Free Republic

There are going to be surprises Election Day.... How tall will the Republican wave be tomorrow? Two leading political analysts for Gallup have gone through the House races and drawn up what they call the most pessimistic scenario for the GOP. Even so, Republicans end up taking 38 net House seats from Democrats, putting them one seat short of control. Their most optimistic scenario for Republicans is a GOP gain of 90 seats. Impossible? Seasoned Washingtonians don't think so. For 60 years, Gallup has released an amazingly accurate final pre-election poll showing which party is favored by "likely voters." It...

Roosevelt: 'Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst without flinching and losing heart.'Obama: We don't 'always think clearly when we're scared.'. Whatever the outcome of today's election, this much is clear: It will be a long time before Americans ever again decide that the leadership of the nation should go to a legislator of negligible experience—with a voting record, as state and U.S. senator, consisting largely of "present," and an election platform based on glowing promises of transcendence. A platform vowing, unforgettably, to restore us—a country lost to arrogance and crimes against humanity—to a place...

Republicans are positioned for large gains Tuesday, likely retaking the House and picking up seats in the Senate, amid strong voter frustration with President Barack Obama and the Democratic-run Congress, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. In the new survey, Republicans held a six-point edge, 49% to 43%, when likely voters were asked which party they hoped would be in charge. Nearly half of voters who favored GOP control of Congress said their feelings reflected a vote of protest against the Democrats—an unusually high proportion that pollsters said reflected deep frustration among many voters. "The Democrats are...

Voters don't want to be governed from the left, right or center. They want Washington to recognize that Americans want to govern themselves. In the first week of January 2010, Rasmussen Reports showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. Scott Brown delivered a stunning upset in the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election a couple of weeks later. In the last week of October 2010, Rasmussen Reports again showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic ballot. And tomorrow Republicans will send more Republicans to Congress than at any time in the past 80 years. This...

CLEVELAND—President Barack Obama closed out his 2010 campaign season here with a mocking rebuke of Republicans, in stark contrast to the lofty, hopeful rhetoric that marked his 2008 campaign. With Democrats facing potentially big losses on Election Day Tuesday, Mr. Obama has projected a rougher tone than he did two years ago. The bad economy? Blame Republicans, he said. Bipartisanship to solve problems? No, the president said, the GOP has no interest. Bits of the 2008 spirit were still in evidence in a weekend of campaigning, but Mr. Obama's calls for change now came with caveats. He still exhorted, "yes...

The Democrats' final push to woo undecided voters appears to have fizzled, potentially putting dozens of competitive House races beyond reach and undermining the party's chances in at least four toss-up Senate seats, according to party strategists and officials. Independents, a crucial swing bloc, seem to be breaking sharply for Republicans in the final days of the campaign. One nonpartisan prognosticator, Stuart Rothenberg, said Friday he thought the Republicans could pick up as many as 70 House seats—something no party has achieved since 1948. The Republicans need 39 seats to take the majority. Fading Democratic support among independents is also...

WASHINGTON—Authorities intercepted two U.S.-bound suspicious packages in cargo shipments from Yemen, raising alarm in the U.S. and Europe at a time when counterterrorism officials say they are closely tracking multiple suspected terror plots by al Qaeda and its affiliates. The discovery of the packages on UPS and FedEx cargo planes in the U.K. and Dubai prompted U.S. officials to conduct wider screening for potential bombs in airports in Newark and Philadelphia and in a delivery truck in New York City. No explosives were found. The White House characterized the incident as a potential terrorist threat, and officials said they believed...

It's a male politician's nightmare. You're facing a female challenger. You're lagging in the polls, but a great debate performance could redeem you. Then, just when you think victory is within reach, your opponent hits you where it hurts. "Man up," she taunts. How do you recover from that? It's a tough one, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can attest. It took the Nevada Democrat a week to come up with a retort after GOP challenger Sharron Angle zinged him with a "man up" during a televised debate this month. (Ultimately he settled on, "From the street to the...

The latest absentee ballot statistics released this afternoon by the state of Pennsylvania show a strong Republican tilt in the Keystone State, a bad sign for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. According to the secretary of state’s office, 53,226 absentee ballots have been returned by registered Republicans in Pennsylvania compared with 37,631 by registered Democrats.

With the election five days away, politicians and their backers aren’t holding back. Kentucky Democrats will begin airing an ad over the weekend that features a supporter of Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul stepping on the head of a woman from MoveOn.org. The ad comes on the heels of another commercial aired by Democrat Jack Conway’s campaign that questioned Mr. Paul’s faith.

