Free Republic

Mid-term elections are generally not very pleasant for the president's party, especially when the president and congress are all lead by the same party.... The 2010 elections will be no different, the only real question is whether the losses will be small or large. The tea party and town hall protest movements show there is great anger and frustration amongst voters toward a congress that is out of touch with their constituents. Then there is the fastest growing voter block in the American electorate, Seniors: Bush's 2005 Social Security debaclealienated seniors and contributed to Republican congressional defeats in the 2006...

American voters are not satisfied with the amount "Hopey Changey" they have gotten since election day. According to the latest Rasmussen Poll , 57% of voters would vote to fire the entire Congress and start all over by replacing them with a new set of "representatives." Only 25% would keep the group we have now. Even though they are the party in control, only a plurality of Democrats (43%) want to keep the entire Congress.On the other hand, the vast majority of Independents (70%) would "throw all the bums out." Republicans, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly support replacing everyone in the Congress.

Republicans plan to use the government takeover of General Motors Corp. as ammunition in their bid to defeat congressional Democrats next year, saying its a glaring example of big government intrusion into the marketplace that will rankle average voters. They said the bankruptcy arrangement, which President Obama announced at the White House on Monday, is doomed to entangle politicians in business decisions... "We'll continue to make the case that President Obama and House Democrats want to do to America's health care system what they have done to General Motors," said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for House Republicans' campaign arm, the...

WASHINGTON -- Signing the Republican Party's post-election death certificate is risky business, but Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg did so last month -- predicting the GOP will remain in the political graveyard for many years to come. Perhaps one can forgive the head of the New Democrat Network (NDN) a moment of irrational exuberance when you consider that until Barack Obama's decisive victory, Democrats had won just three of the previous 10 presidential elections. Simon has suffered a lot of Democratic defeats, so when his party scored big on Nov. 4, well, let's just say his euphoria flowed over the top.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III ordered an internal investigation into whether bureau agents interfered with midterm congressional elections by disclosing a corruption probe that undermined the re-election bid of Republican Rep. Curt Weldon weeks before the Nov. 7 vote. The internal probe was disclosed in a Senate Judiciary Committee report containing the FBI's written answers to questions posed by committee members. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, asked why FBI agents searched the office of Mr. Weldon's daughter and a business associate three weeks before the elections. The publicity from the raid contributed to the Pennsylvania Republican's defeat and...

Interviewing anti-war Senator Russ Feingold this morning, Good Morning America weekend co-host Bill Weir offered his interpretation of the mid-term election results and virtually taunted Democrats for being insufficiently aggressive in confronting President Bush: "Do you hold your party responsible, not only for the authorization, but for the seeming inability to muster a unified front to fight the president on this, to get what you want, and apparently what the American people wanted with the mid-term elections, and end the war?"View video here.Feingold, in full pass-the-buck mode: "This is George Bush's war without a doubt."He continued: "Those Democrats who...

...there's a voting cohort between Generation Xers and boomers that bears watching. They're the not-so-young of Generation Jones. If they're not "the lost generation" they're invisible to most of our culture commentators. The Joneses, who were born between 1954 and 1965, are usually included in the boomer cohort, but Jonathan Pontell, a pop culture consultant who coined the name, says that's a mistake. He thinks the Jonesers may be crucial in next week's congressional elections. "Coming of age politically in the late 1970s and early 1980s," he says, "Jonesers were the much discussed 'ReaganYouth,' and is the most conservative U.S....

This summer I gave two speeches that defined the unique challenges that confront the United States as we conduct a new world war. I gave those speeches-one in Washington at the National Press Club, and one here in Pennsylvania at the Pennsylvania Press Club-because I believe that now more than ever we need to study the past, learn from events, and take proactive measures to protect our freedoms at home and provide a safer world in which to exercise those freedoms. I am here again today talking about this issue because Islamic Fascism continues to rear its ugly head. And...

In a new research paper, three political scientists attempt to use the results of generic congressional polls to predict the outcome of the midterm elections. "Via computer simulation based on statistical analysis of historical data, we show how generic vote polls can be used to forecast the election outcome. We convert the results of generic vote polls into a projection of the actual national vote for Congress and ultimately into the partisan division of seats in the House of Representatives. Our model allows both a point forecast-our expectation of the seat division between Republicans and Democrats-and an estimate of the...

