Free Republic

Late last week, a state judge on Long Island in New York certified that Mineola mayor Jack Martins, a Republican, had won the race for state Senate District 7 by a mere 451 votes out of the more than 85,000 cast. With that win, the GOP took control of the New York Senate by a 32-30 majority making it the last state legislative domino to fall in the 2010 election cycle. The New York state Senate was the 20th legislative chamber picked up by Republicans in the 2010 elections. In addition to gaining new majorities in 20 chambers, Republicans won...

In the days after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, Kevin Hollinshead hoped the president would become a leader reminiscent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- capable of steering the country out of a massive economic crisis while taking on his sharpest critics. But Hollinshead, a senior at Colorado State University, now feels that the president has ceded too much to his Republican opposition and failed to live up to the ideals of his campaign. "They've decided that he's public enemy No. 1, and they'll do whatever it takes to ruin him," Hollinshead said of Republicans in Congress. "And rather than...

Will the real Rick Santorum please stand up? BEFORE the November 2, election, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell in her US Senate race in Delaware (though trying to have it both ways to some extent). Now, AFTER the election, Rick Santroum is now trying to jump on the bandwagon and attack the GOP’s losing candidates. Goal: NOT win elections, NOT learn how to win elections, but simply for personal aggrandizement by Rick Santorum. ________________________________________________ On September 21, 2010, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell as a candidate on Greta Van Sustren’s “On the Record” Rick Santorum Santorum — famous for dumping...

Three years after he led the charge to require consumers to ditch their comfortable old incandescent lights in favor of those twisty CFL bulbs, Rep. Fred Upton now wants to be the man to help undo that law as the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That about-face is not unique among lawmakers looking to atone for stances they've taken over the past decade as they seek to gain top posts in a decidedly more conservative Republican Congress, but his reversal underscores how intent the GOP is on proving it has broken with past practices. "We have...

Democratic Attacks Fell on Deaf Ears This Fall NATHAN L. GONZALES DECEMBER 1, 2010 · 6:30 PM EDT For most of the election cycle, Democratic strategists were optimistic they could hold the House because of their arsenal of opposition research. But Democratic attacks failed to bring down enough Republican challengers to keep the majority. Democrats thought GOP challengers were simply too flawed to be acceptable alternatives to voters who wanted change. But as Republicans learned in 2006 and 2008, the messenger and the audience matter just as much, if not more, than the message when it comes to political attacks....

Results from November's midterm elections have exposed a deepening political divide between cities on the coasts and the less-dense areas in the middle of the country. The Republican Party's big gains in the House came largely from districts that were older, less diverse and less educated than the nation as a whole. Democrats kept their big majorities in the cities. That's a contrast to the last GOP wave in 1994, when Republicans' share of the vote was consistent inside and outside metropolitan areas, according to a Washington Post analysis. That year, Republicans captured seats in a broader array of places....

  Votes without voters - the notion seems like something from "The Twilight Zone." Yet this outcome, the result of a mysterious computer glitch, may have helped re-elect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over his Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, last week by a 50.2%-44.6% margin. Actually, the "mystery" is very likely the doing of a local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which nationwide provides votes, money and muscle for the Democratic Party. Critics are charging that voting machines throughout Clark County (Las Vegas), where about three-fourths of the state's population resides, were rigged to place check marks next...

Back to Article Democratic Losses Hit State Farm Teams Hard By Steve Peoples Roll Call Staff Nov. 9, 2010, 11:30 p.m. While the GOP celebrates historic gains in the House, Republicans in state capitals across the country are cheering massive pickups that wiped out key Democratic bench players — a shift that they say may shape elections for years to come. From Minnesota to Montana, Democrats lost state Speakers, Senate Majority Leaders, lieutenant governors and other up-and-comers whose political futures are now uncertain at best. Nowhere is the shift more apparent than in New Hampshire, where the GOP won all...

One of the most striking aspects of the 2010 election is how uneven the wave was. Rather than striking down Democrats across the land, it spared most Democrats on the coasts and in cities. In New England, Republicans will pick up only two congressional districts, no Senate seats, and will actually lose ground in governorships. On the West Coast, the GOP finds itself picking up one or two congressional districts, and will be shut out of governorships and Senate seats. And while the GOP performed well in congressional races nationally, and very well in state legislative races, the Democrats clearly...

The election post-mortems keep rolling in. Politico's Byron Tau's report on the remarkable shift in voting patterns among America's oldest voters goes a long way to explain why last week's contest became such a rout for Republicans. Voters over 65, he writes, favored Republicans by a 21-point margin after breaking narrowly for Democrats in 2006, and in some key races the margin was even more lopsided: In New Hampshire, for instance, seniors backed GOP Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte over her Democratic challenger by 33 points. In the narrow Illinois Senate contest, Republican Mark Kirk won older voters by 22 points....

