Free Republic

There is a widespread assumption that President Obama has expanded the electorate and inspired booming voter turnout. One could make a case for that based on the 2008 election. But since then, not so much. Looking back over the past 15 years, the biggest surge in voter turnout came during George W. Bush's presidency. In the Obama years, turnout actually declined in both the 2012 presidential and the 2014 congressional elections. In 2000, about 105 million Americans voted for president. In 2004, 122 million did. That's a 16 percent rise, the largest between two presidential elections since 1948 and 1952....

This mid-term election was clearly a repudiation of President Obama's"transformational" agenda. The majority of voting Americans were not pleased with the America the Obama administration has created. Americans weren't anti-incumbent; it was Democrat incumbents who felt the wave of voter anger. Democrats lost governorships in Illinois, MA, and Maryland where President Obama helped campaign. The GOP owns majorities in 70 percent of the state legislators. They control both houses of Congress in Washington. America has had enough of this Democrat nightmare.This election landslide was not a GOP endorsement but a challenge for them to lead in establishing a national agenda...

Since Officer Darren Wilson killed the unarmed Brown on a Ferguson street, much has been made of the city's supposed history of poor voter turnout. In a city that is two-thirds black, how, many asked, could the police force and local government be so overwhelmingly white? . . . To put it bluntly, voter turnout for Ferguson township was far from historic. Of 24,334 registered voters, 10,222 cast ballots in Tuesday's election, a turnout of slightly more than 42%, according to an initial tally. There wasn't a wave of new voters, either, as only 204 residents registered to vote between...

November 5, 2014 Shellacked and thumped by an angry electorate, President Obama declared to every American who voted in Tuesday's elections—and to those who've checked out of the political process—"I hear you." And then he ignored them.

On election night, TV talking heads watching the Republican wave/surge/tidal flow across the country earnestly looked at each other and asked if the new Republican Senate majority can work with the president and overcome the gridlock that has so turned off voters. Umm...what? Yeah, I know Americans keep telling pollsters that they can't stand "partisan bickering" and really hate Congress for its inability to get things done. But there's a strong hint that they're regurgitating sentiments that all of those right-thinking pundits tell them that they're supposed to mouth. After all, those same Americans just handed control of the Senate...

The results of the midterm elections are not yet fully known, but it is safe to say at this point that Republicans won a historic victory. As of this writing, the Republicans have won a 52-seat Senate majority outright. Republican candidates are expected to take seats in Alaska and Louisiana, resulting no less than a 54-seat Senate majority in the 115th Congress. NBC News projects that the GOP will hold a 250-seat majority in the next Congress, among the largest Republican majorities in generations. On the gubernatorial level, where Republicans were expected to lose ground, the GOP defied expectations...

Elections have become theater.By regularly promising the impossible, political candidates give the dangerous impression that salvation is only one bill, one policy solution away. It breeds impatience, impetuosity and ecstatic hopes in citizens.And it can make us bad voters.James Madison and Alexander Hamilton had a different understanding of voting than we currently do. The authors of The Federalist Papers understood voting as an exercise in elevating citizens’ minds above the concerns of their engrossing private lives. That is, voting was to be a kind of civic education, preceded by genuine debate, perhaps similar to the Lincoln-Douglas debates.Such elections might be...

It is instructive to consider the premises that underlie the liberal view of the world. These are the ideas that determine their votes in elections; ideas that could shape the future of our country. Taken together, it is striking how detached from reality the beliefs are. The list could be much longer, but consider the following 20 beliefs from the imaginary world where liberals live....

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Voters have approved a change to the Tennessee Constitution that would prohibit lawmakers from imposing a state income tax. The last serious attempt to impose a state income tax failed in 2002 amid raucous Capitol protests that included a brick thrown through the window of the governor's office. The public backlash against the proposal led several supporters to retire from office or to lose their re-election campaigns.

Take a look at this informative website. It shows all the races and the most frequent search trends that voters are using to learn about candidates. We have seen the enemy...

The hard-core socialists have a party. The soft-core socialists have a party. It is the voter who is traditionally conservative that has no home I’m afraid we have done it again. The Left has been allowed to define the “independent voter” group and the Republicans have bought it; hook, line and sinker. For some reason, it is commonly accepted that the “independent voter” is to be found somewhere between the Republican and Democrat platforms. Every two years, during the campaigns, we see Republicans running as conservatives during the primary elections and then moving to the left for the general election....

