Posted on 11/11/2006 12:00:19 AM PST by FairOpinion
The Democratic share of the eligible vote casting ballots for the House of Representatives increased from 16.8 percent in 2002 to 17.9 in 2006.
The Republican share declined sharply, from 19.2 percent in 2002 to 16.8 in 2006. This marks the first mid-term election since 1990 in which the Democrats garnered more votes that the GOP.
In the ballots so far counted in 2006 (and again excluding California, Oregon and Washington), citizens cast 31,703,311 votes for Democratic candidates for U.S. House, compared to 28,749,023 in 2002. The Republican candidates received 29,920,240 votes in 2006 compared with 32,771,580 in 2002.
(Excerpt) Read more at spa.american.edu ...
Well, if you hadn't done it, someone else probably would have and come up with some bogus result that would have had us all chasing geese all over FR.
Sounds like a little vote fraud went on there!
The Dems did what one expected them to do: turn out their base.
The point is that we could easily have blocked them, since most newly won Dem seats were won by less than 2 %.
Some people are running around telling everyone how conservative they are and then they allow the Dems to take power. Those are the ones responsible, because they allowed the Dems to get that sliver of margin of victory. If conservatives had turned out, the Dems wouldn't have won. But they CHOSE to sit it out, vote third party of even vote for Dems.
I'd like to see the numbers on who voted absentee. I'm sure the rats have got this system down. I think we need a force of people going door to door in some areas and helping republicans get their absentee ballots in!
We are now in the position that the Dems were six years ago. At that time the left wing extremists such as the the abortionists and the socialists were striving for ideological purity. They disenfranchised a portion of their voters by calling them "DINO's". These people then stayed home or became Republicans.
With their following diminished they then became the minority party.
After six years of losses they reached out to the conservative democrats while the "true" republicans were striving for ideological purity on the conservative side and driving off the people they considered "RINO's"
btt
Well, you know what I mean. McCain can sound like an "R" when he wants to, which isn't often.
Some people are running around telling everyone how conservative they are and then they allow the Dems to take power. Those are the ones responsible, because they allowed the Dems to get that sliver of margin of victory. If conservatives had turned out, the Dems wouldn't have won. But they CHOSE to sit it out, vote third party of even vote for Dems.
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Then, considering the slim margins, it would behoove the Republican party to have candidates that can actually attract the Conservative vote instead of repel it.
Or is telling conservatives to 'shut up and take it' your preferred way of attracting support?
Some are demanding the impossible.
The choice is between a Republican and a Dem candidate. You choose the one that is closest to your views, not the one that is a polar opposite of everything you believe in.
By staying home and pouting the so-called conservatives are directly responsible for electing the Dems and for all the damage they will do to the country, not to mention endangering our lives.
I fully agree with this. The question is one of what, exactly, should be done.
THere are those here who have increased, if anything, their shameless promotion of POTUS candidates who are even more liberal than those who lost to the 'Blue Dog Democrats".
Let's not get stuck on stupid there.
Morphing further left is not the key to winning.
What disappointed the voters was a sense of business as usual in DC, and the sense that they had been abandoned by the party.
Illegal immigration, spending, and the perception of lackluster leadership all contributed mightily.
COnfusion over whether "fair and balanced" is on our side (closer than CNN, but not there yet) contributes to image problems fed by the performance of the Republican Majority.
We need candidates with a track record of walking the walk, not just talking the talk on conservative issues.
We need mass media, not just the internet, e-mail, and word of mouth, that can reach the voter who is not involved enough to go looking for information.
Our candidates need to be media-savvy and not provide the opposition with the rope to hang them (Allen's macacca).
Our candidates need an record of accomplishments to stand on when they run, not just vote for me 'cause I'm not them, or the wearying vitriol of endless attack ads. It has to become a question of why we should vote for a candidate instead of just against the opposition. You want the base to show up, give them someone to vote for.
Lynchpin issues remain:
Border security.
The GWOT
The economy and taxes
gun control
abortion
English as the national language
an Energy policy (not just pork) aimed toward becoming more self-sufficient in the future, and one which embraces oil, nuclear, coal, and viable alternatives.
That just names a few, I am sure folks around here can come up with more.
We have a lot of work to do, so let's wrap up the post mortem, and get 'er done!
Yeah, sure, Nancy Pelosi is more conservative than Hastert, she deserve to be speaker. Great conservative reasoning (/sarcasm)
Exactly right!
Do you mean like reigning in spending, MediCare reform, immigration reform, and limiting the size of government?
Yup...
Too bad the Republican party allowed this to happen by ignoring the vocal cries of it's conservative base...
...by trying to act like the 'Democrat Lite' party.
It's really looking like the current Republican party wanted Pelosi in charge. If they didn't... well, they knew what to do, but didn't do it.
It's not so hard to understand, for heaven's sake! And aren't we supposed to have Karl Rove, the political supergenius, as well?
Instead, conservatives got the 'shut up and do what your told' spiel. Which, in foresight... and hindsight... didn't work.
And they, the cut-N-run "voters (???), could also clear the road for another clintooons into the White House for another sixteen (16) years???
MUST be all those Legal and Illegal aliens VOTING..
Folks who bomb abortion clinics. Some of them here freely damn you to hell for not believing what they do.
Frankly, if their book told them so, they would kill us. Mind numbed robots.
Thanks for those numbers for those places in CA. They do not show what the republican base did though. Those numbers only show the total results of the vote. They include all voters. that means the R vote shown includes independants-folks that are wishy washy and not part of the base. You can't say that when 20K people voted R in the past, and now only 15K voted R, that republicans failed to show. The real R turnout is buried in those numbers.
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