A majority of American voters have just rejected a decades-long progressive agenda in favor of a shift back toward center-right. Republicans took control of the House for the first time since 2006, capturing 64 additional seats, the largest shift in 78 years, when Democrats gained 97 seats in the Franklin D. Roosevelt-led landslide of 1932. Democrats now have fewer House members than any time since World War II. Republicans gained seven seats in the Senate, even though only 17 Democratic seats were in play. Twenty-three Democratic senators will run in 2012. Republican governors replaced Democrats in 10 states. North Carolina...

\ Each of the 435 congressional districts is rescaled to have the same area. The white districts are too close to call (4 Nov 2010) or do not send voting delegates to the House (Washington DC). A comparison with the 2008 cartogram reveals not only that the Republicans made gains, but also where these occured. The next cartogram shows those districts that have changed parties.

The Republican victories in Tuesday’s midterm election removed 10 Democrats from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). Texas Democrat Rep. Solomon Ortiz, current HASC readiness panel chairman most likely will be the eleventh. The most noticeable Democrat departures are current HASC chairman Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO.), (after 33 years in office) and Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.), also lost his seat after 28 years. The leading candidate for HASC chairmanship, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA.) announced his priorities for the 112th Congress as: “…support [for] military personnel and their families; and investing in the necessary capabilities and force structure, “while mandating...

This is the full 8-minute video of "Happy Days Are Here Again" from the Glenn Beck radio show on November 3rd, the day after the election. It is so funny that I'm still watching it!

Congratulations to the GOP, which just trounced both Democrats and liberal journalists alike.There’s only one hitch: Somebody hit the reset button and everything started over again like the movie “Groundhog Day.” The campaign for 2012 has already begun with a vengeance.And vengeance is exactly what the losing side wants. They are angry – from journalists to pundits to the Twitterati. They want revenge, and they want it in its most base forms. The Internet is a great leveler and allows everyone to express an opinion. Unfortunately, the level we’ve all settled at is somewhere deep into the gutter where bloggers...

Two men and a woman who identified themselves as members of the Democratic National Committee were asked to leave an election poll in the City of Hazleton on Tuesday. Eileen Whitaker, the election judge in Ward 8, which has its polling place in Hazleton City Hall, said the men, one of whom identified himself as Edmund F. Brown, were escorted out when they told poll workers they didn't reside or vote in Hazleton. Whitaker said Brown appeared at the poll as it opened at 7 a.m., but became a nuisance. "He was obnoxious, but a nice obnoxious," Whitaker said. "He...

If national elections were held exclusively on college campuses, America truly would become a one-party state. “While conservatives have always had to go up against a much smaller number of liberals, it is the influence of the progressives and their strategic location—in such power centers as the media and academia—that gives them the strategic advantage,” Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid writes. “Now, with their power in the Democratic Party more concentrated than ever, they are relishing a fight they think they can win.” In fact, “A new Young America’s Foundation [YAF] study reveals that the nation’s top ten colleges...

Ok, oil is hovering at $85/barrel, which means like $3.00/gallon where I live. That is unacceptable with ANWR and our shallow and deep waters off our coasts just sitting there. Gas affects everyone, even the folks who take the bus as their fares will rise (or they'll pass the redistribution to us). It's time to start yelling at the White House and Senate from our newly elected Reps. Not later, now...pressure now and don't let them start on their wave of lame duck legislation.

Syracuse, NY -- Republican Ann Marie Buerkle surged ahead of U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei by 659 votes this afternoon in the 25th Congressional District race after Wayne County reported its unofficial results. Buerkle sealed her victory in the western part of the district with a convincing win in Wayne County, trouncing Maffei 15,429 (63 percent) to 9,191 (37 percent), according to returns Wayne County released at about 5:30 p.m. Before Wayne County reported its results -- more than 20 hours after polls closed -- Maffei held on to a slim lead of about 5,600 votes from the other three counties...

If you believe that the cable news landscape is symptomatic of our two-party political system, then you also probably, and predictably, saw a different tone in last nights election results. Fox News presented its coverage with a patina of celebration, while MSNBC’s took a more gloom and doom approach. But there was one important distinction between the two outlets: Fox News offered a far more balanced set of analysts for the election coverage than did MSNBC. Almost all of the results from yesterday’s midterm elections are in, and there is little question that the GOP has good reason to celebrate...