Free Republic

Hillary Clinton to Kentucky: 'I'm back for one reason. That's because Ky. deserves a change in Washington' LOUISVILLE — Making her case as a “Clinton Democrat” who would spend more time in office under the next president “no matter whom he or she might be,” U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes rallied the Democratic base in downtown Louisville alongside former U.S. Sen. and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A standing-room-only crowd of more than 4,500 people turned out to hear Grimes and Clinton speak at the Kentucky International Convention Center on Wednesday night. The duo delivered speeches promoting pocketbook...

FiveThirtyEight’s latest Senate forecast gives Democrats a 40 percent chance of maintaining control of the Senate. Still, you’ve probably heard that control might not be known until December (when Louisiana would hold a runoff election) or January (when a Georgia runoff would take place and when Kansas independent Greg Orman, should he win, would have to decide which party to caucus with). But polling released over the past few days makes clear the most likely path the GOP would have to walk to win a majority Nov. 4 (or the early hours of Nov. 5). Republicans need to pick up...

A national tea party group will hold a news conference in Wichita on Monday with U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, but leaders stopped short of saying whether the group plans to endorse the Republican incumbent. “It will be an announcement,” said Taylor Budowich, executive director of the Tea Party Express, a California-based group that describes itself as the nation’s largest tea party political action committee. The news conference, set for 11 a.m. at the Sedgwick County Republican party headquarters in west Wichita, will be attended by Roberts and local tea party leaders and activists, Budowich said. Earlier this year the group...

Virtually every major electoral forecaster had described the three-way race in South Dakota -- along with likely lopsided contests in West Virginia and Montana -- as a sure thing for Republicans hungry to win a Senate majority. Top Democrats have come to disagree with the conventional wisdom, however. And they’re betting serious money against it. Signs of Democratic optimism surfaced last week. RCP reported Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen assertion that the race “is just as competitive as the ones in places like New Hampshire and Michigan that have drawn far more attention.” Then the levee broke: Bloomberg Politics reported...

Two narratives have competed for attention since Campaign 2014 got underway. One says, rightly, that the political environment favors the Republicans. Voters are unhappy. Most of the competitive races are in red states. President Obama’s approval ratings are weak. Democrats usually struggle to get their voters to the polls in midterms. The second narrative says: Hold on, it’s not over yet. The reasons? Democrats have some popular issues on their side, from raising the minimum wage to their positions on women’s issues. Republicans have to beat a bunch of Democratic incumbents to win the six seats needed to take control...

Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear several Appeals Court cases on gay marriages, which resulted in bans on gay marriage being struck down in numerous states across the country. Following the Supreme Court's decision to punt on the issue of gay marriage, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd saw this as a sign that social conservatism was declining and obnoxiously asked "it is time for conservatives to surrender in the culture wars?" After playing a pre-packaged segment on the evolution of social conservatism in the United States, the NBC host did his best to portray social conservatives as...

I don't understand why one is called a "purist", a "troll", a "fascist", a "liberal Democrat" and a lot of other, non-flattering names just because they..... Stand up to powerful, political elites, who have a lot of power over us, the common man, and say to them: "You hate Conservatives! You have vowed to "crush" us wherever you find us." "You used racist antics and Black Democrats to steal an Election from a fine young Conservative in MS. In so doing, you disenfranchised the votes of everyone of his supporters. You violated their Civil Rights, and that can be proved...

Despite being an extremely popular two-term governor, Republican Mike Rounds has lost steam in the race for a U.S. Senate seat, according to the latest SurveyUSA poll. With just four weeks until the Nov. 4 general election, Rounds appears to have 35 percent of the vote, down 4 percent from a month ago. Independent Larry Pressler, a former Republican, is within the margin of error with 32 percent, gaining 7 perent from the last SurveyUSA poll. He is followed by Democrat Rick Weiland with 28 percent and the self-proclaimed "conservative" candidate Gordon Howie with just 3 percent. Democrats and their...

The Washington Post's Election Lab -- our statistical model designed to predict outcomes of the various races on the ballot this fall -- is currently showing Republicans with a 95 percent chance of winning the Senate. While most political handicappers suggest Republicans have an edge in the battle for the Senate majority, few would say it is as heavily tilted toward the GOP as Election Lab. And, even other statistical models -- kept by FiveThirtyEight and the New York Times -- project far more caution about the likely outcome in 25 days time. Nate Silver's model pegs it at a...