GOP's California Gubernatorial Candidate Plays Catch-Up With Sophisticated Voter-Turnout Effort in Campaign's Final Days. OAKLAND, Calif.—Volunteers for Republican Meg Whitman's campaign for California governor are calling voters in Farsi, Korean and two Chinese dialects. They are canvassing Latino voters in East Los Angeles. Ms. Whitman, trailing in every poll, has rolled out a big get-out-the-vote operation, funded with part of the $162 million she has spent on the race so far. The effort is a particularly sophisticated version of voter-mobilization pushes candidates and parties are ratcheting up with less than a week before Election Day. Many candidates believe get-out-the-vote drives...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio Democratic Governor Ted Strickland is trying to mount a furious comeback campaign against challenger John Kasich, the former Republican congressman. The latest polls suggest Mr. Strickland has narrowed what had been a comfortable lead for Mr. Kasich in recent months. A new Quinnipiac Poll has Mr. Kasich ahead 49% to 43%. That six-point margin is down from ten points a week ago. "Gov. Ted Strickland has momentum and . . . has made the race for governor competitive," Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, was quoted as saying in the Columbus...

In the first of what could be a nationwide spate of austerity-prompted spending cuts, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday canceled an over-budget $9-billion-plus commuter train tunnel between his state and Manhattan - shrugging off the Obama administration's efforts to save it. Mr. Christie said his state "simply no longer can afford" ballooning costs for the Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel, and the Republican governor said canceling the project is the type of decision he promised voters he would make when he was elected a year ago. The move ends the nation's largest public works project, and adds fuel to the...

Why Barack Obama gave the Supreme Court a public tongue-lashing. Taking office in January 2009 as president, Barack Obama's achievement was everywhere called historic. He was at the pinnacle of American life. Two years later, he may be on the cliff's edge of another historic achievement—the electoral wipeout of his party with some of the Democrats' longest-serving and revered members of Congress disappearing in the avalanche. Presidencies and parties decline for lots of reasons, but looking back, one of the pivotal events in writing the history of the first Obama term is likely to be the tongue-lashing he gave several...

Midterms are tough for presidents, but party leaders aren't usually in trouble. Next Tuesday Democrats will receive a crushing rebuke. More to the point, voters will be delivering a verdict on the first two years of the Obama administration. Midterm elections are almost always unpleasant experiences for the White House, especially when the economy is weak. But key races that should have been safe for the party in power demonstrate the extent to which President Obama and his policies have nationalized the election. In Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a huge war chest in a state Mr. Obama...

WASHINGTON—More than half the members of the Blue Dog Coalition—the organization of moderate to conservative Democrats in the House—are in peril in next week's election, a stark indicator of how the balloting could produce a Congress even more polarized than the current one. The Blue Dogs are often seen as a kind of human bridge, connecting left and right in the House. But that bridge is imperiled by the coming Republican wave in midterm elections, the most stark example of how the midterms are likely to weaken Capitol Hill's political center. Of 54 Blue Dogs in the House, six already...

Black-on-black crime remains at epidemic levels and black children continue to suffer in bad schools. Doesn't the organization have better things to worry about? The gulf between the priorities of civil rights leaders and the actual needs of the people they claim to represent has been growing for decades. And the trend continues with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's release of "Tea Party Nationalism." The NAACP passed a resolution in July condemning "racist elements and activities" in the tea party. Now it has issued a report that accuses the movement of giving a "platform to anti-Semites,...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who orchestrated the overturn of term limits in 2008 as he successfully pursued a third term for himself, declared Monday he will support a ballot measure to restore the law banning elected officials serving more than two consecutive four-year terms. “I’m voting to restore,” Bloomberg said when asked by The Wall Street Journal what his position is on the Nov. 2 ballot question on term limits. The mayor defended the controversial decision to overturn the term-limits law two years ago, saying it “was changed legally.” He said he considers next week’s referendum to be a fulfillment of...

The tea-party phenomenon is forcing possible Republican presidential candidates in 2012 to make early and potentially high-risk strategic gambles over how to harness the movement. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is traveling the country to build alliances with local tea-party activists in key presidential primary and caucus states. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is solidifying ties with traditional party leaders and organizations by helping them with fund raising and candidate endorsements. The two potential rivals are acting on opposing assumptions about the newly energized but volatile tea party-infused Republican base. The results of their decisions will show the impact that...

Could the Ohio governor’s race really be a toss up?A new poll found John Kasich, a former congressman, leads Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland by just two percentage points, 49% to 47%, among likely voters — a statistical dead heat.“There’s certainly an uptick in excitement on the Democratic side, which has allowed the race to become more competitive,” said Eric Rademacher, co-director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati, which conducted the poll for a group of eight Ohio newspapers. “It could break either way,” he said. The poll has a 3.3 percentage point margin of error.The...