Campaign 2014

Massive GOP Win; So, Now What?

Mark Noonan34 Comments

First and foremost, boys and girls: be realistic.

No, there won’t be an impeachment of Obama (and, anyways, even if we could, do you really think we’d want to relieve the Democrats of the Obama albatross at this point?).

No, there won’t be a repeal of ObamaCare: Obama would veto any such proposal (or anything which defunds or otherwise guts the legislation) and we would not have the votes to over-ride.

Just forget about things like that. Obama is still President and still wields awesome authority and influence – that is a problem for another day: we GOPers also let the President get too powerful and that power has to be reduced…but we can’t get there right now. All we can do for the present is remember that Obama is a committed leftist, doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about what the American people think, is more than willing to break the law to get his way and believes that it is his bound duty to destroy anything non-left. We have to work with this, or around this – we can’t get rid of it or destroy it right now. And the MSM will still form a praetorian guard around him, with the only caveat being that they’ll jump on a grenade for Hillary in preference to Obama; they gotta think about the future and Obama is old news.

But there is still plenty the GOP can do. Always keeping in mind that the real purpose is to set the stage for a complete GOP victory in 2016, of course. We’re not necessarily going for enacted reforms – if we get some, great: but the real purpose is to set a reform agenda comprehensible to the American people as a platform for defeating the Democrats in 2016. The best means to do this is to pick about 10 issues which are very popular with the American people and over time pass them out of Congress and send them to Obama. Passing popular reform legislation will give GOPers things to brag about in 2016 and will show our party as being the party of “getting things done”. It will also put Obama in quite a pickle – reforms such as approving the Keystone Pipeline or allowing people to recover their cancelled health care plans will be popular, but Obama will be in a bad position on them. He’ll either have to veto them and anger the American people, or sign them and tick off the liberal base he needs to ensure his agenda is protected in 2016 (and Obama does want a Democrat to win in 2016 – he knows a GOP President in 2016 will undo all or most of what he’s accomplished). To us, it doesn’t matter what he does – if he signs it, then we’ve got good stuff to talk about; if he vetoes it, then we get to campaign on getting a Republican into the White House to move forward with reform.

To be sure, Obama will try to short-circuit such actions. His Presser on Wednesday is enough to confirm that. He will try to do things to outrage Republicans and, in his hopes, provoke a heavy counter attack which he hopes can be used to cast him as the long-suffering reformer stymied by an obstructionist Congress. Hillary wants this, too – she’d like nothing better than to campaign on the concept that she can get Congress to work. We dare not let Obama do this. In fact, its much better at this point that we ignore what Obama wants to do. Let him propose away – just go ahead and pass what we believe is best and let it land on his desk. Once the reforms are there, he’ll have to do something. For the first time in his life he’ll have to take concrete action that he can’t blame on anyone else. He’ll hate it. It will be wonderful

We did very well in 2014. The 2016 electorate will be different – it will be more Democrat friendly, no matter how bad things are going for Obama and the Democrats by then. But it will not be insurmountably Democrat. A program of clear, easy to understand reforms which will directly benefit the American people will show us as the party of the people – and allow our 2016 nominee to campaign on a reform platform against eight years of Obama failure, and the prospect of an Obama Third Term if the Democrats win. This is not the sure path to victory, but it is the path to victory. Let’s go ahead and take it.

2014 Mid-Terms (RED WAVE!!!!) Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

Ok, so here we go – the Big Day. Or, as Democrats have put it over the last couple days: The Day The Racist, Sexist, Homophobic GOP Doesn’t Really Win Because We Never Cared About This Election, Anyways. So There!