It is now becoming increasingly apparent that the true scandal concerning a certain homosexual congressman's dirty instant messages and emails to teenage pages is just beginning to be heard. The Democrats, now wringing their hands, crying for the children and scaring us all with visions of pedophiles roaming the halls of congress, in fact not only knew the content of the various Foley e-mails and instant messages long before the Republican leadership of the house did, but did absolutely nothing about it for a very long time. The crocodile tears have been shown to be just that. There was absolutely...

When The Washington Monthly reached me at my office recently, a voice on the other side of the line meekly asked if I would ever consider writing an article supporting the radical proposition that Republicans should get their brains beaten in this fall. “Count me in!” was my chipper response. I also seem to remember muttering something about preferring an assortment of Bourbon Street hookers running the Southern Baptist Convention to having this lot of Republicans controlling America’s checkbook for the next two years. Maybe that’s because right-wing, knuckle-dragging Republicans like myself took over Congress in 1994 promising to balance...

GIGOT: Let me ask you, first, about the president's strategy, the Republican strategy to frame this election as a choice on national security. How do you think that's been working so far? BARONE: I think they have had considerable success in framing the issue that way.

WASHINGTON -- Even the most partisan Democrats have said all year they expected their 6- to 10-point advantage over the Republicans in the party-preference polls to tighten as Election Day neared. But certainly no one expected the midterm congressional elections to tighten as much as they have so early in the general election cycle. Earlier this month, the Gallup Poll reported a 4- to 6-point advantage for the Democrats, which fell to 2 to 3 points, and is now down to a "dead heat" among likely voters who say they will vote Republican (48 percent) and those who say they...

President Bush has dramatically enlarged the issue of terrorism in the 2006 midterm elections by revealing the names, faces and confessed plots of the Islamic radicals held by the CIA. In a sweeping, lay-it-all-out White House address that elevated the issue of the deadly dangers Americans still face from terrorism, Bush confirmed the existence of foreign-based CIA prisons where terrorists have been secretly interrogated by intelligence agents and even disclosed some of the plots they planned to execute against the United States and our allies. Last week's speech, part of a series of speeches to remind Americans of the increasing...

Zogby and the Wall Street Journal released a poll only two weeks after their last one. It represents a loss of 3.5 for Casey and a gain of 1.2% for Santorum. The Romanelli factor is unknown. Casey's lead has dropped from 9% in July and August to 4.1% today. The margin of error for poll was 3.3%. The polling was done between August 29th and September 5th, which means that only the last three days of polling would have covered the Meet the Press debate. The Casey performance's effect on this poll may be minimal. A 4.1% difference is closer...

Rick Santorum (R-PA) was recently as many as 20 points behind. He had shown clear signs of making a strong come-back, pulling to within single digits, apart from a fluky-seeming Gallup/USA Today poll showing him trailing by 18. Then he trounced Bob Casey, Jr. in the debates. Now, there are rumors he has pulled to within the margin of error, and the source is none other than Casey's own polling! [National Review]: An internal Casey polls shows Santorum within the margin of error. [National Review Citation]: Casey's handlers are at loggerheads as far as when/if/how to go negative. The fear...

Maybe it could be called “The Conspiracy Hour with Jack Cafferty.” On the September 2 “In the Money,” the program’s host recycled his theory that gas prices are dropping because of scheming oil companies. “You know, if you were a real cynic, you could also wonder if the oil companies might not be pulling the price of gas down to help the Republicans get re-elected in the midterm elections a couple of months away,” Cafferty suggested just a few days earlier on the August 30 “Situation Room.” “In the Money” contributor Jennifer Westhoven reminded Cafferty of his August 30 comments...

Democrats often portray themselves as a beacon to the poor and especially protectors of the sacred American middle class. They are prone at almost any time to break into song over the way Republicans "cater to the rich" by cutting taxes and "balance the budget on the backs of the poor." The ultra-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which has now become its dominant voice, is essentially made up of socialists, or those who endorse one of their main tenets: state-controlled distribution of wealth. They might couch these ideas in wholly American terms like workers' rights, or claim that it's...

by Mark Finkelstein August 1, 2006 - 07:55 Tim Russert used his Today show appearance this morning to paint a bleak tour d'horizon of Bush foreign policy, expressing the fond-wish-in-guise-of-a-question that the American people might come to their senses and throw the bums out at the mid-terms. Interviewed by co-host Campbell Brown, Russert first asked: "What's the end game? The concern among Republicans I've talked to is how are the American people viewing this? Is this blind allegiance to Israel or is this standing by the only ally we have in the region? They don't know how much longer there...

