Free Republic

I’m impressed that Romney’s camp works this quickly. A day ago a poll came out showing the Donald catching up to Romney in NH and the very next day this story drops. Trump seemed to be getting traction with the “birther” issue and this is a move to cut out his legs among conservatives who dominate the primary.

The shadown GOP primary goes on.

Ensign was badly damaged from his scandal and the odds are better to keep the seat out of the Democrats’ hands without him as the nominee. Heller is the best hope to keep the seat and this move has been telegraphed for awhile.

I agree with Dick Morris that the GOP is poised to win the Senate. The playing field is definitely leaning in their favor, with states like ND, MT, NE, VA, WV, OH, FL, and MO very much in play. Their playing defense in 2-4 states (MA, NV, ME, IN) depending on how primaries turn out. A gain of four seats is a very real possibility at this point.

Tester is in trouble with Rehberg deciding to get in the race, no doubt about it. They are on equal footing financially and Rehberg has run and won 6 statewide races in Montana, compared to Tester’s lone victory in 2006. Tester’s 3,500 vote victory against scandal-plagued Conrad Burns is insignificant when you consider that Rehberg received nearly 40,000 more total votes while being re-elected to the House on the same ballot in 2006. I realize that Montana has elected plenty of Democrats statewide, with Baucus and Schweitzer winning races recently. Rehberg should be able to take this seat back and his chances are only better without having to use resources on a primary challenge.

George Allen’s lifetime ACU rating is 92.6.

http://www.conservative.org/ratings/ratingsarchive/2006/2006senate.htm

Jim Webb needs to be defeated. He campaigned as a blue dog, conservative Democrat but of course his voting record is typically liberal. This is an important seat to pick up and I believe George Allen has the complete set of tools to get it done. He has the experience, fundraising, and name ID to win statewide.

Best Alternative #1: U.S. Representative Dean Heller

Best Alternative #2: Lt. Governor Brian Krolicki

There is already a recent precedent in Nevada for replacing an incumbent who won’t bow out in a primary, namely Brian Sandoval defeating Jim Gibbons in the most recent Governor’s race. I’d be surprised if Heller or Krolicki don’t enter a primary against Ensign and defeat him.
The Democrats are likely to run U.S. Representative Shelley Berkley as their candidate.

No Kennedy’s? Freakin fantastic. Joe Kennedy was as corrupt as they come and I’m glad none of his progeny remain on the national scene. Irish trash who have helped set back Catholics for half a decade.

I have no idea why Miller is still fighting at this point, but his ultimate goal is to have ballots thrown out. You’re talking about laws and tyranny and the Declaration of Independence while the objective of Joe Miller is to make sure votes are not counted. It’s all very ironic. Nobody has agreed with Miller’s interpretation of voter intent when counting write-in ballots. He lost with the state elections board and he lost in lower court. The courts in Alaska have specifically allowed for interpreting voter intent prior to this case. Miller’s narrow interpretation just doesn’t pass the smell test. Someone who wrote “Lisa Mercowski” or “Lisa Murkowsky” or “Lisa Murkowski Republican” deserves to have their vote counted, IMO. It’s clear who they were voting for.

Lawlessness? Because Joe Miller lost to a write-in candidate? Gimme a break. Miller blew it, plain and simple. He ran a pathetic general election campaign and has only himself to blame. As far as the rule of law is concerned, the lower court ruling yesterday was against Miller’s interpretation.

Joe Miller loses again. This time he lost in court, which was the one area where he had the numbers on his side, at least in terms of lawsuits filed. Judging by his actions to this point, I expect Miller to appeal as long as he can, but nothing suggests he has much of a chance for ever being seated in the Senate.

Miller will go down in history as both a bad candidate and a sore loser. He managed to lose to a write-in campaign in a heavily Republican state despite the backing of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. Since election day, his only goal has been to hope he could disqualify as many write-in votes as possible. He has refused to concede even though the votes and now court decisions have gone against him. That’s the definition of a sore loser.

Jay Nixon is definitely vulnerable and it’s a mixed blessing for him to be on the ballot with Obama in 2012. On the one hand, it’s almost guaranteed that Obama will get record turnout from black voters. On the other hand, Obama is very unpopular with independents and older voters. The Republicans should have a strong pair of candidates for Governor and Senator with Kinder and Steelman, respectively. The party has momentum after easily winning an open Senate seat and defeating Ike Skelton in 2010. Add it all up, Missouri will be a tough state for all the Dem candidates (Nixon, Obama, McCaskill) in 2012.

