Posted on 11/08/2006 7:25:35 AM PST by lasereye
Already you're seeing people criticizing outgoing Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist for the failures in the Senate. Frist certainly deserves to take hits over his inability to control the likes of Sen. John McCain during legislative battles, but without Frist the election might have looked even worse. Tennessee right now is the only strategic hold the Republicans got on Tuesday night, and it was largely because the Frist operation saw Corker's problems earlier this year, took charge of the campaign and got him back on track. And while some Republicans - Allen, perhaps being the greatest offender - chose not to run on the judges issue, Corker, in fact, did. And he won. That wasn't an accident.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Strange how Republican senate candidates don't talk about that. I think they don't know how to explain it or something.
IF they had listened to Rush Limbaugh...we would not have lost our shirts last night...
Dole failed us in Florida by failing to recruit a decent candidate. She needs some blame. Our whole campaign was poorly run. We never came up with a theme to stick to. We had no unified message.
I've been a little out of it lately with graduate school. What are you referring to? Honest question.
So, Frist is good in Tennessee. Wonderful.
Lindsey Graham and Chuck Hagel should be nominated for the Hall of Shame.
Frist helping Corker is worth very little in the grand scheme of things. Frist has been a very weak majority leader from the very beginning.
Love him or hate him, McCain represents his constituents in Arizona. The Senate should not be set up in such a way that one senator is expected to rein in another.
Maybe it is time to go for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on congress critters.
Term limits have worked well in California where politicians are forced to move on from safe positions to fight for other ones. The same should be true at the national level.
If senators and congressmen were term limited then there might not be so much graft, corruption, and isolation from reality.
If Republican candidates knew they actually had to go back into the real world to get a job they might not start acting like Democrats who expect a government handout for their entire life.
I can tell you though that Mitch McConnell will not make these mistakes in 2008.
Look at what McConnell achieved last night. After Kentucky's GOP governor got mired in a hiring scandal and his approval ratings fell to the floor, Democrats thought they could exploit it and pick up as many as three House seats. They only got one, barely, in a district that was already Democrat-majority. McConnell helped keep Anne Northup in the House for four terms, much longer than anyone expected. She apparently also ignored McConnell's advice and went positive at the end of her campaign, which may have killed her. Democrats brought the popular Ken Lucas out of retirement in the 4th District, but Geoff Davis trounced him. Ron Lewis also kicked ass in the 2d. Kentucky remains a GOP stronghold, while Democrats made gains in every surrounding state. This should give Republicans some comfort as McConnell takes the reins in the Senate.
Rush talked with Tony Snow...earlier this week and emphasized over and over and over to Tony that the President must talk to the public about the Supreme Court appointments; but the Republican Party did not start early enough to warn the American people the importance of these appointments....
Honestly, I would have been a lot happier this morning if the NRSC would have done two things:
1) not gone back and recruited Bouchard in MI to run against Butler in the primary.
2) used the money they dumped into MI and used it on another race where the numbers were better for the R's.
I know that I would have been disappointed that the national party bailed on MI, but we needed to win in other areas and we didn't. Now I'm extremely P.O.'d at the Party for trying to pick up when they couldn't defend what they had very well.
If all of the Right's
lunatic fringe groups hadn't
spent the last few years
attacking their own
Party, threatening 'protest votes,'
the Right may have held . . .
Allen was 10 point ahead after the primary.
He lost most of those points over Makaca.
It doesn't matter that he did not know what it could mean.
In politics - preception is thruth
Dole needs to be dumped. I cannot believe we could not come up with good candidates in some of the red states, including FL.
No he doesn't. Once McCain became a national figure he totally forgot about Arizona. He comes home every six years, deals out goodies to the Indian reservations and the democrats and that's it.
We must emphasize that Democrats won control with CONSERVATIVE candidates. This country didn't sweep Liberals into office last night; each and every race was LOCAL. Rahm and Chuckie (I have to admit) were brilliant. They know in their heart of hearts that Americans are primarily conservative; but they know that under Speaker Pelosi, the newbies will wilt and comply. Look for investigations of Bush and Cheney. Look for a lower stock market. Eventually, though, the people who voted in these nitwits will finally see that Democrats are downright DANGEROUS.
I agree. This is actually good news. Not the Republican defeat, but who was elected. The conservative revolution is continuing, just not the way we expected it too. We can and need to do a lot better, but this is a silver lining we need to understand. Who knows? The Democratic party could be reformed from within. God's ways are not our ways. Thankfully.
Do you know how many of the new House members could be considered conservative, or some nuance thereof? Democrat and Republican? I'd be interested to know.
Let me add another angle. How many votes do you all think we lost (or didn't vote) because of the Internet Gambling ban tacked on to the Ports Security bill by Frist late at night?
I know that I was seriously pissed at that action and expressed my displeasure to both my texas senators, Frist's office and the White House. I also considered not voting but reconsidered when I decided there were more important issues.
But how many folks do you think reacted in a negative way to the Republicans?
Could it have been 6000 voters in Virgina?
How about 2000 voters in Montana?
To me, it was a stupid, pandering bill to tack on. Something that the US will have to overturn at some point because of the WTO litigation we are going to receive.
I would be willing to bet that the Republicans lost more votes then we gained by this action.
Also, Frist will not get my support when (or if) he runs in 2008 for the Presidential nomination.
The Martinez primary showed that the cupboard was pretty bare. Blame Dole less that the RPoF. Are you saying the National Party should override the State? How, by parachuting in a candidate? Don't you remember all those posts about how the party was dissing Katherine? She might be a good conservative but she was a lousy candidate and a worse manager. Definitely not strong enough to defeat a multi-term incumbent with strong name-recognition and the ability to pose as a moderate despite the voting record. Jeb was the only hope and he chose not to play.
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