Posted on 01/08/2013 2:39:40 PM PST by Red Steel
“I think you need to put everything on the table,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D, told ABC News‘ George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday, “but what I hear from the administration – and if the Washington Post is to be believed – that’s way, way in extreme of what I think is necessary or even should be talked about. And it’s not going to pass.”
The Washington Post article Heitkamp was referring to, reported that President Obama would soon seek to pass legislation “that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors.” And Obama wants all of this “by the end of January” according to The Boston Herald.
While this ambitious agenda and timing may be music to blue state Democrat ears, it can only be a headache for red state Democrats like Heitkamp … and she isn’t even up for reelection this cycle. A total of seven Democratic Senators from states that Mitt Romney carried in 2012 are up for election in 2014. And six of those Senators (Sens. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Mark Pryor, D-Ark., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Max Baucus, D-Mont., Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Jay Rockefeler, D-W.V.) hail from states that Romney carried by double-digits. Only North Carolina’s Kay Hagan will face an electorate that Obama came close to winning in 2012 (Romney +2) … and the only other Democrat on the ballot statewide in 2012 lost by 11.
And gun control is not the only issue Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will ask red state Democrats to take tough votes on. If Obama is serious about not negotiating over the debt limit, then the Senate is going to have to pass a debt limit hike without any mitigating spending cuts sometime before March. Then there is the amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants that Obama promised to address this month too.
Gun control, debt limit, amnesty … that is not an agenda red state Dems want to take home to states dominated by conservative voters.
It lools like those Montana Dim senators are keeping their mouths shut.
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