Farewell to Principle The Republican Party has lost his soul. First we all thought that it was just W's administration tryin to rally some hardcore social conservative support in order to improve his plummeting popularity. Well, as it turns out, the Republican strategy for this fall's elections will be based on fear (a republican classic) and big government. Of course republican leaders won't say that they want a bigger, stronger and more oppressive government, but their recent strategy certainly suggests so. For example, flag burning. Even though it's true that not all Congress republicans advocated for such an asinine...

Brian Straw, 19, said he uses a religious message to try to recruit Democrats at Hope College, the Christian university he attends in Holland, Mich. He argued that opposition among some Democrats to the death penalty and support for social programs should win over students who want to vote their conscience. "As a Christian I feel like I have to love everyone the same and I feel like (Republicans) are cutting taxes for the rich and services for the poor," Straw said. Republicans countered that they will continue to make inroads with college students who they say have increasingly turned...

How quickly things can change. For months Democrats have been basking in the glow of President Bush's dismal approval ratings, ongoing investigations of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and a White House in disarray and seemingly helpless to respond to the steady stream of bad news in Iraq. There has been giddy speculation by some Democrats about retaking control of one or both houses of Congress, and more than a few stories have popped up recently reporting that Democrats are already hard at work making plans for when they regain majority status in November. But a string of events over the...

Democrats believe that 2006 must be a year of significant transition in Iraq," says Democrat Party leader Howard Dean. On Thursday, Democrats will have a chance to say exactly what that means to them, when the U.S. House of Representatives begins debating another war resolution. This resolution, introduced by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), praises U.S. troops and rejects an "arbitrary date" for withdrawing them from Iraq, the Washington Post reported. According to the Washington Times, the resolution declares that the United States is "committed to the completion of the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure and united Iraq." House...

Liberal activists speaking at the "Take Back America" Conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday said a "human Congress" and a "Peoples Emergency Management Agency" are needed to help rebuild New Orleans because of the federal government's alleged failures both before and after Hurricane Katrina. They also accused the Bush administration of diverting funding that should be used to rebuild New Orleans "overseas to an unjust war" in Iraq. Rev. Lennox Yearwood, national coordinator for the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign, called Katrina the "lunch-counter logo for the 21st Century," a reference to discrimination against African-Americans who were refused seating at lunch counters...

Talk is increasing among House Democrats that if they fail to regain control after 12 years of a Republican majority, Rep. Nancy Pelosi should be replaced as the party's leader in the House.

PHOENIX (AP) - Hispanic groups on Tuesday filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to block and declare unconstitutional voter identification requirements imposed under a 2004 voter-approved state law. Voter registration drives are being hindered by the law's mandate for registrants to submit documents proving their citizenship, the lawsuit said. Also, the requirement to show specific types of ID when voting at polling places could keep citizens from exercising their voting rights, the suit claimed. The suit was filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Chicanos Por La Causa, Friendly House, Valle del Sol, Southwest Voter Registration...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- When J. Kenneth Blackwell took the stage here on May 2 to claim the Republican nomination for governor, he became something more than his party's standard-bearer in a bellwether state. The Ohio secretary of state -- a crusading conservative with an appetite for political combat -- also assumed a leading role in his party's latest effort to break the Democrats' decades-long grip on the black vote. Blackwell, who will face Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland in November, is now the third prominent African American on a statewide Republican ballot this fall. In Maryland, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele,...

President Bush delivered his fifth State of the Union speech, but he didn't address the issues that matter most to working, middle-class Americans, from substantive health care reform to assuring educational opportunity to combating the outright war on our middle class. President Bush hopes this latest address will lift his poll numbers and set the tone for the midterm congressional and senatorial election campaigns. But the president and the Republican Party face major challenges. The American electorate is dissatisfied with the president's conduct of the war in Iraq and frustrated with the rising cost of health care, unchecked illegal immigration,...