Will it be a blow out? Not sure. The thing to look for if that is happening is a late call in Virginia and/or a Brown win in New Hampshire – if that happens, then things are going rather well for the GOP. Here’s What I think will happen:

The GOP will win on election night the Senate contests in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Colorado. Arkansas and Alaska. We’ll eventually win Georgia and Louisiana, as well, but both of those might go to a run-off. I’ll go out on a small limb and say we survive in Kansas, though the bogus “Independent” Orman might be able to eke out a win as the Republican Governor of Kansas loses, and thus drags down the whole GOP ticket in that State. For those doing the quick math, that means on election night, even with a Kansas loss, the GOP gets to 51 Senators – 53 once the run-offs are done, and Georgia just might be decided on election night. Given that the GOP will almost certainly win an outright majority on election night, even Orman might decide that he likes the GOP just fine for caucusing purposes.

There is still, by the way, a realistic chance for the GOP to pad its total if we pull out the win in North Carolina and surge to victory in New Hampshire. NC is real tight and could go either way while for all of Brown’s vigorous campaign, New Hampshire is further out of reach…but a big GOP wave, if it really shows up, could drag both those States into our column. That happens and after all is said and done, the GOP comes away from Campaign 2014 with 55 Senate seats. A 10 seat gain would be astonishing, but Democrats will still claim it means nothing and now we’re all Ready for Hillary!

For the House, I’m thinking 244 is the eventual GOP total – though a big GOP wave could get the Republicans up to as high as 250.

Governorships – its a bad year for us: we’re pretty sure of losing Kansas, and absolutely sure of losing Pennsylvania. We might also come up short in Florida and even Michigan is looking a little iffy. Walker will win in Wisconsin – and thus make himself the logical choice for the GOP nomination in 2016. State legislatures will fall our way, but the only prediction I’ll make is the Nevada State Senate going GOP – the others I just don’t know enough about (and there’s an outside chance that the GOP will win the Nevada Assembly, as well, though that is longish-shot…but Governor Sandoval has done a great job of rebuilding the GOP in Nevada…I figured him for a run against Reid in 2016, but word I’ve heard is that he’d rather have bleach poured into his eyes than be a Senator…so, he’ll either angle for a VP slot or he might shock everyone by tossing his hat into the Presidential ring).

What do you think will happen?

UPDATE: John Hindraker gives us all a downer to start our day:

…Mitt Romney’s pollsters were famously wrong in 2012. They thought Mitt was going to win because they failed to foresee how extraordinarily effective the Democrats’ ground game would be; therefore, they underestimated Democratic turnout. The great unknown in this year’s election is, how many Democrats will the party be able to drive to the polls, notwithstanding that Obama is not on the ballot and things have gone poorly for the administration and for Senate Democrats over the last two years? The reality is that no pollster knows the answer to that question…

Everything does depend on who actually shows up to vote – we do have some good indicators in early voting that lots of GOPers are showing up, not quite so many Democrats. But this is now Election Day, and if the Democrats have their GOTV on warp drive, things can come out very different from what the polls say. We’ll just have to wait and see.

UPDATE II: Just wow! Happy dance. Might get to 54!

We’re All Victims

Cluster9 Comments

America’s most famous Native American with high cheek bones is on the stump getting traction with the low information voter:

“The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it,”

That’s right folks. After six years of corporatizing health care, driving up premiums, increasing the cost of living, overseeing the decline of the average wage of American families, regulating the life out of the coal industry, refusing Americans the benefits of energy independence, refusing tax reform, growing the federal government, wasting trillions of dollars of tax payers money, rewarding incompetent government bureaucrats, enslaving children in under performing schools, and assisting in increasing the cost of a higher education – the Democrats are playing the victim card and blaming Republicans. I am surprised she didn’t get laughed out of the room, but I think the following quote tells us why that didn’t happen:

“She’s a rock star,”

Where have we heard that line before? These low information voters have not learned a thing, probably as a result of our failing education system, and are once again playing identity politics. Warren is a product of the Harvard faculty lounge, just like Obama, and does not have one day of practical, real life experience. She would in all reality be a far worse President than Obama if you can even imagine that, but experience, results, competence, nor even the truth have any bearing whatsoever on the POTUS candidate selection of the Democratic Party. Hillary is an incompetent liar who also has zero real world experience but she is leading the current Democratic field by a mile only because of her gender, and her womanizing husband.

