Free Republic

A few weeks ago I wrote a column comparing the 1994 election for the U.S. House of Representatives with this year’s election. I concluded the column by pointing out that history rarely repeats itself exactly. How wrong I was. The current page scandal is an exact re-run of the scandal House Democrats faced in 1994 over the House Bank and the House postal system, except that the parties are reversed. This year it’s the Republicans who are on the ropes and the outcome should be the same…devastating results for the party in power. Let’s review the bidding. In 1994, then...

One of the stories going around Democrat Party circles is that party operatives like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and American Family Voices weren't quite ready for primetime with the opposition research materials they had gathered for the 2006 election cycle. According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party organizations, "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de grace, not the first shot." So why the rush? According to another DNC operative: bad polling numbers across the...

GOP leaders privately said that Democrats are edging much closer to locking down a majority of House seats because a small but significant number of conservatives are frustrated with Republican governance, while independent swing voters are turning against GOP candidates. A Democratic takeover of the House is not a foregone conclusion, however. Because of congressional redistricting plans that gave huge advantages to incumbents, fewer than 50 of the 435 House seats are competitive. Democrats said internal polls show that the fallout from the Foley scandal is confined to half a dozen races. Moreover, House elections are traditionally shaped by local...

Trailing in his bid to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democratic challenger Phil Angelides will begin airing a biographical TV ad Tuesday in a late-hour bid to tell his story to voters who may know little or nothing about him. The ad, to run in markets statewide, entwines family footage of the candidate with details skimmed from his resume as a Sacramento businessman-politician. Opening with chiming guitar chords from the Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow," it alludes to his political awakening in the Nixon era and later features a shot of Angelides with U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

A pro-Proposition 87 commercial featuring former Vice President Al Gore -- his first television advertisement since he last ran for office -- was unveiled Monday at a Palm Springs hotel.

California voted three times to elect Al Gore to national office, twice in the 1990s as Bill Clinton’s running mate, then in 2000 for president. The former vice president carried California in a landslide over George W. Bush as part of his national popular vote victory in the presidential race. Now he’s back campaigning in California, appearing in his first TV commercial since his own campaign, on behalf of Proposition 87, the oil extraction tax for alternative fuels research. The ad will begin airing throughout California later this afternoon. The campaign will unveil the ad with events in 11 cities...

Worried Democrats said Sunday that Phil Angelides failed to achieve the breakthrough he needed in the sole gubernatorial debate and expressed fear that his campaign's trajectory threatened others on the statewide ticket. Fellow Democrat John Garamendi, in a tight race for lieutenant governor against Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, has started to distance himself from Angelides. On Sunday, the example cited repeatedly by Angelides' disappointed party brethren was the 1994 election, when then-Treasurer Kathleen Brown lost in a landslide and dragged several fellow Democrats down with her. "When you have a situation like we had in 1994, when the top...

According to a poll released Monday by the Public Policy Institute of California, Schwarzenegger leads Angelides, 46 to 33 percent. Even in the notoriously liberal San Francisco Bay Area, Schwarzenegger leads Angelides 42 to 37 percent — despite the Angelides camp's attempts to link him to President George W. Bush, who sports a 25 percent approval rating in the same region. That's why union workers and other tried-and-true Santa Cruz Democrats are joining a statewide campaign to get out the vote next week, complete with door hangers, posters and old-fashioned precinct walking. UC Santa Cruz liberals were trying to talk...

Here is my bottom five: 39- Ulysses Grant 40- Warren Harding 41- Herbert Hoover 42- Millard Fillmore 43- George W Bush List your bottom five, or just the worst one and give us your reasons why.

Despite The Foley Scandal, Some Issues Can Carry G.O.P. Through In the wake of the Mark Foley sex scandal, Republicans are doing their best to hold the party together in the face of the upcoming election in which Democrats are making serious threats to retake control of Congress.

