too bad there can't be an adult conversation with assholes like you: so prepare to be embarrassed - you JUST STEPPED IN IT DEEP - which I bet you do a lot frankly.
Posted on 11/01/2014 6:43:31 AM PDT by massmike
It's become the mother of all political clichés: Every election, we are told, is the most important of our lifetime. If our side doesn't win, it's 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, rivers and seas boiling, human-sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria – or worse.
While it's hard to rank these biennial slug-fests, given the rot that's eating away at the soul of our nation, 2014 is right up there.
Will there be any break on Obama's increasingly despotic reign during his last two years in office, or will Harry Reid and his cohorts continue to provide cover for the presidential putsch?
Most analysts are predicting the 2014 election will give Republicans a slight majority in the Senate next year. The New York Times gives the GOP a 64% chance of taking the Senate.
But nothing is guaranteed. The outcome could depend on last-minute spending, which party has the better ground game, and how much fraud the party of illegal aliens and the graveyard vote can get away with.
Starting with 45 seats, Republicans need to pick up six more to gain a bare majority. Two open seats currently held by Democrats are considered likely pick-ups. The Democratic incumbent in Louisiana will probably lose. Of the nine toss-ups, three are currently Republican seats. If Republicans hold those and take the three they're slated to win, they'll need only one of six toss-ups.
That only sounds easy. In Colorado, Republican Cory Gardner has a one-point lead over incumbent Senator Mark Udall. In Iowa, Republican Joni Ernst leads her opponent by 2.2 points. In Arkansas, the Republican challenger leads the incumbent Democrat by 2 points – all within the margin of error.
With so much at stake this year, the toss-ups could well be squeakers. In the meantime, we're getting lectures from conservatives castigating 2012 stay-at-homes.
"Why did we lose in 2012?" asks the typical e-mail I get at least daily. "Because millions of delusional, self-defeating conservatives, who were disappointed by Romney, were AWOL on Election Day, they helped to re-elect the man who's destroying our Republic.'"
This argument relieves the Republican establishment from all responsibility for nominating a clunk like Romney, and Mitt from practically throwing away the nomination by running an abysmal campaign.
Still, this year at least, voting Republican as the default position makes sense.
Unless the GOP candidate has you running for the toilet bowl (like Charlie Baker, RINO candidate for Massachusetts governor, whose bucket list includes performing a partial-birth abortion while simultaneously presiding over a same-sex wedding), conservatives should vote Republican, even if it hurts. I did in 2008 and 2012, though the experience was excruciating, I can assure you.
Let's start with a hard case – Scott Brown, former Massachusetts Senator now running for the Senate as a Republican in New Hampshire.
During his two years in the Senate, Brown (who won a special election in 2010 with Tea Party support) was a huge disappointment. His rating from the American Conservative Union was 50% – one of the lowest for any Republican Senator.
On the other hand, according to the Congressional Quarterly, his opponent, incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, voted with the president 98% of the time. She is Obama's Topo Gigio. ("Oh, Barack, I love you!") The latest CNN poll has them in a statistical dead-heat – Shaheen 49%, Brown 47%, with a margin of error plus or minus 4.
The choice isn't between an authentic conservative and a typical Democrat, but a 50% conservative and a 98% hard-core leftist. Representing conservative New Hampshire, Brown would probably have a better voting record than he did as the junior senator from the Bay State.
More importantly, he'll be part of the Republican Senate majority. That means the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee passes from Patrick Leahy (lifetime ACU rating 6%) to Charles Grassley (lifetime ACU rating 83%).
It also means no more rubber-stamping of Obama's judicial mutants – no more Sonia ("wise Latina woman") Sotomayors. Ruth Bader Ginsberg – 81, ailing and having an unnatural relationship with the Constitution – won't wait to see who's elected president in 2016, but will likely retire next year. Only a Republican Senate will stop Obama from filling the vacancy with a Ginsberg-clone 30 years her junior.
Grassley is eager to launch investigations to compliment House inquiries – including Fast and Furious and the IRS harassment of conservatives.
Conservative hero Jeff Sessions will chair the powerful Budget Committee. Expect renewed attacks on ObamaCare and proposals for a sweeping overhaul of the federal tax system.
Bob Corker (the kindest thing he can say about Obama is that he's an "unreliable ally") gets the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and John McCain will chair Armed Services. Besides a push for new weapons systems, look for hearings on Obama's blunders which helped to foster the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
With both houses in Republican hands, Obama will get writer's cramp using his veto pen. If contested programs are riders on appropriations bills, the president will have to explain why he risked shutting down the government over the Keystone Pipeline – because it's crucial to maintain our dependence on Middle East oil?
