Free Republic

Republicans prepare for a comeback: ‘We can’t come off as a bunch of angry white men’ By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News Political Reporter CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Republican National Committee members gathered here to re-elect Chairman Reince Priebus for a second term. But by week's end, that vote seemed secondary to the question of the party's long term survival. After three months of denial, anger, despair and depression over the results of a bruising national election that gave Democrats an edge in Congress and kept President Barack Obama in the White House, Republicans know they must adapt if they are to...

Right now the political landscape is grim for Republicans–and in the short term, thanks to the so-called fiscal cliff, things may get grimmer still. But moments like these can pass, often quicker than we think. And next year may turn out to be one in which the pernicious effects of the Affordable Care Act–aka ObamaCare–really begin to kick in, from higher premiums to the loss of employer-based health insurance to the start of enrollment in insurance exchanges. It will become more and more clear to the public what a nightmarish law the Affordable Care Act actually is. “The administration is...

ALBANY — The state Senate will return to Republican control in January. A judge on Saturday certified a result that showed a Long Island Republican won a key seat in the Nov. 2 election, meaning the GOP will have at least a 32-30 edge over Democrats when the Senate’s new session starts next month. (A pending recount in Westchester County could give the GOP a 33-29 majority.) The result gives Republicans their only power base in a state where Democrats hold the Assembly and the three statewide offices: governor, comptroller and attorney general. The final tally in the Long Island...

Gay-rights activists in Minnesota thought 2012 would be the year they could finally make a serious push for gay marriage in the state, but a surprise Republican takeover of the Legislature has them back on the defensive instead. Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council, said Thursday that his group will push for a statewide vote in 2012 to ban gay marriage and civil unions in Minnesota's Constitution. Previous efforts to do so in 2004, 2005 and 2006 met a firewall in the strongly Democratic state Senate, but that liberal majority crumbled in Tuesday night's election. And despite a...

For all the turmoil, the spectacle, the churning — for all the old bulls slain and fuzzy-cheeked freshmen born — the great Republican wave of 2010 is simply a return to the norm. The tide had gone out; the tide came back. A center-right country restores the normal congressional map: a sea of interior red, bordered by blue coasts, and dotted by blue islands of urban density. Or to put it numerically, the Republican wave of 2010 did little more than undo the two-stage Democratic wave of 2006 to 2008, in which the Democrats gained 54 House seats combined (precisely...

Will Redistricting Be a Bloodbath for Democrats?Republicans See Historic Victories; Gain Control of At Least 19 Democratic-Held State Legislatures By HUMA KHAN Nov. 4, 2010 Republicans gained a historic edge over Democrats in state legislature elections that will have national implications for years to come. State legislatures in 44 states are responsible for one of the most important political processes: drawing district boundaries for the U.S. House of Representatives. In a process that usually triggers partisan bickering, the reigning party usually has the upper hand, especially if the governor is also from the same party and cannot veto the legislature's...

Tuesday was a great day for Republicans, not just because they won a lot of new congressional seats. It was also about which seats they captured. To note just a few of the most prominent examples, grizzled Democratic incumbents such as Minnesota's Jim Oberstar, South Carolina's John Spratt, and Pennsylvania's Paul Kanjorski lost Tuesday after serving for decades in the House. These gains for Republicans are powerful examples of principled opposition trumping entrenched power and money, and they are encouraging.

GOP's Kirk wins Obama's old seatFrom the NBC News political team Republican Mark Kirk is NBC's projected winner of the Illinois Senate race, snatching the seat that former Sen. Barack Obama held in Illinois. Kirk defeated Obama ally Alexi Giannoulias. Giannoulias struggled to overcome reports that his family's failed bank made loans to known criminals. The president and the first lady both made stops in the state to try to boost the Democrat. **SNIP** The victory for Kirk gives Republicans a net gain of five Senate seats so far tonight.

The most captivating political story of the present moment is not the Republican resurgence but rather the ongoing diminution of President Barack Obama. It is a story that started almost as soon as he took office, took hold with the passage of the stimulus, played itself out during the health-care debate and its aftermath, and reached its inevitable climax on Tuesday night. It is the story not of policy but rather of personality, and what makes it so captivating is its element of mystery. President Obama, after all, was elected by virtue of his personality, which provided not only contrast...

