Free Republic

Still waiting for ACU and Club for Growth to update their numbers to reflect 2013. As usual, senators up for reelection on top, primary dates included.

The balance in the 2014 race for a majority in the Senate seems to have shifted -- toward the Republicans. Two polls released today showed Louisiana Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu trailing Republican challenger John Cassidy and New Hampshire Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen running even with former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown. Here is how Republicans are faring in seven seats that are up in states carried by Mitt Romney. I've shown the Real Clear Politics averages or, when that wasn't available, an average from the two most recent public polls (an asterisk means there wasn't an RCP average available). Following that...

Read 'Here's The Republican Path To Taking Back The Senate' on Yahoo7 Finance Australia. American Crossroads, the Republican super PAC... Article Link: Here's The Republican Path To Taking Back The Senate - Yahoo7 Finance Australia (http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-republican-path-taking-back-182555056.html) Posted with Article Posting Assistant: (http://code-happy.bahits.com/?p=62)

Republicans have leads in five crucial Senate races, according to new polling conducted for the GOP-aligned group American Crossroads.

Is this the best the Establishment has got on Chris McDaniel? A super PAC associated with former Mississippi Gov. and current lobbyist Haley Barbour has resorted to attacking McDaniel for voting for bills that Barbour supported and signed into law. And in one instance, the group accuses McDaniel of voting for a bill he didn't vote for. Barbour, incidentally, also signed that one into law. McDaniel has secured endorsements from the conservative groups like the Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund, Heritage Action, and Freedomworks. The Washington establishment appears to be deeply concerned that Cochran is in trouble before...

Congressman Tom Cotton holds a five-point lead over incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor in Rasmussen Reports’ first look at the 2014 U.S. Senate race in Arkansas. A new statewide survey of Likely Arkansas Voters finds Cotton with 45% support to Pryor’s 40%. Five percent (5%) like some other candidate in the race, and 10% are undecided.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- Nine months before Kentucky's 2014 U.S. Senate election, Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes leads five-term incumbent Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) 46% to 42% in a WHAS11/Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll released Thursday. McConnell enjoys a comfortable 26 point margin in the Republican primary contest against Matt Bevin in the poll conducted by Survey USA and commissioned by a partnership of WHAS11, The Courier-Journal, WKYT-TV in Lexington and the Lexington Herald-Leader.

After his YouTube video in which he blasted Obamacare and the Republican establishment in Washington for not combating it fiercely enough went viral late last year, conservative Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse has rocketed from obscurity to holding a virtual tie for the party's Senate nomination. A Harper Polling poll released Wednesday found that Sasse, the former Bush administration Health and Human Services Department official who is the country's youngest president of a university (Midland), trails former Nebraska state Treasurer Shane Osborn by only one percentage point in the race to replace retiring Sen. Mike Johanns. Osborn is at 30...

Sen. Lindsey Graham leads his challenges in the lead up to South Carolina’s Republican primary, but does not appear to have enough support to avoid a run-off, according to a poll by Wenzel Strategies. Currently, Graham holds 46 percent support among Palmetto state Republicans while state Senator Lee Bright trails by 17 percent. Nancy Mace, one of the first women to go to the Citadel, and businessman Richard Cash both receive 5 percent. Attorney and Afghan war vet Bill Connor falls last with 4 percent. The poll was sponsored by Bright. Although Graham holds a strong lead, he needs more...

COLUMBIA, SC — Sen. Lindsey Graham leads his nearest Republican challenger by 28 percentage points, according to a new poll from Wenzel strategies. But the poll -- paid for and released Thursday by the campaign of state Sen. Lee Bright, one of four Republicans vying to unseat Graham in June's primary -- shows Graham did not get more than 50 percent of the vote, which he would need to avoid a runoff election. That's important because, with a crowded Republican primary field, the only way a challenger has a chance is to get into a runoff. More than 22 percent...

RALEIGH — FreedomWorks, a national grassroots conservative organization, endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Greg Brannon on Tuesday night, comparing him to tea party figures Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe traveled to North Carolina for the event at the BBQ Lodge in Raleigh and introduced Brannon as the next U.S. senator from North Carolina. “We’re definitely in it to win it, and I think if you want to win the general, you’re going to win it with a candidate who stands for something, that authentically believes in what he’s talking about,” Kibbe said. “If you look at the...

