Posted on 08/25/2006 12:40:57 PM PDT by Bob J
In an Election 2006 conference sponsored by Paul Weyrich and the Free Congess Foundation this afternoon, panelist Robert Novak stated that based on his and others significant research he believed the GOP would lose between 27-30 seats in the House this fall.
Other panelists inlcuded John Fund, Kate O'Bierne and John Gizzy. A replay of the one hour conference can be heard at www.Rightalk.com , which webcast the event. click on "The Right Hour" logo.
The Prince of Darkness prefers the darkside.
Before the last two elections I read EXACTLY the same kind of apocalyptic Bush is going down tripe I'm reading now. Since President Bush was "selected not elected" in 2000 EVERY SINGLE ELECTION was going to be punishment for that.
On election day 2004 itself we heard that he was going down in a landslide for crying out loud.
It's never happened. It might this time, but pardon me if I just don't get all panicky because frankly most of these prognosticators are full of it.
He started drinking the same cheap stuff as pat buchanan.
I will second that. I take Zogby polls. I know from experience. ; )
Including Election Day of '04. Kerry was absolutely crushing Dubya in the exit polls. The moving vans were already moving up 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!!! :-)
If by "old man" you mean President George H.W. Bush, let me ask you this: What in the father's term compares with the challenges of the son's? The two Presidencies are as different as water and oil.
And your "running out the clock" comment is simply vapid.
It is politically juvenile to dismiss the fact that GWB is still standing and still pressing on after six years of relentless national and international personal attacks.
It is shortsighted to ignore the six years of leadership that has successfully steered our economy through major turbulence and taken on the animals who want us dead.
The President's efforts and his successes should be the cause of applause and gratitude, not whining.
Oh, and as for predictions about the midterms...let's exhale and recognize that no one but we on this forum are engaged. By political standards, the election is still a LONG way off.
My suggestion: Keep the faith and VOTE!
Excellent post. BTTT
Barone is one of the few people who do this by really studying precinct by precinct, rather than basing things on gut feelings produced in the cacophony of the beltway tin can. I trust his analysis.
Well said!
Do I need to say more?
We cannot sit this one out. I'm not too happy with the Pubs right now, but foremost, we've got to keep the lunitics at bay. If you want to send a message to the Republicans, do it in the primaries, not during the general election.
Well, I hear they think their efforts to reach out to their new "illegal alien" base which is chock full of conservatives will bail them out.
Consider the source. That's all I can say. Not all voices are equal, and I'd hope that you'd discount the pollyannaish rantings of Paul Begala, James Carville, and Dick Gephardt as a matter of course.
Indeed, exit polls are very unreliable. (As is Zogby, who clearly has a side he's rooting for.)
Do you respect Stuart Rothenberg? I do.
This is WAY off. I don't think we'll lose more than two or three seats. Maybe I'm overly optimistic...oh, well.
Also, I hope it is not rude to bring this up, but I do recall hearing some predictions for a Kilgore win of 4-5 points last November. I expected him to win as well, so I cast no aspersions on the source of the prediction, but these things do not always move in the same direction.
Thank you, onyx.
By the way, what exactly are we arguing about? We're probably closer than it seems. Here's my point of view:
Polls are not predictive, but several can be a good snapshot of the race at that point in time. What this means is that if the polls in April end up very different from the outcome in November, it doesn't mean the polls are wrong, necessarily, although they may have been; the dynamics also change.
Exit polls are useless, and some polls are more reliable than others.
Some pundits have a good track record, (Rothenberg, Charlie Cook, Barone) some parrot the CW without adding anything (Sabato, Madonna), some are weirdly unreliable and have their own biases (Novak, Zogby), and anything spoken by a past or present consultant for a party should be taken with a grain of salt.
I remember the 2002 and 2004 campaigns pretty well and the only way to argue that the spin is the same is to cherry pick quotes and polls. People are decidedly more downbeat this year than in the past. It looks like things have changed in the past two weeks, but we need to see if the course stays. However, it is not legitimate to say that anyone with any credibility were predicting the Democrats to pick up 20 seats in 2002 or 2004, because they weren't. And even to take control of the House they needed a lot fewer seats, because they went into the 2002 and 2004 redistrictings with several more seats than they have now.
Thanks. We'll need to repeat this often as the election really begins.
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