Posted on 04/25/2012 10:36:30 PM PDT by neverdem
Link to an oversize Senatorial map in a new window
Less than 200 days before the November elections, Republicans are brimming with confidence about gaining at least the four seats they need to put the U.S. Senate in their column.
With 47 Republican senators and 53 Democrats, the number of seats up for election clearly point to the much-desired GOP net gain of four and then some. There are 35 Senate seats are up for grabs this fall, with 10 held by Republicans and 25 by the Democrats.
Of that 25, six Democratic senators are retiring: Akaka (Hawaii), Nelson (Neb.), Bingman (NM), Conrad (N.D.), Webb (Va.), Kohl (Wisc.). In addition, one independent who votes with the Democrats for Senate control, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, is also calling it quits. In all seven situations, Republicans range from being slam-dunk favorites to pick up seats (Nebraska and North Dakota) to at least even money of winning (New Mexico, Virginia, and Wisconsin) to fighting chances in states once considered lost causes. In Hawaii, which last elected a Republican senator in 1970, popular two-term Gov. and moderate GOPer Linda Lingle is thought to be a formidable candidate against whoever wins the hotly contested Democratic primary. In Connecticut, where Rep. Chris Murphy and Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz are duking it out for the Democratic nomination, Republicans feel they can pick up the pieces and win their first Senate race since 1982.
“I’m an honest broker,” Connecticut GOP Chairman Jerry Labriola told Human Events during a recent interview, underscoring his neutrality, “but if Chris Murphy [who is 38] wins, he could be there for the rest of my life. So we have to have a candidate we can rally behind to stop that from happening.” The two Republican hopefuls are 2010 nominee and former World Wresting Entertainment executive Linda McMahon, a center-right GOPer, and former Rep. (1987-2006) Chris Shays, a liberal Republican.
In contrast, three of the seven Republican incumbents facing the voters are considered certain winners: Wicker (Miss.), Corker (Tenn.) and Barrasso (Wyo.). In Indiana and Utah, the two most senior Republican senators respectively—Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch, both of whom won their first terms in 1976—faced spirited renomination challenges. But so weak are the Democratic contenders in either state that even if the insurgents were to depose the senators, they would be the betting favorites to keep the Senate seats in the two states.
Only two Republican senators are in danger of possible defeat: Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who won the nationally watched special election for the seat of the late Edward Kennedy in January 2010, and Dean Heller of Nevada, appointed to replace fellow Republican John Ensign when he resigned over a sex scandal last year. Brown faces former Obama administration official Elizabeth Warren, while Heller is locked in a tight contest with Democrat and Las Vegas-area Rep. Shelley Berkley.
Danger in Maine
Of the three Republican Senate seats in which incumbents are retiring, only one is in danger of falling into Democratic hands: Maine, where former two-term Gov. and independent Angus King is the favorite to defeat both major party candidates and succeed retiring Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe. King insists he won’t say which party he will side with for Senate control, but it is widely expected that the former governor would go with the Democrats. In contrast, retiring GOP Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas are sure to be succeeded by fellow Republicans.
In the 15 states where Democratic senators are running again, at least half are sites for highly competitive contests: Florida, where Sen. Bill Nelson should face a strong challenge from Rep. Connie Mack; Michigan, where either former Rep. Pete Hoekstra or former Legal Services chief Clark Durant could upset Sen. Debbie Stabenow; Missouri, where three strong GOPers are vying to challenge Sen. and narrow ’06 winner Claire McCaskill; Montana, where Rep. Denny Rehberg is in a nasty bout with Sen. Jon Tester; Ohio, where State Treasurer Josh Mandel is locked in a tight battle with far-left Sen. Sherrod Brown, and West Virginia, where the administration’s “war on coal” could sweep out Sen. Joe Manchin in favor of John Raese, who narrowly lost to Manchin in the 2010 special election.
That leaves Vermont, where Bernie Sanders, an independent with Democratic backing, is favored to win again.
So you don’t think Republicans can win the Senate this fall, huh? Just do the math.
Senate 2012 map courtesy of the National Republican Senatorial Committee
If Willard is the nominee it is even more imperative to displace Harry Reed.
