Posted on 10/27/2012 2:21:24 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too
Romney’s pollster did a poll in which he also tested Mandell’s numbers (as he has for months). He has had Mandell at -4 for some time. Then, last week, Mandell shot into a 1-point lead. Just one more indicator that the national polls are very sluggish when it comes to OH.
Agree completely. I don’t want to play too loose, but we know there’ll be treachery in our own ranks. Controlling the Senate gives us control over committees, but if Dems undermine us every step of the way they’ll run on they had control of everything, etc. You can see how this will go.
Come January you know they’ll have stories about hobos, women dying from back room abortions, children starving to death, etc.
If they can take and hold and take and hold over the next 8 years perhaps your wish will come true, but given that Obama would be winning, but for this bad economy I’m not hopeful.
What’s the history of GOP-controlled Senates with razor-thin majorities? Are they able to do whatever they want? Keep budgets down? When was the last GOP SCOTUS nominee dumped and why?
That’s a supposition as well. The abortion coalition is in tatters and I don’t think they’ll be able to derail a nominee so easily anymore. There just isn’t an Iron Media Curtain and they haven’t won that many fights. Bork wasn’t a loss. Sure we got Kennedy, but that was the last big fight.
You’re not going to have a Ted Kennedy (D-Dead) state:
Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork in a nationally televised speech, declaring,
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”
Those days are over. I think you could easily get a Scalia or Thomas through the process. Libs will fight hard and long, but they’re powder is wet. We’ve heard it all.
If there is one thing that Democrats excel at, it's the tit-for-tat retaliation.
-PJ
Who would expect a liberal to be a petulant, immature, vengeful brat?
That said, Limbaugh also said in 2004-2006 that Democrats had to count on America failing for them to do better. He accused Democrats and the MSM of "talking down the economy," and they were unwilling to acknowledge any success that Bush might have achieved.
Fast-forward to today, and we're back to a time when the economy is poor, unemployment is high with record numbers of people giving up, crushing tax increases around the corner as Obama's going-away present, health care in limbo, and the world on fire, and again the Democrats are going to be rooting for Romney to fail to turn things around.
This time, failure for Romney and America really is a Leftist win if America as we know it collapses.
-PJ
“It would be excellent to win the Senate, but politically dangerous. If we control it all and the economy isn’t moving 4 years hence the GOP will be hard pressed to hold on.”
Balderdash.
If Political Junkie Too’s predictions hold, and the ‘rats keep the Senate, expect NOTHING to get done for at least two years. They will obstruct EVERYTHING that Romney and the Republican House attempt to do.
The ‘rats know that the Senate will be their “last line of defense”, and will use whatever power they have there accordingly.
Expect to see political division in 2013 as you have never seen it before.
Others in this country have seen such divisions — in the 1850’s...
Thanks for the ping!
Really? How does the Senate work now? Not holding it or holding it at parity can be very powerful as well. If the GOP uses it correctly.
Hi, PJT,
Would you include me on your ping list, as well, please?
Many thanks!
Boy I hope you’re right. I’ve been wondering if Mandel is hurt by how young he looks.
Let's talk about that.
Do you think the businessman or Governor in Romney would stand for Harry Reid continuing to fail to pass a budget in the Senate? What "power" would Romney deploy to get the Senate to change?
First, Romney would try compromising with Democrats, but then he would realize that, to Democrats, compromise is really just a stalling tactic to delay Republicans from implementing their agenda while the MSM pounds on them day after day, week after week, until Republicans give it up, whatever "it" is. See Jay Rockefeller's famous "pull the trigger" memo for an example of "pulling Republicans along as far as we can" until they "have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority."
Second, Romney would try peer pressure to try to pick off one or two Democrat Senators to vote with Republicans. Democrats are notorious for their solidarity, while Republicans are often weak and unreliable, undercutting each other when negotiating comes down to brinksmanship. Just witness how Mitch McConnell interfered at the last minute with House negotations over the debt limit increase to see what I'm talking about.
Third, Romney will need to take control as the head of the party and create a party discipline around messaging that doesn't exist today. Democrats also excel at messaging discipline across the House, Senate, and White House. Republicans never seem to have a coordinated plan in how they communicate on issues. There doesn't seem to be anybody who story-boards the GOP agenda so that the party leadership not only is consistently on-message, but that there is a strategy to the message that everybody understands.
