Game, set, match.
There is already a gang of 8 out.
The Republic and GOP are done once they vote yes on amnesty.
Posted on 01/27/2013 10:19:23 PM PST by Kaslin
These days, our political parties are defined by their presidents. Their policies and their programs tend to become their respective parties' orthodoxies.
And the perceived success or failure of those policies and programs tends to determine how the parties' candidates, even those who don't support many of them, do at the polls.
This has been especially true in the past two decades, in which fewer Americans have been splitting their tickets or changing their minds from election to election than was the case from the 1950s to the 1980s.
For years, white Southerners voted Republican or for a third-party candidate in presidential elections and Democratic in congressional and state contests. Now they're solidly Republican.
For most of the 20th century, New York was a target state in elections, and Vermont was the most Republican state in the nation. Now they're both hugely Democratic.
These are things to keep in mind as the political air swirls with talk of Barack Obama as a Democratic Ronald Reagan annihilating the Republican Party.
Neither of our two political parties is going to be annihilated. Both have suffered far worse defeats than Mitt Romney and the Republicans suffered in 2012.
Both have figured out how to adapt and win over voters who used to vote against them -- or at least to position themselves to win when the other side's president is seen to have massively failed.
The 2008-2012 Obama campaign -- it never really stopped -- did an excellent job of turning out just enough voters to win 332 electoral votes in 2012. But Obama carried just 26 states to Romney's 24, which is relevant when you look at future senatorial elections.
As for House elections, Obama carried only 207 congressional districts to Romney's 228. That's partly because Republicans had the advantage in redistricting after the 2010 census.
But it's also because Democratic core constituencies -- blacks, Hispanics and gentry liberals -- tend to be clustered geographically in big metropolitan areas. Obama's large margins there helped him carry many electoral votes, but not so many congressional districts.
And Obama's in-your-face liberalism, so apparent in last week's inaugural speech, antagonized some groups in a way that may hurt Democrats for some time to come.
The Obamacare contraception mandate helped Romney carry 59 percent of white Catholics -- probably their highest Republican percentage ever -- and 79 percent of white evangelical Protestants. Those groups total 44 percent of the electorate.
That's a counterbalance to Obama's 93 percent among blacks and 71 percent among Hispanics. They were just 23 percent of the electorate, and though Hispanics will be a growing percentage, blacks probably won't.
It's going to be hard for other Democrats to replicate Obama's coalition in 2014 and 2016. It's not clear whether other Democrats can generate the turnout among blacks, Hispanics and young voters that he did.
And it's pretty clear that under the Obama aegis, Democrats cannot make the kind of gains in congressional races that they did in 2006 and 2008.
Back then, Democratic strategists Rahm Emanuel and Charles Schumer fielded moderate-sounding candidates in Republican-leaning territory who were able to win because of discontent with the performance of George W. Bush. When his job approval fell below 40 percent, Republican candidates almost everywhere were hurt.
Democrats in 2014 will have to run as members of the party led by Obama. That could be a hard sell in the 24 states and 228 congressional districts that he failed to carry in November.
Take Georgia, where Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced Friday he will not run for re-election next year. Obama got 45 percent of the vote there, his second-highest percentage in a state he didn't carry. (The highest was in North Carolina.)
Examination of the 2012 returns in Georgia's 159 counties and in its 14 congressional districts reveals unusually high turnout among black voters -- considerably higher than in the 2010 off year or any election before 2008.
Georgia Democrats have high hopes of winning Chambliss' Senate seat. But it looks like an uphill climb.
George W. Bush's 51 percent re-election, with 11.5 million more votes than four years before, got his strategist Karl Rove musing about a permanent Republican majority. That didn't happen.
Now Obama's 51 percent re-election, with 6.8 million fewer votes than four years before, has Democrats talking about annihilating the Republican Party. That's not likely to happen, either.
The Dems don’t need to devastate the Republicans. They only need to keep the Republican party sufficiently divided, so the Dems can walk up the middle.
The Dems’ RINO allies are doing that just fine. It’s the conservatives they want annihilated.
I am sure you are everything to help the rats
Great post!
I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to stop someone from shooting himself in the head.
Game, set, match.
There is already a gang of 8 out.
The Republic and GOP are done once they vote yes on amnesty.
That was the stated goal of one of the demcrat strategists.
Divide the republican party.
Both parties are likely to survive.
The problem is the USA is headed into a debt induced economic death spiral and the republicans don’t have the votes to stop it and the democrats have zero interest in stopping it.
much as I despise Sherman’s march to the sea, it’s time to burn ‘em down and take no prisoners.
that’s still great. the endgame is the collapse of the country so we can build it right back up. By that time, we should have eradicated the traitors...
Probably not, Kaslin.
I support getting the most conservative candidate possible. However, I would vote for the candidate that becomes available, in hopes of keeping the Dems out.
Rand Paul 2016!!
That is fine, but then we all have to unite and stand behind the candidate, once we decide who we want
I agree with you here. Fight for the most conservative, Constitution-supporting candidate possible, but don’t boycott your vote or vote for other, because your candidate didn’t win.
That’s how Obama and the Dems got in.
Exactly. Unfortunately many in here don’t see it
Yeah, how’s that DINO train workin’ out for you? Nominate a conservative next time. Maybe you’ll win.
If you’re a Democrat, it’s probably working out wonderfully.
Absolutely. When both choices are democrat, you have 0 percent chance of failure.
The willingness to vote for, what you consider to be, Republican-lite is not voting for a Democrat. The fact is that the definition of what is considered an acceptable Republican differs all across the country. A Georgian Republican could not, for his life, win a seat in most of the country and neither could a Massacheutts Republican win in Georgia.
My personal preference is a Republican that believes in being fiscally sound and supports the Constitution, unabashedly and stays out of what should be state business.
However, although that is my candidate of choice and the one I will push hardest to ensure a nomination win, I will vote for the nominated candidate in hopes that, if enough people would fight just as hard for the most conservative Republican, that party can be pulled to the right.
The alternative is to simply give the country over to the Democrats and be done with it.
It’s not my fault if the Republican voters can’t get their head out of their backside and see the light.
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