It’s a sad statement on our society, our political culture and on a good portion of our fellow Americans that someone like Warren gains any credibility whatsoever outside of the far left lecture halls.

Obama Joins the GOP in Fighting to Defeat Democrats

Mark Noonan3 Comments

Geesh!

…Here are the four sentences that will draw all of the attention (they come more than two thirds of the way through the speech): “I am not on the ballot this fall. Michelle’s pretty happy about that. But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.” Boil those four sentences down even further and here’s what you are left with: “Make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”…

Democrats just spent the last 6 months distancing themselves from Obama and here comes The Smartest Man, Ever, to muck it up for them. The last thing Democrats need is a public reminder from Obama and each and every House and Senate Democrat is a mere rubber-stamp for Obama.

The truth will out, they say – and Obama has done truth a favor, for once. I don’t know what his intent was, but he’s made it clear what the 2014 stakes are. And GOPers are already running with it.

So, Will 2014 Be a GOP Wave, or Not?

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Here you’ve got analysis that the GOP only picks up a few seats and that works out to a win for Nancy Pelosi. Here you’ve got other analysis which indicates the GOP might get its largest majority since the 1928 election. So, which is it?

Beats all heck out of me. Real Clear Politics currently has the GOP with 47 Senate seats in the bag, the Democrats with 44 and 9 toss-ups, with the likely outcome as of today being 52 GOPers and 48 Democrats (that includes us losing Kansas, by the way – which I don’t think we will, in the end). But another way to read it is that the GOP could end up with as many as 56 Senate seats – an 11 seat gain. That would, indeed, be a wave.

While there is trouble for the GOP on the gubernatorial front (we’re definitely going to lose Pennsylvania and we’ll probably lose Kansas), there is also Democrat governor Hickenlooper’s likely defeat to counter that – and Hickenlooper was supposed to be the perfect person to transition a purple State to blue…now he’s probably going to lose, and maybe take down Democrat Senator Udall with him…all because he’s liberal.  Not fanatically liberal, but just liberal…and that is being rejected in Colorado, to all appearances (and this can’t make Team Hillary comfortable about 2016 – she’s a female Hickenlooper).

I really don’t know where this is heading. But there are some ingredients for a blow out – of course, we must remember the GOP’s penchant for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory (and talk of Jeb or Romney running in 2016 is the GOP Establishment’s way of saying “we’d rather have Hillary than Walker”).

The Art of Redundancy

Cluster78 Comments

If it is one thing the Democrats are very good at, and one thing that their legions of progressive sycophants depend on – it’s redundancy. The Democrats bleat on endlessly over contrived issues and the repetition thereof results in an allegiance amongst their base that rivals that of the most famous Tyrants. It’s at a level now that I have never seen before and the most recent Paul Krugman article is a great example. You may remember Paul Krugman – the Nobel prize winning progressive economist who decries the inequities of a capitalist society and whom recently accepted a six figure position with an institution of higher progressive learning for offering his valued opinion on matters of import, yet not required to lower himself to the masses and actually teaching in the classroom. This latest Krugman article perpetuates the infrastructure redundancy that progressives seemingly fall back on every time they need an economic issue to distract voters with. You may remember the Obama proclamation of 2008 wherein the great orator decreed:

“We will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.”

Subsequently, in March of 2009, the single greatest stimulus package was passed and funds were given to the administration to use where they sought fit. Strangely, the infrastructure still seems to be a problem, and an issue of which progressive elites like Krugman feel that they can foam up the base with one more time:

“In prosperous times, public spending on roads, bridges and so on competes with the private sector for resources. Since 2008, however, our economy has been awash in unemployed workers (especially construction workers) and capital with no place to go (which is why government borrowing costs are at historic lows). Putting those idle resources to work building useful stuff should have been a no-brainer.”

