Posted on 09/14/2007 8:12:13 AM PDT by jdm
Who is Larry?
Your competence has to be questioned if you want to hold the Incumbent Speaker of the House accountantable for accuracy when he predicts with bombast and confidence, before an election, that his party gain seats.
No I am questioning Newts competence
Because after making a statement like that he set the stage for allowing the MSM to paint the 98 election as a massive defeat which it wasn’t
Sorry in your incompetence you don’t see that
Newt, as speaker, must always be confident of gaining seats BEFORE the election. No matter what he said the MSM would portray it however they wanted to portray it. Always. And 98 was a pretty historic defeat.
Armey and DeLay both have said about Newt that he is more interested in new ideas than of dealing with real situations. He couldn’t keep a stready course. That’s why they fired him.
A Republican may well win. We are still trusted more on terror (we want to fight them - they want to appease them - only one of the two works “and it ain’t appeasement”) and unliek in ‘92 when Bush Sr.’s appeal that he was the best equiped to handle a crisis was well received but caused no bounce, people now realize the importance of this issue.
Second - Most people are socially conservative. Democrats sometimes win by camoflaging their liberalism or when a conservative President is in power to counter them. People will see the Dem nominee for who they are. So in short, think 1988. The supposed underdog is the one in tune with voters’ values and issues and will end up winning.
Here is what I posted on this site after the 98 election .Learn something
“The GOP may not have covered the unrealistic point spread, but this is certainly not a win in the democrat’s column.
After that huge shift in 94 there wasn’t really much more anti-Clinton sentiment to exploit. Clinton had already demonstrated his real self to anybody who could think straight in his first two years in office with, Gays In The Military, Assault Weapon Bans, Travelgate, Troopergate, Abortion, Jonesgate, Tax-increase-gate, Invasion of Haitigate, ETC, ETC. After 94 only hard core believers remained democrat and getting them to change is almost impossible.
The only negative aspect is that the GOP lost some of the 94 gains in the house and this was due to failure of the some of the conservative element that was disgusted with the GOP caving in to Clinton on key issues to turn out ( The GOP is lucky that Clinton is so loathed, otherwise more of these voters would have stayed home ) and because of the large turnout of black voters for the democrats. I don’t know where the GOP thought those large gains were going to come from. Certainly not the 60 or more percent that don’t vote in off year elections. The polls showed they could care less about scandals. By predicting these gains all the GOP did was set itself up for a media spin that they really lost big time. That is the real story.
Buying this democrat spin about a great democrat victory can only be a result of believing the liberal media anchors without any serious reflection on the real situation. The senate is still solidly GOP and the house though the numbers are close is still GOP. The GOP now has control of both houses for 6 years running. I bet the democrats would gladly change numbers.This is the first time this has occurred since before the Great Depression. Much has been made of the fact that this is the first time since President Monroe that the party not holding the White House has failed to gain seats in the sixth year of an opposition president’s second term. But that is the result of huge gains with the concurrent shift of control in Clinton’s second year. As stated above Clinton’s action caused this result to occur four years early.
94-96-98 showed the GOP can get and keep control of congress but they better keep their base shored up. ( The democrats realize how important a base is and made sure their black base stayed loyal and turned out to vote.) As it is the media and democrats are trying and with some success to convince the GOP to abandon the two groups that gave them the huge gains in 94, The Cultural Conservatives and the Gun Owners. (Clinton and democrat representatives publically admitted the Gun Control Bills cost them the house.) Newt would like to think it was the Contract with America that enginered the 94 revolution, however exit polls showed the vast majority of voters didn’t even know what it was. In addition those that did were probably already in the GOP camp. Newt ( being an egotist like most politicians) wrongly believed he was responsible for 94, he predicted more BIG gains for 98, thus enabling the democrats to proclaim a victory when they didn’t occur
The GOP had better not buy this media induced mantra about moderating its postions. You ain’t gonna out-liberal a liberal and all they can do is further alienate the groups that got them there to begin with.
The REAL PROBLEM is not the Cultural Conservatives but the general American public that doesn’t care about having a perjurer and pervert as president and DOESN’T EVEN BOTHER TO VOTE. What it will take to get them to wake up is a mystery.
The hard core democrat base will never change. Jimmy Carter with double digit inflation and interest rates , an ongoing recession , a demoralized and weakened military, and a hostage situation in Iran still got 43% of the vote in his landslide defeat to Reagan. These voters are democrat till the Second Coming occurs .”
FYI, the surge was in fact a neocon idea. See Frederick Kagan.
Telly you what. When you get elected Speaker of the House, go into an election talking about how many seats you are going to loose and see what happens.
Cheers.
Well maybe if he did that he would have to resign
Oh wait he did resign
Unoriginal?
Oh you saw that same analyis someplace else
BTW I notice you didn’t DISAGREE with any of the points in it
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