Saying he got the message from voters, President Obama invited Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress to the White House after he returns from his trip to Asia to discuss the economy, tax cuts and unemployment insurance. Following a Cabinet meeting, Obama told reporters he invited presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell to meet with him on Nov. 18. The meeting is also to include current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats. Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures -- the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats. The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have...

Tom Junod’s eulogy for Barack Obama’s mystique in Esquire indulges in overwrought excuse-seeking and ultimately misses the obvious conclusion, but it’s notable for recognition of one central fact: Obama as President has been the Incredible Shrinking Man, and in more than one way. Not only does Obama seem incapable of offering soaring rhetoric that engages and inspires millions now –as Junod puts it, he no longer seems born to fill stadiums like a rock star — but the rhetoric Obama does offer makes it seem that Obama can’t even engage himself. As the Anointed Obama vanishes, all that’s left is...

Now that the dust has settled on the 2010 midterm elections, it’s slowly becoming clear just how monumental the results really are. We saw an extreme left-wing agenda suffer a crushing defeat. At the ballot box, voters took Obamacare and the stimulus and wrapped them right around the necks of those same House members and senators who had arrogantly dismissed the concerns voiced in countless town halls and Tea Party rallies up and down the country. Voters sent commonsense conservatives a clear mandate to hold the line against the Obama agenda. Does that mean Republican candidates can look forward with...

Hey gang- I am new here. I was looking for Conservative boards to post on during the election and they just weren’t very good. Someone told me about this site so I figured I’d check it out. I felt compelled to log-up after the Republicans took massive control of the US House this election. Like most of you I was over-joyed when the Democrats got swept out of Congress. But we have seen how the tea leaves (pun intended) change. The last two cycles the Republicans got waxed, we were losing seats in strong Conservative areas. That cycle is now...

Don't blame the Democrats for the defeat of Christine O'Doneell and Sharon Angle. The RINOs have worked hard and worked WITH the Dims to make sure that the Tea Party candidates would not win. In Delaware, it was Karl Rove who opposed O'Donnell. In Nevada, it was a state level RINO who supported the Democrat. In Alaska, RINOs have done everything to prevent Joe Miller from winning. You can be sure that Ken Buck must have been done in by RINOs like Karl Rove. A suggestion to hit back at them - deny RINOs the right to post on FR....

While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats. Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures -- the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats. The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have...

Massive gains by the GOP from top to bottom augur well for redistricting and the 2012 presidential race. A few liberal media talking heads are saying today that the Republicans fell short yesterday, since the Democrats held onto control of the Senate. This summary of what happened reminds me of the old joke about the match race during the Cold War between a Russian horse and an American horse. The American horse wins the race easily, and in the next day’s Pravda, the headline is: “Russian horse second, American horse next to last.”Yes, the Democrats survived and appear to have...

On the whole, these insurgents lost big. And that's good news for the Republicans David Frum The Republican leaders won twice last night. They won a majority in the House of Representatives and a big gain in the Senate. Those leaders also won an important psychological contest inside the Republican party: Three ridiculously winnable Senate seats have been thrown away by incompetent Tea Party radicals: Delaware, Nevada, and possibly Colorado. Meanwhile two tough seats have been won by level-headed Republican moderates: Illinois and Ohio. The ultra-radical Rand Paul won his race in Kentucky and will be coming to Washington to...

A day after President Obama got what he called a "shellacking" in the midterm elections, he took full responsibility for the outcome that turned over the House to the Republicans. Pundits will spend the next few days poring over the numbers. But judging from the questions reporters asked at the news conference, the defeat is being cast as a clear message from voters that Obama is going in the wrong direction.(snip)For the last two years, the electorate has been subjected to lies about Obama's religion, his heritage and his agenda. These deliberate falsehoods were designed to scare the bejeezus out...

So much of the national media's attention is focused Wednesday, shockingly, on Washington, where they live and work and where Republicans captured a half-dozen new Senate seats and five dozen new House seats. But out where most regular Americans live and work, voters also made historic changes -- to the long-lasting benefit of Republicans. This is especially important in years ending in '00 because these newly elected governors and state legislators will (with the exception of California) be the ones redrawing legislative and congressional district lines that will stand for the next decade until the 2020 census. And occupying the...