F U...from a 75 year old women..jack ass
Any veep stupid enough to be on romney ticket is as bad as romney who is equally bad as obama so therefore by the transitive power of pretentiousness you are requesting that obama cast the deciding vote on senate ties. You’re not as conservative as me and the rest of the FR-e, blahblahblah.....
BTW, not a chance on taking you up on your offer.
Best bet for Romney is to step down now.
Unless they do something really stupid {which they are very capable of doing} the pubbies are a solid lock to win the senate, keep the house and beat the hell out of obama.
Remember that stupid is the real name of the pubbie party for a reason, and you can't put anything past them, but as it is shaping up right now, it should be a tsunami, with debbie schultz killing herself on national TV.
Oh Lord, please make it happen!
Remember that stupid is the real name of the pubbie party for a reason, and you can't put anything past them, but as it is shaping up right now, it should be a tsunami, with debbie schultz killing herself on national TV.
I'm inclined to agree with you, USS Alaska and Lazlo in PA. Willard doesn't inspire the conservative base, but it will be the ABO vote from independents that carries the day, IMHO.
I'm not sure what Willard's political convictions are, or if he has any. If he has none, whatever he did in MA may mean mothing because MA was so far left, e.g. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
When Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's seat, independent registration was just over 50 percent of MA's voters. (In January 2010 they were called non-affiliated or unaffiliated voters in MA. Rats were just over 38 percent. The GOP were a little over 11 percent.) In a NPR story from September 23, 2010, "Pew surveyed 2,800 registered voters, 37 percent of whom were independents." "Only 34 percent were independent in 2008."
Independent voters can be a huge demographic depending on the state. Now I know that likely voters and swing states are more important in presidential elections, but it was moderate and independent voters that left the GOP in 2006 & 2008, but they came back in 2010. I posted the exit polls for those years. Look under the keyword 20XXexitpoll. Substitute 06, 08 and 10 for XX in 20XXexitpoll.
Hold you're nose again in 2012. I know it hurts, but ABO!
If we're still here in 2016, that's a different story.
Perhaps you have it backwards. People voting to kick out Dem incumbents in the House and Senate could create coattails to help Romney.
Perhaps you have it backwards. People voting to kick out Dem incumbents in the House and Senate could create coattails to help Romney.
Since absolutely everyone in this country is part of a class, employment category, or social group that in some way is primarily affiliated with one or the other of the two very large coalitions (which we call Republicans and Democrats) there are NO INDEPENDENTS.
LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush all won one or more elections by respecting the bi-modal saddle structure and picking off a coalition partner from the other side.
It is first necessary for the candidate to preserve his BASE, and if he doesn't he can't possibly win. Here we have a situation where Romney has actually alienated his base, as has Obama.
There is no race to the top here ~ it's all downhill ~ the only question is how many millions ~ on both sides ~ will refuse to vote for the top dog.
doubt it. Mitt is a enthusiasm killer.
Unless they do something really stupid
You mean like nominating a socialist to the top of the ticket?
Are you saying that the story that the Emanuel-Pelosi "demoralization" campaign emphasizing GOP officeholders' scandals and criminality, and the side effort by gays to out Mark Foley, did not depress conservative turnout in 2006?
That the turnout dynamic of 2004, with conservatives being brought to the polls in droves by Karl Rove's down-ballot DOMA referenda, was not inverted by the 'Rats in 2006 through the emphasis on GOP disgustingness? That's what I've been reading heretofore. Was it all wrong?
You do realize that this "it's all about the independents" is a RNC/RiNO/Willard Romney meme. One that the neocons have been pushing ever since they were horrified by the Southern conservatives (social conservatives) who carried the Congress in 1994, and immediately started a culture-war campaign against them within the GOP halls of power, arguing for the exclusion and quarantining of Southerners as leprosy-ridden moral outcasts who would soil, taint, and defeat the GOP if embraced.
That theme was meat and drink at The Weekly Standard for something like eight or ten years after 1994. One of their leading lights, Christopher Caldwell, was pushing it wherever he could, after writing a cover story in The Atlantic Monthly in 1996.
I have no idea what you said.
That’s cause a person forfeits the need to make sense when mindlessly and constantly equating obama and romney
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