Free Republic

<p>It’s hard to imagine a single person who had a worse year in politics than Barack Obama. His policy agenda went nowhere in Congress; his approval ratings tanked; and his party got demolished in midterm elections. On foreign policy, critics had harsh words for the way he dealt with Russia, ISIS, and even Ebola.</p>

President Obama is responding to a drubbing in the midterm elections with action. So far, it's paying off.Obama's poll numbers — which had previously slid into the low 40’s — are up, and the president has enjoyed a streak of good headlines.Those factors, coupled with a rising economy, are making the White House optimistic about his final two years in office.White House allies say the president feels an increased sense of liberation with the elections over. They predict that he will continue to be proactive in the face of the Republican Congress that will take power early next year.  ADVERTISEMENT...

Campaigns and political committees spent more than $1.5 million on private jets to fly in Bill and Hillary Clinton to stump for various candidates during the 2014 midterms, campaign filings show. The tally includes $44,360 the final weekend of the campaign for a plane in Iowa. That was when Bill Clinton did a fly-around for failed Democratic Senate hopeful Bruce Braley. There was also a $21,801 charge that weekend to Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s unsuccessful reelection campaign, a POLITICO review found. More than 60 payments were made to a New York-based company called Executive Fliteways over the course of 2013...

The most immediate consequence of the Democrats’ midterm disaster was losing control of the Senate and ceding Congress to the GOP. For the next two years, Democrats will have to deal with conservative legislation, right-wing hijinks, and—in all odds—a vacancy crisis, as Republicans freeze confirmations and refuse to fill spots in the executive branch and on the federal bench. That is bad for the Democratic Party. What’s on the horizon is worse. As Amy Walter notes for the Cook Political Report, Democrats lost big at all levels of government, including the states. “Today,” she writes, “about 55 percent of all...

REPUBLICANS STUNNING WINS MAKE ELECTORAL HISTORY The treasure trove of Congressional and down-ticket wins: <><> midterms were a massive and awesome rejection of liberals and Progressives, <><> Southern Democrats control not a single governorship, US senator or legislative chamber, <><> 73 percent of LA's white voters say they "strongly disapproved" of Obama, <><> Democrat losses stretch from the Carolinas westward to Texas, <><> Of 140 Southern States election districts---110 went Republican. <><> GOP House majorities are huge and solid. <><> NBC's Chuck Todd says Dems can't recapture losses until 2022, <><> Some pundits say Republicans have a 100-year majority;...

I thought it would be interesting to show how narrow it is...literally, but you can see the exact distribution of representation this post from The Blaze.

WASHINGTON — President Obama emerged from last week’s midterm election rejected by voters, hobbled politically and doomed to a final two years in office suffering from early lame-duck syndrome. That, at least, was the consensus in both parties. No one seems to have told Mr. Obama. In the 10 days since “we got beat,” as he put it, by Republicans who captured the Senate and bolstered control over the House, Mr. Obama has flexed his muscles on immigration, climate change and the Internet, demonstrating that he still aspires to enact sweeping policies that could help define his legacy.

There were 60 Democrats in the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, when they voted in lockstep to pass the Affordable Care Act. Soon there will be 46 Democrats in the Senate, or perhaps 47, if Sen. Mary Landrieu manages to eke out a win in Louisiana. In plain numbers, the post-Obamacare trajectory has not been good for Senate Democrats. The 46 or 47 Democrats in the next Senate are a bit different from the group that passed Obamacare. Sixteen of them took office after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. They never had to vote for it and...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The fate of a little-noticed ballot measure in strongly Democratic Oregon serves as a warning to President Barack Obama and his party about the political perils of immigration policy. Even as Oregon voters were legalizing recreational marijuana and expanding Democratic majorities in state government, they decided by a margin of 66-34 to cancel a new state law that would have provided driver's licenses to people who are in the United States illegally. Obama is considering acting on his own, as early as this week, to possibly shield from deportation up to 5 million immigrants now living...

If you’re a political junkie — or at least if you’re a conservative political junkie — you’ve probably seen the map. It’s a map of the United States showing the congressional districts won by Republicans in red and those won by Democrats in blue. It looks almost entirely red, except for some pinpoints of blue in major metropolitan areas and a few blue blotches here and there — in Minnesota, northern New Mexico and Arizona, western New England, along the Pacific Coast. Of course it’s misleading. Congressional districts are of basically equal population, and Democrats tend to roll up big...