Here's how the Deadites view the prospect of a Republican Senate.
In an opinion column in the October 21 Washington Post ("The Catastrophe that a GOP-controlled Congress would bring") Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, sputters:
"What happens when they (the Republican majority in Congress) send him a bill to prevent a default on our debt at the 11th. hour, attached to a bill that ravages (reforms) Social Security? The Republican Party will gain the power to force the president to choose between impossible options."
Even though self-styled progressives think Obama hasn't moved far enough toward a Soviet America, Vanden Heuvel writes: "It is madness to suggest that little will change if Republicans take the Senate. A lot will change, and the change will be the worse for women, immigrants, workers and the environment" (feminists, illegal aliens and global-warming cultists). "A Republican Senate, working with a Republican House, will be a wrecking crew."
If only.
Still, the alternative to a GOP victory in this year's Senate elections is more judicial nominations from Hell, the continued implementation of ObamaCare (millions more losing their private insurance), a sweeping amnesty (with crime, disease, unemployment and terrorism for all), taking a civil-liberties approach to containing Ebola, and accelerating attacks on Israel by the Grand Mufti of D.C.
It will also mean that Democrats will have won three of the last four elections – sending the GOP into 2016 dispirited and disorganized.
Winston Churchill said of England's victories over the Nazis in 1942: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
I've been disappointed too often by the GOP to expect much from a Republican Congress. But the end of the beginning is better than the alternative—the unimpeded march toward the abyss of hope and change.
“We here at Free Republic”??? Who made you the spokesman? Some of us have been around here years before you showed up. It used to be a friendly place to spend time and to share ideas and rarely did we see personal insults.
You are just being played by Reid et al, now!
Jesus Mike, Brian Herr's a friend of mine. I've worked with him for 10 years in the private sector. Is he as conservative as me, of course not. He's a good guy and he is far more conservative than any other Republican to run for Senate in years. He wants to wage war on Obamacare and he's about as good as it gets on immigration for a Mass Pol. Please give him a chance.
Go ahead and be a fool. You are a waste of my time.
Just vote for NH born and bred Shaheen, no more carpetbaggers!
Nope, not voting for her.
Aren’t you tired of being to told who to vote for by the powers that be GOP?
I’ve said Mississippi is one place to take a stand. Your overall point is still womanish and emotional and just plain stupid.
Stupid?
YOU bend over for back stabbers! Go peddle your GOPe liberal loving garbage somewhere else!
Oh, I'm a Democrat tool?
Please support this assertion — especially since I'm working toward rooting out corruption and holding government officials to account.
Go ahead and be a fool. You are a waste of my time.
Because I see the Republican Party's offerings as detestable and not representative of myself?
(Or would you counsel people in Mississippi to vote for the Republican regardless of actions on his behalf?)
“In the mean time, I’ll take back any ground I can.”
That’s what we need to do or all our states will look like democrat controlled California. Defeat the democrats!
Of course you’re voting for her. I like Bob Smith as much as the next guy, but he’s not on the ballet. Brown didn’t win because the GOP wished it. He won because he got more votes. Here’s a suggestion, write in Harry Reid. Jeff Sessions says Scott Brown’s a good guy, and we need him in the Senate. That’s enough for me, or is Jeff Sessions a RINO too?
I agree no rule of thumb is a substitute for judgment, sometimes it may make sense to hold your nose and vote, sometimes not.
I had no problem supporting Brown in Mass. He was reasonably the most conservative candidate that could be elected.
To a large degree that's the case in Senate and House races.
Except...when you have an eGOP candidate calling his base racist...or Neanderthal...or any number of names.
Any candidate who runs against ME can be assured he won't have my support. Nor should he expect it.
Sure...just like we control the vote...except that's crooked, too.
Do remember Einstein's definition of insanity, will you?
And consider my tagline...
I believe he was referring to negotiating with the other party...not his own.
I think your analogy is flawed.
If that is in fact the case, he should assume a flood and mitigate the result by moving what he can to higher ground and get out of the way.
But I don't think it's the case. I think he doesn't have sandbags, but paper grocery bags.
The tools at hand are not sufficient to get the job done...much like expecting an eGOPer to act like a leader.
I understand that, but it’s the leftward swing of the electorate that we’re up against.
too bad there can't be an adult conversation with assholes like you: so prepare to be embarrassed - you JUST STEPPED IN IT DEEP - which I bet you do a lot frankly.
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