Free Republic

Having emerged from an Election Day that many Republicans only dreamed of, the Senate Republicans’ campaign chairman was already looking forward to a Senate starting to function again. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told a home state radio station that frustration with the lack of legislative activity contributed to his seeking the campaign job in the first place. “This place has been run, for the four years I’ve been in the United States Senate, with the goal of doing nothing,” the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said on KNSS. “Boy, this place better change. It’s why I was willing...

Obama is relegated to a reactive presidency, except to the extent that he can go around Congress and use unconstitutional executive orders in lieu of passing legislation The American public realized not long after the 2012 election that they had blown it. Given the opportunity to fire Barack Obama and turn the federal government back in a wise direction, they should have seized the moment and done just that. Instead, they got caught up nonsense like Big Bird and “binders full of women”, and in not liking rich, CEO-ish Republicans, and as a result they dropped the ball and stuck...

Democrats on Wednesday morning began sorting through the wreckage of disastrous midterm elections in which losses eclipsed even their worst fears. The scale of the defeats, taken together, was breathtaking: a Senate majority lost, over a dozen House seats swept away, and Democrats ousted from governors’ mansions across the country. The drubbing is sure to spark a round of soul-searching as Democrats ponder whether President Obama is to blame — or whether something deeper has gone wrong in the party that could threaten its chances of retaining the White House in 2016. “This is where the administration has to take...

Despite signs pointing to Republican gains in Tuesday’s midterm elections, White House aides said President Obama won’t change his leadership style because the contests in red states don’t represent a “true national election.” With the GOP in striking distance of regaining control of the Senate, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that “the vast majority of [Senate races] are actually taking place in states that the president did not win in the last presidential election.” And he said the Republican-friendly nature of this year’s electoral map would be a reason for the White House to limit any lessons...

So, if you were a fruit, what kind of fruit would you be? Barry thought he was a grape:Unfortunately, with his root stock, Barry’s more of a blackberry: small, prickly, seedy and filled with pith.Butt shiny!And while you can make wine from blackberries, it doesn’t age well. I’ll let Michael Goodwin at the NYPost explain:  The presidency is sinking, but we are expected to believe that only the president is blameless.We are witnessing the total collapse of a bad idea. Obamaism, a quasi-socialist commitment to a more powerful government at home and an abdication of American leadership around the world,...

Democrats may be making their last stand in Arkansas. At the beginning of the cycle, Democrats touted a dream ticket that could help rally the party back to relevance after a series of stinging losses in the state. They cheered Sen. Mark Pryor’s (D) centrist profile and strong family name. In the governor’s race, they hoped former Rep. Mike Ross’s long string of successes in conservative southwest Arkansas would boost him. But months later, Pryor has trailed freshman Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for much of the summer in the Razorback State and former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) has had a...

President Barack Obama had an approval rating of just 38 percent as of late September and he is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. This week, the man who once filled arenas like a rock star suffered the indignity of Wisconsin Democrats walking out on him as he stumped for another struggling Democrat, Mary Burke. Obama’s visit to Wisconsin coincided with the disappearance of Burke’s modest lead in statewide polls....... ......The atmosphere has got to be pretty glum in the White House and in various leftist hothouses. The Daily Caller wants to help. Here, then, is a...

No kidding? We had all year to plan for Halloween and this is the best we could do? It looks more like a display at your local Dollar Store than the People’s House (no disrespect to the Dollar Store intended).Well, you can sort of understand how this happened; Lady M has been so busy campaigning for people she barely knows An exhausted Lady M, campaigning for what’s-his-name in Connecticutand Big Guy has been so busy not campaigning for people who barely know him.Meanwhile, lest there still be any doubt in your mind, the Fourth Estate officially sold out yesterday in...

Democrats have lost their grip on Hispanic voters heading into Election Day—and in turn could lose the Senate because of them. Even though Latinos split heavily for their party in 2012, mounting evidence suggests Hispanics could sit the midterms out after immigration reform has fallen from the White House agenda. "There's no question it's going to affect Democrats in this midterm. There's no one to blame but Democrats themselves," said Arturo Carmona, executive director of Hispanic engagement group Presente Action. A Pew poll out Wednesday revealed Democrats suffered an eight-point drop in support from Hispanic voters nationwide since 2010, down...

Harry Reid’s caucus is running from him on the campaign trail, but that doesn’t mean a revolt is in the works — yet. The majority leader has twisted the Senate into a pretzel all year to protect his vulnerable members, but the Nevada Democrat is now facing skepticism on the campaign trail from some of those same Democrats, as well as from some would-be newcomers. And there’s at least one scenario that could force his hand. Still, there’s that old saying: You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and so far, none of the senators who might have the chops to...

