Posted on 09/21/2014 4:48:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
I know a lot of people are giddy at the prospect of Republicans taking the Senate this November, but that’s becoming less and less likely. It’s not because Democrats are rallying around a particular mission or set of candidates; it’s because Republicans and conservatives aren’t.
It seems like I’m always writing on issues no one wants to hear are mistakes, such as messaging or social issues. But I don’t care. These things have to be said. If these columns are received like a gaseous cousin on a long car trip through the desert, so be it. Crack a window…
If things continue on their current course, the GOP will not retake the Senate. Anyone telling you differently is selling something.
There are many reasons for this: tough primary fights, the “establishment vs. Tea Party” meme, stubbornness, arrogance, ignorance, ego. You name it, a segment of the center-right coalition suffers from it.
Too many people and groups on the right are content to take their ball and go home because their candidate lost a primary and/or the nominee doesn’t pay enough attention to whatever pet issue they care about most. They may vote, but their email lists sit idle and their wallets remain closed.
GET OVER YOURSELVES!
As upset as you may be, this election is not about any of the candidates you dislike. This election is about the following things, and the following things only – Barack Obama, Harry Reid and the Supreme Court.
I don’t care where someone lives or who their Senate candidate is … if you don’t support the Republican candidate, for whatever reason, with everything you have, you are voting to retain Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.
In spite of what you may have heard, the Senate is very much in play and too close to call. As unpopular as Barack Obama is, that isn’t enough to win. You have to be involved – through donations, volunteering, talking to everyone you know – or else Democrats will win.
I’m not making this up, I’m not trying to scare you; these are real numbers in real races that will make the difference. And they don’t look good.
The next two years can be spent either forcing an unpopular president to veto popular, pro-growth, pro-liberty legislation, acts that will harm his party for years; or spent with an unfettered activist president complaining about a do-nothing Congress while he initiates executive actions to implement a radical agenda and worse – packing the Supreme Court.
Live in Kansas and think Pat Roberts is a squish? Tough! Suck it up and support him.
Live in Kentucky and think Mitch McConnell is awful? Get over it and support him.
Live in Iowa and not a particular fan of Joni Ernst? Grow up and support her come hell or high water.
Live in Colorado and don’t think Cory Gardner is for you? Who cares? Support him or you are supporting Harry Reid.
Live in Arkansas and wish Tom Cotton wasn’t the nominee? So what? He’s the nominee, support him or lose more than that one race.
It doesn’t matter where you live—Louisiana, Michigan, Alaska, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire, anywhere—if you don’t suck it up, fight and work like your candidate won, you will be handing the Senate back to Harry Reid and the power to President Obama he has always sought – to fundamentally transform America.
It’s not the Senate that’s on the ballot this fall; it’s the Supreme Court.
In the last two years of his presidency, Barack Obama could appoint as many as three new justices to the Supreme Court. Would you like to see retiring justices replaced by young activist progressive nominees rubber-stamped by Harry Reid? Then work!
Yes, a Supreme Court nominee must overcome a filibuster according to Senate rules. But those are current rules and, as Harry Reid demonstrated for all other federal appointees, those rules can be changed at a moment’s notice and by a simple majority to fit whatever he and the president want at any time.
If you stay home, or if you simply vote and that’s it, you might as well be working for Harry Reid and Barack Obama. If the Supreme Court is lost, it will be lost for at least a generation. Then it won’t matter who you elect or who the next president is, the progressive agenda will be locked in as the law of the land for the foreseeable future.
You have a choice this fall: Sit on the bench or work to defeat whoever the Democrat is running for the Senate in your state. One choice is a vote for Harry Reid for Senate Majority Leader and more cover for President Obama’s abuses of power. The other will at a minimum apply pressure on the hemorrhaging wound from which our liberty is seeping.
The damage done to this country in recent years won’t be reversed by one election. No ship as big as the United States can be righted immediately. It will take time. But it can’t start being corrected until it stops getting worse. It can stop getting worse this fall if you vote and work to get others to do the same.
If you’re unhappy with your choices this fall, if your candidate didn’t win, you face a simple choice this November: Check your ego, pull your head out from where your hands are and get in the game. Or just quit. Which way are you going to go?
In some ways you are making my point. I think that the dedicated conservative of the right, and the rabid-most leftists of the left don’t pick the winner. It is the voters in between or those less motivated that do become motivated.
Much of this thread consists of argument of the question as to whether a truly informed conservative should not vote for a squish Rino that wins a particular primary during the General Election. If I lived in Thad Cochrane’s state I would be sleepless making that decision. I once lived in Kansas and I would have no trouble whatsoever voting for Roberts in the General Election because I have seen his voting record over many years. I was truly unimpressed by Wolfe who ran a smear campaign which did not appear to promote the conservative agenda and place it in front of the voters. He simply took the “tea party” mantle and wrapped himself in it by association only.
I think we need to motivate our base in general and we need to capture the middle like Reagan did and as other local strong conservatives have done in the past.
Over the years I have watched the third party efforts and the Ron Paul / Ross Perot idiot candidacies and seen it as something that allows the left to win.
Last time, "we" had to do this, and it didn't happen. What makes you think it will happen next time?
