - Tom Udall (D)
OR - Jeff Merkley (D)
RI - Jack Reed (D)
SD - Tim Johnson (D) - Retiring
VA - Mark Warner (D)
WV - Jay Rockefeller (D) - Retiring
(If you noticed Susan Collins in the list, it was intentional, just my warped sense of humor.)
I think DE, HI, IL, MA, NJ, NM, and RI are off the board. There would have to be a complete melt down in the Democrat party to pick up any of these states.
AK, AR, IA, LA, MT, NC, SD and WV are winnable – that gives the Republicans more than a majority in the Senate. There also a chance to pick up CO, MI, MN, NH, OR and VA. That gives us the 14 in ’14 to target. I’m not saying we can win all of those seats, but the this last group, VA, is the most possible as long as there isn’t a Democrat in Libertarian disguise running. With Levin retiring in MI, and that lying asshat Franken in MN, I think there will be interesting races if Republicans can find competent challengers. NH is an outside shot, but I think NH has too many illegal immigrants from MA to recover. I’m hoping some western sensibility finds its way into CO and OR. The state senate recall elections in CO may have established enough grassroots to barely win. OR is a long shot, but in this environment it may be possible.
Right. In any case, Colorado is pretty far away.
So grain of salt, but encouraging numbers. I’m skeptical of Rand Paul leading Hillary by 3 in the state.
Interesting result in one of those links, ‘Hispanics’ support Osamacare by only 51-45.
“The Angles, Akins and Mourdocks need to STFU and go wait for Lawrence Welk to come on. Because not only to they blow very winnable elections; they make the GOP look idiotic as a whole,”
You’ve got that right. While things are going very well politically, there’s no guarantee that the Obamacare horror stories will be front-page news this time next year. We need the best candidates possible and for the most part, we haven’t gotten them.
Thank you.
...Mourdock... (just one more time).
We also have at least one Freeper, Diamond, who is a member of Akin’s local church.
Akin has a long history of being a conservative evangelical Republican, and he has been attacked many times by GOP-e people as an example of the sort of conservative they want to marginalize or eliminate.
I expect that from GOP-e people. I am sick and tired of listening to Akin being cited on Free Republic in the same category.
Akin said something really, really stupid. I'm not going to defend it. Any evangelical in politics knows he's going to get the “abortion in case of rape” question. There is simply no excuse for him not getting his chosen answer to that question evaluated in advance by solid political advisers in the pro-life movement with current medical knowledge since his chosen answer was based on medical advice.
What makes it even worse is that because Akin is a longtime student of military history, he **CERTAINLY** knows about the large numbers of pregnancies resulting from wartime rapes. Look at what the Russians did to German women (and others) and you'll have positive proof that Akin was factually wrong about the trauma of rape resulting in failure to implant and therefore failed pregnancies. At most, an argument could be made that the percentage of pregnancies from rape is less than from consensual sex, and I don't think even that can be backed up from current empirical medical evidence, though apparently Akin based his views on old medical opinions that were once held more commonly than they are today.
But the simple fact of the matter is that all this needed to come out in the primary, not a few weeks after the primary.
Why wasn't Akin grilled on his views about abortion? I don't know. But the result is that because neither of the two other serious Republicans running in the Missouri senatorial primary pushed the pro-life issue, perhaps because everybody knew Akin has solid pro-life credentials and has had them for decades, we ended up with a disaster.
The proper solution under these circumstances, once it became clear that Akin would not withdraw, was to back him or at least back off and not attack him, saying, “Missouri voters have made their decision; we totally disagree with his stupid statement but that's now between Akin and the voters.” (And let's not forget that Akin himself disagreed with his own statement once he realized it was based on grossly outdated decades old medical advice.)
What the Republican establishment did instead was to viciously attack Akin in the hope that more moderate Republicans wouldn't be destroyed by Akin’s stupid comment.
What happened? Akin lost, and most of the moderate Republicans lost, too.
So we got the worst of both worlds.
I understand why GOP-e types will attack Akin. That makes sense, and is quite consistent. But somebody needs to explain to me how attacking Akin in 2014 on Free Republic for a stupid statement in 2012 helps anyone except Democrats and GOP-e people.
I certainly would never accuse Freepers of being GOP-e supporters, but I do think some Freepers are repeating GOP-e talking points, quite possibly without even realizing they are doing so. The result is that they're unintentionally helping GOP-e people accomplish their agenda.
I'm one of the offenders you're addressing. Let me start with this: Were I a Missouri voter, I'd have cast my vote for Akin.
My objections to Akin had nothing to do with his evangelical identity and resultant pro-life policy. Only to the very shortcomings you mentioned -- he was unprepared to answer a question he knew would be coming and he stubbornly hung on after he had made himself electoral dogmeat.
As such, Akin single-handedly squandered a great opportunity. But the GOP-e was perfectly capable of the same -- as evidenced by their candidates in North Dakota, Montana, etc.