Of all the midterm elections of the last century, the elections of 1910 have to rank among the highest in terms of significance. Republicans had won the previous four presidential elections beginning with William McKinley’s first victory over William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Indeed, among Democratic presidential candidates, only Grover Cleveland had won the White House in the 50 years since Abraham Lincoln was first elected. The GOP seemed solidly in control of Congress, and the Republican Speaker of the House, "Uncle Joe" Cannon, ran the House of Representatives with an iron fist. Yet all was not well in the...

March 20, 2006, 8:09 a.m. March to the Senate How it’s looking. As we head into spring, this year's Senate races come into sharper focus. Democrats need to gain six seats to secure control of the chamber — a tall order, even as they stand poised for a good fall. Here's a quick tour of nearly two dozen contests, updating a report from January. ARIZONA: Before it's over, developer Jim Pederson, a Democrat who once headed the state party, will spend a bundle to defeat Republican senator Jon Kyl. A Pederson upset is not inconceivable, but it will take an...

President Bush delivered a partisan pep talk Thursday night to Republicans who may be jittery about midterm elections while his approval rating is at an all-time low. "We don't fear the future," Bush told donors who contributed $8 million Thursday night to support Republican House candidates. "We welcome it." Bush repeated a version of the no-fear refrain three times during a 24-minute speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee's fundraising dinner. He thanked Republican lawmakers for supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and said it's important that they stay in control of Congress to pass greater tax cuts, cut...

The U.S. economy is producing jobs ever-faster, reinforcing President Bush's arguments that tax cuts were needed to stoke the nation's engine of growth. After weeks of frustratingly weak job-approval numbers, followed by the Dubai ports fiasco that threatened to drive Mr. Bush's numbers deeper into the hole, the spectacular jobs report came out just at the moment when he and the country needed a dose of good news. The Labor Department data showed businesses created 243,000 new jobs in February, beating all the consensus estimates by more than 40,000 jobs and giving the stock market something to cheer about. It...

by Mark Finkelstein March 9, 2006 Joe Scarborough had some tough stuff for both parties today. He revealed that Republicans believe they will lose the House of Representatives in 2006. But no thanks to the Dems, whose failure to exploit the political opportunity he explained in terms of their being "stupid." Scarborough's appearance with Matt Lauer on this morning's Today show capped a long segment themed "Has Bush Lost His Clout?" The answer was a resounding 'yes' in NBC's mind. Today outlined a litany of presidential woe, including: Being forced to accept changes to the Patriot Act to win its...

With the announcement of Bill Thomas’s retirement, many have begun to take closer notice of the number of open seats in 2006 – and how they seem to favor the Democrats. Most political observers have recognized that the number of open seats is a critical factor in the partisan composition of the House, and that this year the Republicans must defend more than the Democrats. However, few have correctly surmised that the Democrats enjoy little-to-no real advantage because of open seats.All political scientists agree that open seats are a key method of party changes in the House of Representatives. Only...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech will stress his optimistic vision for Iraq and the U.S. economy in a strategy aimed at giving Republicans a potential road map to victory in November and boosting his own weakened standing. Sweeping proposals along the lines of his big Social Security revamp -- which fizzled after its high-profile roll-out a year ago -- were not expected in the annual speech on Tuesday night before millions watching on television. Bush goes into the speech burdened by a stubbornly low job approval rating of about 43 percent, reflecting disapproval...

Somewhere between President Bush’s Veterans Day’s speech last year when he personally fired back at Democrats who had been continually suggesting that he had lied the country into war and the December 16th New York Times revelation of the NSA wiretapping program, the outlook for the 2006 elections began to shift.Many of today’s pundits are getting side-tracked by the Abramoff scandal and are missing the change in the political terrain. While the Abramoff mess is indicative of much of what is wrong in Washington, it is not the earth shattering political typhoon that is going to wipe out the Republican...

Yes, President Bush gave a good speech Thursday night but no amount of inspiring rhetoric can obscure the fact that Hurricane Katrina may well have drowned the Republican Party as a credible vehicle of conservative reform. Why? Consider House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s stunning assertion the day before Bush spoke from New Orleans that 11 years of GOP control of Congress has “pared [government] down pretty good.” Here’s what he said when a puzzled reporter asked if Delay really was suggesting there is no fat to cut in the federal budget to help pay Katrina recovery costs: "My answer to...