The Red Sox are wise to be careful with Beltre, IMO. At age 31, he recorded the second-best statistical season of his career in 2010 in multiple categories, including OPS, BA, SLG, OBP, RBI, and hits. You have to wonder if that had something to do with him entering free agency this offseason. His last monster season came in 2004 when he was also preparing for free agency and he was mostly a dud in Seattle. Then again, Beltre also had never played in a hitter-friendly home park like Fenway, although his numbers were marginally better on the road in 2010. It’s a tough call because Beltre’s talent has never consistently matched his production and I am skeptical that he will perform better once he has a new contract and starts getting older.

Gonzalez makes a ton of sense for the Sox. He’s relatively young and has been extremely productive in a terrible hitter’s park (avg. last four seasons = .284 BA, 34 HR, 104 RBI). His career home-road splits lead me to believe he will be very successful just from getting out of SD and the NL West into a place like Fenway.

Ronald Reagan should not be compared to Sarah Palin or any of the other Presidential wannabes in the GOP. Nobody alive today is on Reagan’s level, Republican or Democrat.

Keeping Pelosi as their leader in the House is a DUMB move by the Dems. Her negatives are sky high and most of the country dislikes her. Instead of moving on with a less controversial figure, Pelosi will remain as one of the key faces of the Democratic Party in Washington. This is good news for the GOP heading into 2012.

This race reminds me of the Leiberman-Lamont race in Connecticut in 2006. In both cases, the incumbent lost narrowly in their respective primaries, Leiberman losing 52-48% and Murkowski losing 51-49%. Similarly, the Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger, was a weak candidate and only wound up with around 10% of the final vote. McAdams did marginally better in Alaska with 23%, but the weakness of these candidates allowed it to be two-horse races after very close primaries. The big difference is that a write-in campaign is much more difficult to pull off and has been done in a Senate race since 1954.

Yes, Murkowski is leading Miller on undisputed ballots by roughly 2,200 votes. Miller had to have known he was in trouble just based on the number of write in ballots that were cast. His only hope was that not enough of them would be counted and even if he wins all of his challenges he probably will still wind up behind. It’s all over but the shouting.

BTW, good comparison with Joe Leiberman and Ned Lamont. Both races featured contentious primaries where an incumbent was defeated only to stay in the race and win thanks in large part to token opposition from the other party (Schlesinger in Connecticut, McAdams in Alaska). Of course, the big difference is that Murkowski is on the verge of being the first candidate to win a Senate race via write-in votes since Strom Thurmond in 1954.

Not only Fox, but also the AP, NPR, and the Chicago Tribune are reporting Bean has called Walsh to concede.

You are wrong on multiple counts, most notably the overall vote totals for Kirk and Brady. Kirk totaled 1,765,594 votes while Brady finished with 1,702,399 votes. Those pesky 60,000 or so votes made the difference between Kirk winning and Brady losing. As for the Chicago suburbs, look at Lake county. Brady won it by about 15,000 votes (50-42%), while Kirk won it by 36,000 votes (57-39%). Kirk also outperformed Brady in Kane and Will counties by about 7,000 total votes. The Chicago suburbs gave Kirk almost 30,000 more votes than Brady. It’s ignorant to argue otherwise.

Mark Kirk did what only one other Republican (Peter Fitzgerald) has done in the past 30 years, he actually won a U.S. Senate race in Illinois. He won despite a coordinated hit job by the media and the Democrats for allegedly lying about his military service. Exit polls by CNN showed that he outperformed the Republican nominee for governor, Bill Brady, by 3 points among Independents and 2 points among women. That ended being the difference in Kirk’s two point victory and Brady’s narrow loss. The biggest difference was evident in the Chicago suburbs, where Kirk’s margins were much higher than Brady’s.

I don’t think Miller can make up the difference on absentee ballots alone. His only real hope for victory is to disqualify as many write-in votes as possible for Murkowski. The Anchorage Daily News reported yesterday that more than 90% of the write ins were completely unchallenged and counting for Murkowski. Only 1.5% of Miller’s challenges are undisputed, which isn’t going to get it done. It probably needs to be 10-12% and it doesn’t seem likely that all of Miller’s other challenges (approximately 7.5% of the total write ins) will be upheld. These include challenges made for writing a name in the incorrect order (Lisa Murkowski instead of Murkowski Lisa), including the word Republican (Lisa Murkowski Republican), and votes made with at least one letter written in cursive. He has a decent chance to have his challenges upheld in cases where the name is misspelled, though.