Thank you for your post. I was a supporter of Akin and I endorsed him in the primary. The attempts by some Tea Partiers to dismiss him as “not one of ours” or as some liberal plant the Dems and establishment wanted is disingenuous.
While McCaskill’s campaign did hedge their bets in having him as their opponent, it was a WILD stroke of luck that it worked in their favor for the general election. Their bet was PRIOR to the rape comments that his record would be “too Conservative” for Missouri. It wasn’t. He had a wide lead over McCaskill that would’ve carried to the general were it not for that “x” factor no one can take into consideration.
I personally thought he could ride out the comments, but that proved not to be the case. Given that he never recovered in the polls, he should’ve withdrawn, as any other Republican nominee would’ve defeated McCaskill. We do have to instill in our candidates that it’s not just about them. Akin should’ve taken the example of Clayton Williams in TX, and that is, aside from mentioning that they are pro-life, not to get dragged down into semantics or ill-advised or inappropriate comments and details that are out of their field of knowledge. This dragged down not just one Senate candidate, but two, the other being Mourdock in IN, who was all but assured of winning that seat.
If anything, we probably need a school for Tea Party candidates that instructs them on what to focus on and what to avoid while on the campaign trail. The newbie candidates could use the help, but in the case of Akin & Mourdock, even our more seasoned candidates need some help, too.
You both make excellent points that our candidates would be well-advised to heed. Being right on the issues must go hand-in-hand with being smart on the political campaign trail. Akin and Mourdock had excellent chances to win until they walked into the trap set by the liberal media and said utterly stupid things that were indefensible and, once spoken, unrecoverable. Our candidates have to know that they will always be walking through a minefield set by liberal journalists as well as ‘Rat candidates and plants. They have to be smart enough to anticipate this and have answers ready that can avoid those pitfalls. Those two Senate seats, plus the other one lost in Montana, loom large in view of Reid’s dirty dealing on the filibuster issue.
To avoid the same mistakes happening again. Conservatives need to stop nominating idiots who make idiotic campaign errors or we'll lose. His failure to withdraw and allow for the possibility of victory should continue to be excoriated for all time so the next idiot from whichever wing of the party that shoots his foot off and has a chance to withdraw so we can still win the race does indeed withdraw rather than obstinately putting his personal ambitions over the greater good. (there should probably be some commas in that sentence, but screw it)
His chances of winning after his blunder were zero, despite what some people choose to the believe, zilch. If other Republicans had "backed him" it would have done nothing but tarnish them by association. Demanding that he withdraw was the right play as was focusing resources on winnable races after the deadline passed.
I particularly like the suggestion that fieldmarshaldj made of campaign schools for potential “Tea Party” candidates. I understand the hatred many conservatives have for long-term incumbents, but Congress is not an entry-level job. This didn't apply to Akin — he had spent many years in politics after time in the military, then running a family business, then going to seminary, and then deciding to run for office rather than be ordained — but there are a lot of conservatives who simply don't have much “time in the chair” and therefore, as Chimera said, walk into traps set for them by the liberals.
I want to focus, however, on Impy’s comment that we need to remind ourselves of the Akin case “To avoid the same mistakes happening again. Conservatives need to stop nominating idiots who make idiotic campaign errors or we'll lose.”
Impy is right. We need to learn from our mistakes.
But I'm afraid some in the GOP-e are learning the wrong lessons — namely, stay away from “social issues.”
Well, there probably are some states where that is good advice. A Republican running in Massachusetts or suburban New York probably has to focus on the “small government, pro-business” part of the Republican agenda. That's okay. In districts and states like that, let's take the best person we can get elected rather than a liberal Democrat.
But there was no need for that kind of strategy in a state like Missouri, and even less so in deep-red states like Texas or elsewhere.
What I'm afraid will happen with Akin is something much like what happened with Bork, where the lesson learned was terrible. We now have a situation where a successful Supreme Court nominee, at least one nominated to replace a swing seat justice, needs to be as close to a blank slate as possible with few if any articles in legal journals whose views can be dissected and presented as “extreme.”
That, over the long term, has caused tremendous damage to the Supreme Court as an institution because top-level legal scholars know they have little or no hope of serving on the Supreme Court if they have a track record of publication.
If we end up with something similar in which Republican nominees need to be viewed as middle-of-the-road moderates to be backed by the Republican establishment, it will wreck the Republican Party.
Democrats know that. Groups like EMILY’s List use abortion as a litmus test. There is no good reason why conservative Republican activist groups shouldn't be using our own litmus tests to make sure our nominees are conservatives, just as the activist liberal groups want their party's nominees to be liberals.
Thanks ConservativeInPA.
I don’t know. We can’t even win a simple House seat in Virginia. We have been losing and losing for awhile now. I just don’t see the Republicans or even the Tea Party really into elections. We had a blizzard today and the conservatives did not show up….what does that tell you? This was for control of state politics. Completely crazy. I bet we will lose seats in 2014 unless we shape up as a party.
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