A Handful of House Races in '06 May Hinge On Voter Dissatisfaction With Washington WASHINGTON -- Incumbent advantages are so widely recognized that it's sometimes easy to forget: A few House districts really are up for grabs in the 2006 midterm elections. This select group will draw an outsize share of campaign funds and media attention next year, because it will almost certainly produce whatever partisan shifts emerge in the chamber's narrow but stable Republican majority. The Democrats' long-shot hope for recapturing control rests on the chance -- slim but not out of the question -- that voters' rising discontent...

<p>The concession speech -- the biggest crock in politics.</p> <p>Take the one delivered by Bill McBride Tuesday evening, for example.</p> <p>Having just been trounced by a down-and-dirty Republican campaign, McBride congratulated Jeb Bush on his win, said Florida was one big family and Bush had been chosen as the family's head, and made a pitch for consensus.</p>

<p>How in the world, the party's reigning liberals wondered aloud for eight years during Ronald Reagan's presidency, could a former movie actor be elected to the most important position on this planet?</p> <p>In the same vein, most of them have ruminated over the astronomical approval ratings for George W. Bush, whom they regard as a crass MBA who is not only intellectually inferior but an interloper whose victory two years ago was the product of election fraud.</p>

October 12, 2002 It's the War, Stupid By FRANK RICH As soon as President Bush rolled out his new war on Iraq, the Democrats in Washington demanded a debate, and debates they got, all right. There was the debate between Matt Drudge and Barbra Streisand about the provenance of an antiwar quote she recited at a party fund-raiser. There was the debate about whether Jim McDermott, Democratic Congressman from Washington, should have come home from Baghdad before announcing on TV that we can take Saddam Hussein's promises at "face value." There were the debates about why Al Gore took off...

From Washington Whispers at U. S. News and World Report... A plan born in the wake of the 2000 Florida election crisis, when the GOP sent a strike force to the state for George W. Bush, will be dusted off for the fall House elections. Republicans are working on a "72-hour strategy" of sending Hill aides, lawyers, and lobbyists to the 20 to 40 key House districts to get out the vote for GOP candidates. "It used to be," said one planner, "that the Republicans worked hard all week and kicked back with a martini on the weekends. But that's...

Maybe I am totally off base, and probably I should keep my views to myself, but I sense a Democratic victory in Congress in the making. It is true that President George W. Bush still has sky high ratings among the electorate. They see him as someone who thinks like they do. No matter what issues the Democrats throw at the President, nothing sticks to him. They used to call Ronald Reagan the Teflon President, but if Bush continues these ratings into 2004, he will do Reagan one better.The Bush ratings do not apply to his party, however. In fact,...

TRIO CON BRIO They don't work together often, but when they do, you can expect the work of Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg and political consultants Bob Shrum and James Carville to be something special for Democrats. And in the case of a recent poll and analysis, their output certainly brought smiles to the faces of people like Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt. That's because the three-headed monster reports that Republicans are highly vulnerable in the 2002 elections. So vulnerable, in fact, that Democrats are in prime position to sweep through statehouses and both houses of Congress. The poll, taken in...

Midterm elections are almost always tough on the party in the White House. A key reason these elections have been hard on Republicans is the economy.The U.S. has had recessions and rising unemployment in four of the last five midterm election years in which a Republican was in the White House: 1970, 1974, 1982, and 1990. Although the economy was not in a recession in 1986 it was the weakest election year during the 1980s expansion.The Democrats, by contrast, have had a consistently favorable economic environment. Their midterm years — 1962, 1966, 1978, 1994, and 1998 — all had...

Why should Republicans bother to vote GOP next November 5? Inexplicably, President Bush and congressional Republicans are giving their party base myriad reasons to go fishing on Election Day. Republicans and Democrats have proven to be pigs in a bipartisan pen on pork-barrel spending. While some Republicans still treat taxpayers' dollars with reverence, too many more stand gleefully at the trough, snout-by-snout, with their Democratic colleagues. This Congress is set to hike federal spending by 15 percent over just two years, more than quadruple the inflation rate. Most of this does nothing to fight terrorism. On May 13, Bush signed...