Now, did Krugman forget his Messiah’s 2008 proclamation and subsequent spending spree, or is he being purposely deceitful? I will leave that to your own imagination, but you can all easily imagine is what Krugman’s answer is to this on-going infrastructure problem – more taxes of course:

“It’s hard to think of any good reason why taxes on gasoline should be so low, and it’s easy to think of reasons, ranging from climate concerns to reducing dependence on the Middle East, why gas should cost more. So there’s a very strong case for raising the gas tax “

The progressive Democrats have yet to find a problem, real or contrived, that can’t be resolved by raising taxes. The problem for them is that these issuess are never resolved despite how many taxes they raise, and fortunately for those of us in “realville”, the majority of voters are starting to come to that realization. One thing is for certain though, you can expect this issue, , and the other redundant issues of climate change, and the patently absurd “war on women” to be part and parcel to the Democrats 2014 and 2016 agenda.

Violation of Common Sense

Cluster23 Comments

In a 5-4 decision, the SC has struck another blow to the ACA stating that a requirement of private employers to pay for contraceptive coverage is a violation of their religious freedom and conscience as written into the First Amendment. A common sense decision that everyone should understand but evidently 4 SC justices and a multitude of statist progressive don’t. Hobby Lobby, and the many other private companies that objected to this mandate, can not and do not force any woman to work for them, so when a woman does independently and of free will choose to work for that company, how in the world does she have the right to dictate to them what insurance coverage they should offer? That is absurd.

In another ruling that will rock the progressive world, and in another 5-4 decision, in-home health care workers will not be required to pay union dues which served to strengthen the collective bargaining position of the public unions in Illinois. This again is a victory for individuality and freedom of expression and a blow against big union corruption and political graft.

This has been a bad year so far for statism and progressivism and in turn a great year for individual liberty and conservatism. Let’s keep the momentum going.

The Summer of Discontent

Cluster11 Comments

On the heels of the VA scandal and the recent downward revision of first quarter GDP growth, or lack thereof as it was revised into negative territory, this summer does not bode well for the Obama administration. And it shouldn’t.  The accountability of Obama on every issue is woefully absent, the incompetence is palpable and even the lap dog progressive media is having a hard time covering it up. Jay Carney’s press conferences are more and more contentious and growing more bizarre by the day. The administrations reluctance, if not down right refusal to answer direct questions, and make tough decisions is harming this country, and the VA scandal is the prime example. This is not a new problem. Obama knew of this problem in 2009. Spoke about this problem. Promised to resolve the problem and offer vets the “21st century care they deserved”, yet once again, we can chalk that up to just another empty promise. Should we be surprised? After all this was a guy who promised to heal the planet and cause the oceans to recede.

The VA scandal is just another addition to the myriad of real concerning issues that must be dealt with this summer leading up to the November election. Insurance companies are scheduled to announce their 2015 rates, and expectations are that those revised rates may financially shock some people. The federal government is also expected to have to bail out the insurance companies this summer, a provision written into the ACA and conveniently ignored by the media. Remember, we have to pass it to find out what’s in it. The Benghazi hearings will commence this summer and that promises to be contentious and interesting, and I expect many Democrats are a little worried about that discovery process. The IRS issue continues to unfold with recently divulged emails ensnaring Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, and it was announced today that Judicial Watch has sued the DOJ over Fast and Furious, an issue of which Obama became so concerned about that he closed down the investigation claiming executive privilege. Add to all of this, the anticipated beginning of the “Ready for Hillary” side show campaign with her trying to convince everyone – “what difference does it make?”.

It proves to be an important and interesting summer. So much so, that I have sent in yet another contribution to the RNC this last week, hoping that they take the Senate this fall and at least put the brakes on this madness for the next two years. I encourage everyone to do the same.