Whatever liberal leanings he might have, sometimes the political animal in Chuck Todd just can't contain itself. Take today's Morning Joe, where Todd host absolutely annihilated Alison Lundergan Grimes, Dem candidate for senator from Kentucky, for her refusal to say whether she voted for Barack Obama for president. Todd ripped Grimes as "ridiculous," then twice declared that she had "disqualified herself." Ouch! Even Mika Brzezinski was embarrassed by Grimes' cringe-worthy performance, as you'll see in the screengrab. View the video here.

Should election campaigns and the candidates themselves - be it in Iowa with Bruce Braley (D) saying his rival Joni Ernst (R) is tied to the hip of the Koch Brothers or be it Tom Cotton in Arkansas (R) saying his rival Mark Pryor (D) is tied to the hip of Obama - eschew such tactics? In summation... Should both sides (be it the candidates and PACs on the Republican and Democrat side) eschew this political tactic, or should both sides continue to employ this tactic - and how is the MSM figuring into the dissemination of this political tactic?

....control of the Senate is stable and tight, with Republicans maintaining the inside track to a majority in the latest round of data from the New York Times/CBS News/YouGov online panel of more than 100,000 respondents.

Shocker: The GOP candidate in SD Senate race is only polling at 35% in a four man race. It has been a "given" that SD, along with WV and MT, was "in the bag" for the GOP so, I have not followed the SD Senate Race. I had to do a Google Search to find out which dude in the poll was the Pubbie and which one was the Dem. Come to find out, there is a former GOP Senator, Larry Pressler, running as an Independent(24%) and another guy, Gordon Howie (another former GOP office holder) running as a Conservative...

If the New Hampshire race is like others in some respects, it is unique in at least one. Brown, 55, moved to the state to run. The race is his third for the Senate in five years. Shaheen, 67, is a known political commodity in New Hampshire. She was elected, to this Senate seat, in 2008 when Obama won the state. "She's won in a wave and lost in a wave," says former Rep. Frank Guinta, a Republican. "I think she's as susceptible as anyone is." That view — that even a well-established politician can lose if enough voters sour...

What may have happened is this: Over the summer Democrats used their money advantage to savage Republican opponents. When spending got equalized in September, Republicans’ numbers rose. So Republicans retain big leads to pick up three open seats in states carried by Mitt Romney —West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota. Republican nominees have moved ahead of three Democratic incumbents in Romney states (Alaska, Arkansas, and Louisiana) and in two target states carried by President Obama (Colorado and Iowa).Only in North Carolina, which Romney narrowly carried, has the Republican not yet overtaken the incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan — and her...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEjqRLjP7Io "You are not Mary's cause and you are certainly not her charity. You are just a vote - nothing less, nothing more. You are just a means to an end, so that she remains in power."

Establishment Republicans should keep the champagne on ice until after the midterm elections. Too many are already popping corks, pronouncing their strategy of “crushing” the Tea Party during the primaries as a crucial step in their successful takeover of the U.S. Senate. There are increasing signs, however, that the GOP might not take control of the Senate and may only make modest gains in the House of Representatives. In states like North Carolina, for example, the GOP candidate hasn’t shown the ability to wage a major-league campaign. In other key battleground states, the establishment GOP is supporting problematic candidates, like...

DES MOINES — Republican Joni Ernst leads Democrat Bruce Braley by 6 percentage points in Iowa’s open-seat U.S. Senate race, a new Iowa Poll published Saturday night reveals....

With six weeks to go, the fight for control of the Senate is down to five states, four of them currently held by Democrats. Republicans must win only two of those contests to guarantee the 51 seats they need to control the Senate for the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. And they need to win only one of the Democratic states if they hold the only GOP seat at serious risk. While things could still change — and national polls continue to show an environment that may produce a substantial GOP wave in the House and Senate —...

On "FOX News Sunday." WALLACE: First, Louisiana, Bill Cassidy leads Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu by more than five points, and Arkansas, Tom Cotton leads Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor by 2.5. Karl, how solid are those for the GOP? 2.5 points that doesn't sound very solid. ROVE: Well, out of the last ten polls Mark Pryor has led in one; Tom Cotton has led in nine. WALLACE: Iowa. This is an open seat in Iowa. And Democratic congressman Bruce Braley is up against GOP State Sen. Joni Ernst; it's flat tied. TRIPPI: No, it's a dead heat. Both parties are going...