Democrats in Pennsylvania cheered Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s ouster last week. But winning the governorship may not assuage the loss of their top Republican ally, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, who was deposed in a GOP leadership election on Wednesday. Notwithstanding the Republican governor’s 10-point defeat to Democrat Tom Wolf, Republicans picked up eight seats in the state House and three in the Senate. The gains bolster the GOP majority in the Senate to 30-20 and 119-84 in the House. That’s not strong enough to override a veto, but Democrats will now have a hard time passing legislation merely by...

"With or without help from Congress, I'm not done making real change for the American people," the president wrote in a new email, just three days after a similar email from the Democratic National Committee.

Andrew DuganNovember 12, 2014 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After the midterm elections that saw the Democratic Party suffer significant losses in Congress, a record-low 36% of Americans say they have a favorable opinion of the party, down six percentage points from before the elections. The Republican Party's favorable rating, at 42%, is essentially unchanged from 40%. This marks the first time since September 2011 that the Republican Party has had a higher favorability rating than the Democratic Party. Republican and Democratic Party Favorables, 1992-2014 These results come from a Nov. 6-9 Gallup poll, conducted after Republicans enjoyed a breathtaking sweep of...

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, as well Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama, should take heed. By a commanding 17 point margin, Americans want Congress to take the lead, according to a new Gallup Poll (hat tip: Bloomberg and Instapundit): Following the midterm election that some have termed a Republican wave, the majority of Americans want the Republicans in Congress -- rather than President Barack Obama -- to have more influence over the direction the country takes in the coming year. This is a switch from early 2012 when a slim plurality, 46%, wanted Obama to prevail in steering the nation....

One clear winner on election night was energy. While the economy may have been voters' primary concern and the president's health care law second, energy issues played a key role, especially in those states that gave Republicans control of the Senate. It's a message that those newly elected senators, all of whom stressed their support for expanding energy development, aren't likely to forget. And it's one that Senate Majority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell, who repeatedly stressed his support for the Kentucky coal industry in his campaign, will push to the forefront. First should come the easy stuff. There is bipartisan support...

In addition to the GOP gains in the U.S., Senate, House and governorships it was an historic night for the party in state legislatures. Here is the summary by Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures: The Republican wave that swept over the states left Democrats at their weakest point in state legislatures since the 1920s. Everything went in the direction of the GOP as Republicans seized new majorities in the West Virginia House, Nevada Assembly and Senate, New Hampshire House, Minnesota House and New York Senate, The West Virginia Senate is now tied. Control of several legislative...

... Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas voted for the Gang of 8 bill. He’s GONE. Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina voted for the Gang of 8 bill. GONE. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado voted for the Gang of 8 bill. GONE Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska voted for the Gang of 8 bill. Almost certainly GONE Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana voted for the Gang of 8 bill. She will probably be GONE after a January runoff. Alison Grimes supported the Gang of 8 bill in Kentucky. DEFEATED Michelle Nunn supported the Gang of 8 bill in Georgia. DEFEATED...

First and foremost, let me disabuse both Marxist Democrats and RINOs of the notion that the Republicans were elected so that they could compromise and get along with the Dems to enact legislation. That is NOT what occurred 4 November 2014. These elections – both nationwide and states' wide – were a repudiation and condemnation of big government, big spending, the US "progressive" (aka "Alinskyite") movement and – of course – Dictator-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama; both his policies and him personally. In other words, the American people finally awakened from their long and dissatisfying slumber

Looking back on the 2014 election cycle, I see two largely unnoticed turning points that worked against Democrats and in Republicans' favor. The first came in response to the October 2013 government shutdown. This was blamed, as shutdowns usually are, on Republicans, partly because of their skepticism about big government, and partly because media professionals tend to fault the GOP in any partisan fight. The shutdown occurred because about 40 Republican House members refused to support a continuing resolution funding the government without a proviso defunding Obamacare. Texas freshman Sen. Ted Cruz had been barnstorming the country arguing that this...

The Republican Tsunami that took place on November 4th is not just a mandate against the policies of President Obama (the President himself said that the election would be a referendum on his policies), but a Super-Mandate against not just the President’s policies but the President himself and the way he conducts business. […] His rush and push to make a bad deal with Iran even though “conveniently” postponed till after the election is causing a great deal of fear and trepidation among the American people. North Korea’s advance to the point of fitting a nuclear bomb on an ICBM...