 

Creating More Conservatives

Cluster178 Comments

John Hawkins over at Townhall wrote an excellent piece here about conservative outreach and how badly the GOP has been at it over the last decade or so. I completely agree with his game plan which includes, but are not limited to:

1) We’re not reaching out to people who disagree with us

2) We’ve gotten lazy about making people’s lives better

3) We need to focus more on entertaining than informing

4) We get too impressed by the “more conservative than you” game

5) We refuse to challenge liberal control of cultural institutions

This dove tails nicely with my opinion I expressed the other day of “dumbing down” our message and going into precincts we usually avoid. It also speaks to the strategy of incrementalism which we need to employ, and employ now. Considering the utter economic and social disaster that progressive policies have brought about, winning the short term by taking the Senate this fall should be a no brainer, but winning the long term will require a more methodical strategy, and I think Hawkins has identified 5 good starting points. I am curious as to what other conservative have to say on this, so have at it.

 

If We Win the Senate

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Then things will change – and change quite a lot. From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. Senate failed to advance another piece of popular bipartisan legislation late Monday, and the reason tells the real story of Washington gridlock in the current Congress. To wit, Harry Reid has essentially shut down the Senate as a place to debate and vote on policy.

The Majority Leader’s strategy was once again on display as the Senate failed to get the 60 votes to move a popular energy efficiency bill co-sponsored by New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Ohio Republican Rob Portman. Mr. Reid blamed the defeat on Republican partisanship. But the impasse really came down to Mr. Reid’s blockade against amendments that might prove politically difficult for Democrats.

The Nevadan used parliamentary tricks to block energy-related amendments to an energy bill. This blockade is now standard procedure as he’s refused to allow a vote on all but nine GOP amendments since last July. Mr. Reid is worried that some of these amendments might pass with support from Democrats, thus embarrassing a White House that opposes them.

In the case of Portman-Shaheen, Republicans had prepared amendments to speed up exports of liquefied natural gas; to object to a new national carbon tax; to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency’s war on coal plants; and to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline. A majority of the public supports these positions and many Democrats from right-leaning or energy-producing states claim to do the same. The bill against the EPA’s coal-plant rules is co-sponsored by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin.

Yet the White House and Mr. Reid’s dominant liberal wing won’t take the chance that a bipartisan coalition might pass these amendments, most of which the House has passed or soon would. President Obama would thus face a veto decision that would expose internal Democratic divisions. So Mr. Reid shut down the amendment process. Republicans then responded by refusing to provide the 60 votes necessary to clear a filibuster and vote on the underlying bill…

You understand that?  As was true back when Clinton was President, the GOP has a lot of very popular proposals which would be very difficult for the President to just outright veto.  But unlike back then, we only control half of Congress – and to ensure that the President is not confronted with either vetoing popular legislation or enraging his cronies or far-left supporters, Reid has essentially crippled the Senate’s ability to move legislation.  We don’t really have partisan gridlock – we have Reid-lock.  Senate Majority Leader Reid, desperate to protect Obama, has made the legislature unworkable, thus sparing Obama difficult decisions and allowing Obama to use his pen and phone to advance policies which would be deadly politically if voted on in the Senate.

If we win this November, however, things will change – a GOP-led Senate will be able to advance legislation to the White House, which would either force Obama to sign popular bills opposed by cronies/liberals, or veto them and face the wrath of the electorate (in this case, in the form of weakening Democrat prospects for 2016 with the risk that a GOP President in combination with a GOP Congress would undo Obama’s legacy). It would be quite a pickle for Obama to be in – he’d have to either surrender, or suffer crushing defeat of his ideology in 2016.

This is why it is so crucial for us to win in 2014. The debate will change – it won’t be “partisan, Teabagger Republicans” causing the problem as legislation dealing with all our pressing issues (with input from Democrats – meaning we won’t be able to just get all we want) regularly arrives at Obama’s desk.  Then the ball is in his court and he’ll have to do what he hates most: make hard and fast decisions that he is clearly accountable for.

It’ll be endless fun.