Fourth, it's time for new leadership in the Senate and House. McConnell is to old and tired, too stuck in the past regarding "traditions" that his long-departed friends and foes demanded. It's a new time in politics, and we need new leaders who's first reactions aren't so predictable. We need bold leadership now, people who won't shrink from the MSM's portrayals of them. Or worse, won't shrink from their suppositions of what the MSM will say about them -- but haven't yet -- and then talk themselves out of action before they even get started.
The last one starts with the "freshman orientation" that is intended to indoctrinate new-comers into not rocking the boatload of old-timers. Let's stop disillusioning people as soon as they get to Washington. Let's give new people a chance on committees to show what they can do. Again, the likes of McConnell and Boehner need to be swept aside for this to happen. If that happens, we can see if they go the way of Richard Lugar and try to undermine those who replaced them, or will they behave higher than that, and mentor the new-comers from behind for the good of the party?
-PJ
Disagree with some of this list. Connie Mack has been a complete bomb, and even with these favorable conditions it will take a miracle for him to win. On the other hand Tom Smith and Linda McMahon are running ahead of Romney in their states, and if Romney wins the popular vote nationally by more than few percentage points, I think they’ll be swept in. Even Todd Akin has been polling better than Mack - so much for the predictions of a blowout there.
Kyrillos is a complete non-entity, and I’d rank him behind Summers, who could pull out an upset if the Dem candidate over-performs and Romney puts some focus on ME-2 in the closing days, and Lingle who at least is well known and liked. I’d like to see Ras or someone remotely respectable poll in ME and HI, because lately it’s been nothing but those untrustworthy newspaper polls there.
-PJ
You make some great points here. On messaging, one problem Republicans have had that Democrats haven’t is that the politicians on our side are less likely to fully embrace the general philosophy. I’m convinced that literally ALL of the Democrats are true believers in hardcore socialism, and that they will ALWAYS get away with every tiny bit as much as they think their constituents will put up with. There are no ‘blue dogs,’ there are only socialists smart enough to know which votes for socialist policy are permissible in the eyes of their state/district, as well as with an eye towards future higher office.
But on our side, we often have to fight members of our caucus, even those who are representing conservative states/districts. Imagine trying to do the kind of messaging you’re talking about, in the past decade, with some of the Republicans we’ve had in the Senate, for example. Could we have really trusted Lincoln Chafee, Chuck Hagel, John McCain, Greg Voinovich, Lisa Murkowski, Lindsay Graham, Bob Bennet etc. to carry out conservative messaging?
Could you imagine Dems representing Dem states breaking their messaging? Never in a million years.
Mack vs. Nelson polls have swung wildly so it’s really hard to know what’s going on there. If Romney does well in FL, he may carry Mack to a victory. I do agree that Mack has been a total bomb, but he may end up being a lucky bomb.
Lingle is doing okay - single digits as of the last poll. I think she will probably lose, but it won’t be a rout.
ME hasn’t been polled lately, but the last poll had King comfortably ahead with Dill in the single digits - not peeling off near enough support from King to help Summers, who is a good candidate.
Menendez is not popular and has ethics problems, but Oct. polls have him well ahead.
I dropped a few long shots off the list before this update and will drop NJ in the next one.
Mourdock may slip some. A couple of weeks ago Ras had him +5.
There are quite a few which could go either way clumped in the middle of this list. Romney’s performance may send some in the GOP direction, but nothing’s a sure bet. It will go down to the wire regarding the U.S. Senate, IMO.
So Romney needs 90 EVs from states that Obama won in '08 to reach the magic 270. It's conventional wisdom now that he wins Florida (29), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), and Indiana (11). That totals 68, so he needs 22 more from the list of states still in doubt. With toss-up Ohio (18), he needs only four more which he could get with little New New Hampshire (4) or any other toss-up state. But even without Ohio, there are several possible combinations of three or four states that add up to the 22 he needs. Since he has a fairly decent shot in Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire, and Nevada and there is a possibility he could even get a surprise win in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Oregon or Minnesota, I'd say that the odds of a Romney electoral college win nationally are better than the 44.18% that you indicate.
Dick Morris is thinking pretty much along the same lines, even more bullish on Romney's chances.
BTW, it is statistically very highly unlikely that a three-point leader in the national popular vote (which R0omney has now pretty much maintained for a week in Rasmussen and even Gallup) can lose the electoral college.
So far, based on Rasmussen polls to-date, Romney's probability of getting 270 Electoral votes or more is 44%.
I may post a mid-week report this week if things change drastically before Saturday.
-PJ
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