You can tell that the press is losing interest in covering the 2014 elections. Not only are the tides of fortune not looking all that promising for the Democrats, people in the media’s target demographic – younger, predominantly Democrat voters – just don’t seem that excited or interested in hearing yet another story about how their candidates are getting kicked around. But just how dismal are they feeling? A new poll conducted by the Associated Press and Gfk put a different spin on the usual questions which voters are asked.Rather than just asking people whether they “approve” or “disapprove”...

Buyer’s remorse for twice electing Barack Obama is taking hold. The first stage of grief is denial, after all, according to Kubler-Ross. USA Today has just conducted some revealing polls in six states with competitive Senate races: Now USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls in a half-dozen states with key Senate races underscore just how much times and political fortunes have changed for the president. In five of the six states, the percentage of likely voters who say they voted for Obama in 2012 has dipped from the actual results. Of those who say they did vote for him, as many as...

If Republicans had said what Michelle Obama just did about her own husband’s voters, they’d be burned at the stake. Apparently anticipating problems with Democrat turnout on Election Day, Obama seems to think she knows what the issue is: Democrat voters are ignorant and lazy. The first lady was speaking Wednesday at a campaign rally for the Democrat candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, when she said Democrat voters too often feel that they have more important things to do than vote – like sleeping. That’s if they even realize that there’s an election being held at all. In...

The contrast between New Hampshire’s two candidates for U.S. Senate couldn’t have been clearer this past weekend. In one town, Senator Jeanne Shaheen spoke to the International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers over a pancake breakfast, and in another, former Senator Scott Brown received a rowdy and enthusiastic reception at a tailgate organized by College Republicans at the University of New Hampshire. It sounds like a normal weekend in October, so why the significance? I can’t help but marvel at the juxtaposition: a traditional, pre-planned campaign event with the candidate as the main attraction and the other, a tailgate loosely organized...

Cosmopolitan is “picking brains over brawn” in the 2014 Senate race in New Hampshire: the magazine is endorsing not Scott Brown, its 1982 “Sexiest Man in America,” but his competitor, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, the magazine said Tuesday. “While we wish we could support the man who once posed nude in our pages, his policy positions just aren’t as solid as his abs were in the ’80s,” Cosmo said of the Republican candidate, a onetime Senator from Massachusetts who has decamped to the Granite State.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)One in three Americans can’t name a single branch of the U.S. government, according to a poll from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The survey, which was conducted from July 8 to 14, and published Sept. 17, found that only 36 percent of respondents could name all three branches of government, while an alarming 35 percent of survey respondents couldn’t name a single branch. The poll, which contains a margin of error of plus or minus 3.06 percent, surveyed 1,416 U.S. adults aged 18 and older. The report also found that only 27 percent of...

In the next decade, Florida’s biggest cities will add toll lanes to the state’s busiest highways. Nobody knows exactly how much it will cost. Maybe as little as $3 billion. Maybe double that. What’s clear is that when the toll lanes across the state are complete, they will become one of the largest infrastructure projects in state history. There’s little debate that the toll lanes, also called express lanes or managed lanes, make commutes quicker for those willing to pay as much as $10 to use them. But there has been little debate about the need for the projects —...

Need advice. I have been receiving robocalls from a research frim called WHERE AMERICA STANDS RESEARCH - Telephone 847-250-1400. I do not answer the calls, but learned from a Google search what the caller is identified as. Has anyone else received calls from this research company? I found this from a Google search: "Bert Peal‎The Telegraph & macon.com Yesterday at 7:57pm · I would like to let everyone know that "Where America Stands Research" Has called me 8 times today in four hours on behalf of Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. I wonder if he is aware that he are...

I don’t think there is any way to overestimate the importance of the mid-term elections. Although I wish I could view the world through nonpartisan eyes, Barack Obama and Harry Reid have conspired to make that impossible. I’m just hoping that a sufficient number of Americans come out of their collective coma before the fat lady has a chance to warble “Nearer My God to Thee” at this nation’s funeral. The trouble is that we have a president who seems to lie awake nights trying to come up with new ways to destroy America. For openers, he is terrified –...