Schwarzenegger depicts his foe as a big spender. Angelides compares his rival to Bush, Hastert. Trailing badly in polls, Democrat Phil Angelides on Saturday used the first and only debate of the governor's race to question Arnold Schwarzenegger's integrity and try to yoke him to President Bush and embattled Republicans in Congress. A jocular Schwarzenegger parried with one-liners and invoked major bipartisan agreements with state lawmakers, portraying Angelides as a big-spending liberal who was eager to hike taxes on those who could least afford it. The issue of taxes, the governor's preferred ground, dominated the debate. Schwarzenegger mocked state Treasurer...

As time passes, it is increasingly clear that the ABC News report which started the Foley firestorm is odorous—and I’m not talking Chanel. (1) It dealt with the emails which the FBI and many media organizations considered as innocuous as the Republican leadership did. Who circulated these reports is not yet clear.Foley’s spokesman said his opponent, Mahoney had been shopping the story to the media for some time....(much more)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has been all over the place talking about what Democrats will do after they win Nov. 7. But it's hard to take her seriously when she promises to "jump-start our economy and reform our economic policy . . . to address the needs of working families." Huh? "Jump-start the economy"? That's what President Bush did in 2003, when he pushed through bold, broad tax cuts to end a slump that began in 2000 under a Democratic administration. What do the Democrats promise to do about all this prosperity? They'll let the tax cuts lapse, socking...

In a relatively uneventful debate Saturday night with no clear winner, Phil Angelides, the state treasurer and underdog Democratic candidate for governor, may have come out ahead by simply sharing a stage with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "At least he'll be in the same news cycle (as Schwarzenegger),'' sighed one labor official who is supporting Angelides. Analysts noted Saturday that the debate may have marked one of Angelides' first -- and last -- chances to make an impression.

By one recent count, there have been 23 TV ads aired during the current U.S. Senate campaign, with maybe half that could be classified as negative. Given the closeness of the race and the way things are going, here are scripts of political commercials that may be coming soon to a television screen near you: Bob Corker appears with his mom, sitting in a porch swing, as she smiles and says, "Son, you know I'm so proud of our family." "Me, too, Mom," Corker replies. "You know, I've wondered why my liberal Washington insider opponent never talks about his family....

"I can tell by the joy I see in your eyes that you love to raise taxes," the governor said to Angelides. "Why don't you just say right now, 'I love increasing your taxes.'" Angelides said his plan was to raise taxes on the wealthy and close corporate tax loopholes, in part to help California balance its budget and fully fund education. "Who can you trust to do the right thing by middle class families in this state?" Angelides said. The governor noted the difference between California's economic situation today and three years ago, when Davis was ousted amid a...

After a week of disarray and finger-pointing, Republicans are trying to rally the party and its base voters around a three-part strategy: close ranks around House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, question whether the Democrats colluded with the media to disclose messages sent by former representative Mark Foley, and focus on Democratic sex scandals to reclaim the GOP's place as a party of strong values. Now, newly aggressive House Republicans are turning the tables on Democrats by demanding that House Democratic leaders testify under oath about when they knew about Foley's electronic exchanges with House pages. Seeking to tar the Democratic...

Come hell or high water-ran the conventional wisdom-Republicans could rely on two issues to win elections: the war on terror and values. Then came Mark Foley. The drip-drip-drip of scandal surrounding the former Congressman from Florida, which became a deluge this week, now threatens to sink Republican hopes of keeping control of Congress, says the NEWSWEEK poll out today. For the first time since 2001, the NEWSWEEK poll shows that more Americans trust the Democrats than the GOP on moral values and the war on terror. Fully 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win control of Congress next...

The national immigration debate is reverberating in California's gubernatorial campaign, with the two major-party candidates trading verbal jabs but treading carefully on the volatile issue. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has talked tough in the past on border-related issues — praising Minuteman-style private border patrols and supporting the anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 — now plays up his immigrant roots, calling for a comprehensive and compassionate border policy that bolsters security without mistreating illegal immigrants. Schwarzenegger has labeled Angelides weak on national security for not supporting the deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops to the border. He also has criticized him for...