Republicans are bullish that they will win control of the Senate, make small gains in the House and retain many governor’s offices this year. But just over two weeks from Election Day, fears about Ebola and Islamic State militants, along with sudden, surprising scrambles in key states, have added new volatility to the 2014 campaign. The political climate clearly favors Republicans, buoyed by President Obama’s record-low popularity and a voter-enthusiasm advantage. However, the kind of wave that lifted Republicans in 1994 and 2010 has eluded them, in part because the GOP brand also is damaged. Voters are restive and dissatisfied...

President Obama is taking time out from his much-trumpeted "year of action" to observe a period more important to his Democratic allies in Congress: the season of campaigning.. One by one, the Obama administration is setting aside key priorities, in the hope that voters won't do the same to his fellow Democrats. Immigration reform, once deemed a pressing back-to-school item, will wait at least until the winter holidays. Enrollment in Obamacare will start six weeks later than last year. The climate will warm at the same rate, with new regulations pending. The latest addition to the not-to-do list came this...

"But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them."Can we suck these eggs any harder?Today is your 4 week warning, people: the midterms are on November 4th. In order to assist you with your decisions I was going to recap all of Big Guy’s achievements during his first 3 historic quarters of play.Butt I see that Don Surber has already done that for us: nearly a trillion dollar stimulus that didn’t stimulate, a Cash for Clunkers program that was a clunker, Solyndra Solar which sunset shortly after the loan was gone, Obamacare – need...

One of the biggest surprises on the midterm campaign trail is hearing President Obama echo President Reagan’s famous question by asking voters whether “you are better off than you were four years ago.” The question is the hammer in Obama’s toolbox for nailing down his Democratic majority in the Senate in this year’s midterm election. “By almost every economic measure, we are better off today than we were when I took office,” the president said in a Sept. 19 speech to the Women’s Leadership Forum, sponsored by the Democratic National Committee. Speaking to a Labor Day rally of union workers...

Republicans may be poised for strong midterm gains, according to a new poll conducted for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. Republicans hold a two-point lead nationwide on which party registered voters want to see in control of Congress, and that lead expands to 10 points in the Senate battleground states at 50 percent to 40 percent in the poll, conducted by Democratic polling firm Hart Research and Republican pollster Public Opinion Strategies. "With 56 days until Election Day, our poll provides greater insight into what is likely to happen, and the news is not good for the Democrats,"...

So where’s the wave? This is President Obama’s sixth-year-itch election. The map of states with contested Senate seats could hardly be better from the Republicans’ vantage point. And the breaks this year—strong candidates, avoidance of damaging gaffes, issues such as Obamacare and immigration that stir the party base—have mainly gone the GOP’s way, very unlike 2012

Public opinion polls, as they say, are a snapshot in time. And a glance at the polls today suggests that the 2014 midterm elections are shaping up to be good for Republicans, but a landslide does not appear to be in the offing. As of this writing, Real Clear Politics puts nine of this yearÂ’s 19 even competitive Senate races in the tossup column. Many of those races poll so tightly that it's impossible to make an accurate prediction about how they will shape up but, as RCP notes, the GOP is set today to pick up six net...

With the midterm elections six months away, Democrats are burdened by an uneven economic recovery and a stubbornly unpopular health care law. Perhaps equally important, Barack Obama’s political standing is in some respects weaker than it was at a comparable point in the 2010 campaign, which ended with the Republicans gaining a majority in the House. A national survey by the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY, conducted April 23-27 among 1,501 adults (including 1,162 registered voters), finds that 47% of registered voters support the Republican candidate in their district or lean Republican, while 43% favor the Democratic candidate or...

So says Chuck Morse, the author of Was Hitler a Leftist?. Morse predicts things will get uglier and crazier as the mid-term election approaches. Obama’s coalition of public employees, welfare recipients, old leftists and crony capitalists will fear a major setback as Republicans will be poised to take the Senate majority and increase their margin in the House. They have gone to the well too many times with the nasty and utterly bogus charges against their opponents of war on women racism and homophobia asserts Morse. Even many liberals, Morse speculates, who were once fooled by the cynical identity politics...

When Democratic National Committee operatives describe something as "undemocratic," they mean it's not good for the Democratic Party. "We believe that we should expand democracy -- that expanding democracy is good for the nation; it is good for our party," Democratic National Committee spokesman Mo Elleithee told reporters during a conference call in which he attacked "undemocratic" Republican voter ID laws and other state-level election laws.