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Senate races will never become nationalized as long as Mitch McConnell is the Senate party leader. He doesn't know how.
-PJ
Thanks for your #300.. see my 301 to another poster.
The problems in the judicial branch run very deep and wide. A more arrogant bunch you will not find.
Oh, that’s grown-up. Twitlist? For some reason I thought trying to reason with you would end in up with you calling me names.
You vote? So what’s the argument?
OK
But the voting reality is:
Bush 2004(reelection): 62 million votes (50.7%)
Romney 2012: 61 million votes (47.2%)
McCain 2008: 60 million votes (45.7%)
Indications are that conservatives declining to vote for a liberal Republican don’t really make a difference unless they vote for a noticeably popular third-party candidate.
You still don’t have a single benefit that a republican senate for the next two years provides. I asked, you talk Easter bunny.
Here is my plan: conservative wave in 2016 with a conservative president. Liberals own the next two years and don’t get rino cover to advance their agenda as bipartisan. Gridlock stops major legislation, Obama was going to do what he does anyways.
Bonus points if we can hang this loss around mcconnell’s neck and get new leadership, but that is not likely.... But as unlikely as that is... It is more likely than a rino senate doing anything worth doing in the next two years.
It’s a twofer - the GOP-e for depressing GOP enthusiasm and MAYBE the GOP vote, and the grass roots GOP for MAYBE letting them.
Saw that too, like a poke in eye.
Tried to find the email address for the author but he doesn’t seem to make it available, the dumbass.
Or is it dumbas’s?
That's already happened once in our political history following Franklin Roosevelt's election and ensuing Democrat control of Congress. The Republicans, even under Eisenhower, only briefly controlled the Senate and never controlled the House. That did not turn out very well for either the nation or the conservative movement. I will certainly never endorse such a notion.
How do you propose to regain control of the Senate in 2016 if we do not do so in 2014? Have you seen the breakdown of the 2016 class and how much it favors the Democrats? The history of Senate elections shows that the deck is clearly stacked in favor of incumbents and even wave elections are tempered by that dynamic. The Senate tends not to jump on the wave.
I further believe that the chance of a 2016 wave are very remote. Liberals and Democrats will wish Obama into the cornfield and pretend that he never existed. Their pursuit of their fantasy world will shift to either Clinton or Warren and all the free stuffers will jump on board. Republicans are going to be hard pressed to find a candidate who can compete.
There are two ways to look at this, our political glass can be seen as half full or half empty. I say we are always better off being optimistic.
Only Tea Party orgs lost stroke in the Primaries, us grassroots “Tea Party” folks are still around and motivated and the GOPe knows it.
The vote that swing that was larger was how many fewer votes Obama had in ‘12 than in ‘08, not how many fewer Romney had than McCain.
AS turnout varies and voter roles increase, percentages tell a story that is different than numbers.
You mention third party candidates but don’t really express your thoughts on them. Mine are that they undercut the chances of whatever side of the political spectrum spawns them.
We make progress now and finish the job then. Your same statistics about incumbents is why I say no thank you to putting a rino in office.
Here in texas a while back, a republican names hassert worked with the democrats to be speaker by cross votes. It worked for a bit but then that guy and his allies were wiped out in primaries and general elections. The rinos are just as much the enemy as the democrats.
You still have not told me what the benefit of a GOP majority in the senate is. What good will they do that outweighs taking on rinos. I don’t need a perfect candidate, but Mitch “I’ll crush the tea party” is not a case of imperfect, it is a case of irreconcilable differences.
“First Hispanic president” will be a powerful selling point in 2016.
We talk about Reagan, but there was also Tip O'Neill, Tom Foley, Bob Michel, Trent Lott, Jim Wright, etc.
Those people didn't talk of hate, enemies, crushing, etc. They fought hard for their positions, but they didn't make it a blood sport.
Take no prisoners politics didn't begin until the Clinton administration, and the take-downs of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, followed by the Jim Jeffords party switch and Trent Lott's power sharing offer. I hope that Lott learned his lesson after he was driven out of the Senate after his trumped up comments about Strom Thurmon.
I hope that the entire GOP caucus learned the lesson of Trent Lott, that you cannot make good-faith gestures to today's Democrats in the expectation of receiving in-kind consideration in return.
Today's Republicans think they can mitigate Democrat intransigence. They can't. If they won't see the light, then they must go. If not sooner, time will take care of it later.
The bell will toll for 72 year old McConnell, 80 year old Hatch, 78 year old McCain, 81 year old Grassley, 78 year old Roberts, 79 year old Imhofe, 74 year old Alexander, 70 year old Enzi.
-PJ
Are to planning to vote for David Alameel for the U.S. Senate in Texas?
The point is that the thesis of the original article is wrong.
It’s not conservatives’ fault that McCain and Romney lost, and it won’t be conservatives’ fault when GOP Senate candidates lose. Moderates are running the show, almost exclusively.
The problem is that the Rove-Romney cabal can’t attract swing voters in enough numbers to elect Republicans. Since Reagan, there’s been no GOP attempt to attract swing voters with a conservative.
YOU guys are all the same lots of complaints but few answers other that sitting at home.
Here we go again. Conservatives are the bad ones if they refuse to vote for lefty R’s.
These RINO’s should just go sit on a traffic cone
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