**SNIP** Most notably, the president “stressed how important keeping the Senate is this year,” this person said. The discussion comes amid rising anxiety among some Democrats about how the president’s declining popularity might affect the party’s ability to maintain control of the Senate. Republicans are increasingly hopeful of picking up six or more seats to narrowly retake control of the chamber. Aides to two of the most at-risk Democrats – Mark Begich (Alaska) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) – confirmed that their bosses attending the meeting.

Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Chochran is in trouble, and the GOP establishment is pulling out all the stops to save him. A pro-Cochran super PAC associated with former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is already on the airwaves to define upstart conservative state Senator and challenger Chris McDaniel five months before the primary. And even Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who on Sunday endorsed Cochran, criticized the group on Monday. “I’m disappointed in that – it’s just not something that’s necessary,” Bryant said on Monday, according to the Clarion-Ledger. “I would urge them to stop the Republican-on-Republican attack. I believe it was...

There has been numerous articles on the possible Republican takeover of the Senate by concentrating Republican effort and resources on the six Democrat Senators that are up for reelection in Red States that Romney won in the 2012 election. This is all well and good but it would be a giant mistake to ignore the Blue State senatorial races. After all, there are NINETEEN Democrat senators up for reelection this year. There is no reason to believe these Democrats are any less vulnerable then their Red State cronies. This year is not a "normal" election. The Blue State voters who...

A conservative group is launching a new campaign which calls on "the GOP leadership in both the House and the Senate to step aside." ForAmerica told CNN that it's putting six figures behind its "Dump the Leadership" campaign between now and November's leadership elections. The group says that its digital ads will target House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Cornyn, and the group adds that the first paid spots are now up online. "Time and again, year after year, the Republican...

These ads and this poll must really be eating away at Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). In a recent appearance on WKXL radio, Shaheen parroted the problematic Zeke Emanuel line in response to questions about the president's bogus "keep your doctor" pledge, and ducked giving a direct answer on whether she'd vote for Obamacare all over again (click through for audio): Americans who have lost access to their health care providers due to ObamaCare may be able to get their old doctors back but only if they are “willing to pay more.” That’s Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-NH) solution to the problems...

It’s bad enough that Mitch McConnell is a terrible leader in the Senate who regularly gets outmaneuvered by Harry Reid, but he’s also a lousy Senate candidate. In fact, the only reason the GOP is risking a Senate seat in a state Mitt Romney won by 22 points is because McConnell is so unpopular. Despite the fact that Matt Bevin has low name recognition, he’s already out-polling McConnell in a head-to-head race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes. In a state where McConnell has almost universal name recognition, those are Todd Akinesque numbers. If Mitch McConnell stepped aside, Bevin would win...

<p>WASHINGTON — A top Tea Party group practically declared war on the Republican Party establishment Monday, launching a super PAC to target GOP incumbents in Senate races who don’t meet its conservative standards.</p> <p>In announcing the move, the Tea Party Patriots’ Super PAC put a bull’s-eye on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who already face tough re-election contests.</p>

After wasting nearly $325 million during the 2012 election cycle with nothing to show for it and then declaring war on the Tea Party, donations to Karl Rove's three Crossroads groups decreased by 98% last year. The groups reportedly raised a paltry $6.1 million combined in 2013. .... Since then, as Breitbart News reported, "Rove’s organization has been so tarnished among the conservative base that candidates fear donors will not contribute to any group associated with him." Aware of this, Rove's Crossroads network has reloaded with groups that share donors but are technically not affiliated on paper with them.

Listen to this audio from an interview with Matt Bevin on the Andrew Wilcow show… the interesting part comes in at 13:45 where Bevin is asked about whether McConnell has agreed to debate him and he said no. Apparently, McConnell’s strategy is to act like Bevin doesn’t even exist. He’s been attacking Allison Grimes on the Democrat side of the contest. If it’s true that McConnell has refused to debate Bevin, he needs to be called to the carpet.