Category: Senate

#WAR!

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Today’s vote in the Senate drew furious scorn in a statement from grassroots conservative activist Becky Gerritson:

I along with millions of conservatives around the country are furious with the Republicans’ surrender in the Senate today! We listened to Republican promises to curb spending, restore our liberties and stop President Obama’s illegal executive orders regarding immigration. We helped them win the Senate in November; giving them the largest majority in the House and Senate since WWII. Hopes were high.
However, instead of seizing the power they had been given by the voters, Republican leaders have timidly continued business as usual. In December, kowtowing to Democrat spin on shutting down the government, they passed a trillion dollar spending bill with the promise that in February they would stop President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill.
But now, as the deadline for funding DHS approaches and the Democrats have filibustered (four times) a bill that would fund DHS except for Obama’s Illegal Amnesty, the Republicans are again showing their lack of resolve. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, has revealed his feckless leadership and instead of holding the line on defunding executive amnesty, he is offering a “clean bill” to the Democrats on a silver platter. They are holding all the cards and yet they are folding!
According to exit polls, 75% of Americans reject Obama’s executive action. So Republican leadership didn’t merely let down their party, they abandoned their country. Whether Mitch McConnell’s feeble stewardship is due to cowardice or complicity, he has embarrassed and weakened his office, his party and our nation.
Becky Gerritson
President, Wetumpka TEA Party (AL)
“Born Free American Woman”–Congressional Testimony
www.WetumpkaTeaParty.com
www.BornFreeAmericanWoman.com

Some people you can walk over and live to tell about it. But you don’t do that to people from Wetumpka, Alabama.

 

Democrats Implode in Louisiana

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Ali Akbar, Anita Moncrief and other activists with the Black Conservatives Fund have been making a huge difference in Louisiana during the final weeks of the campaign leading up to Saturday’s election that will end the Senate career of Democrat Mary Landrieu.

However, as much credit as is certainly due to BCF, the real credit goes to the Democrats themselves, who simply weren’t ready for primetime once Ali’s crew showed up to expose their corruption. Take a look at this headline Monday from the London Daily Mail:

‘Go vote again tomorrow’: Video shows
Louisiana mayor whose son is Sen. Mary Landrieu’s
chief of staff encouraging voter fraud as final
US Senate contest’s runoff election draws near

The story of how BCF got that video is very interesting, but the real problem for Democrats is that they’ve been getting away with this stuff so long they don’t even know it’s wrong. Decades of habitual corruption — and Louisiana is a cesspool of crooked politics, the Chicago of the South — have this effect of making Democrats utterly shameless.

So how does Senator Mary Landrieu feel about all of this?
“I looked at the video, it was in a bar room, you know, on a stage, people were having a good time. It seemed to me to be a joke” explains Landrieu.


When they’re exposed, they don’t know how to react.

The staff of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and the Democrat Party continues to use black protesters but constantly stops them from speaking. Now two new videos show a white union supporter of Landrieu tell a black activist, Anita MonCrief, to “go down on Bill [Cassidy],” Landrieu’s opponent, and another black supporter of Landrieu tells MonCrief she is “pretty much” an uppity negro.


The Democrat Party is a political disease caused by a virus of selfishness that spreads through lies. The only known cure is truth.

Louisiana Runoff Polling Looks ‘Ugly’ For Landrieu

Damn, Andrew Breitbart would be so proud to see this day. After Saturday’s election, there won’t be anything left of the Democrat Party in Louisiana but a vast smoldering crater of failure and fear.





 

The Sweet Hangover of Victory

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Tuesday’s Republican tsunami left Harry Reid disgraced and desperate to rescue some semblance of Democrat relevance:

Reid has run the US Senate for the past eight years like a dictatorship, steadily eroding minority privileges to the point where Republicans couldn’t offer amendments or put up any significant resistance to Barack Obama’s radical appointments, unless Democrats forced Reid’s hand on either score. After watching his party lay a historic egg in the midterms — the size of which is still not yet fully known — Reid tried spinning the results as a mandate for the kind of compromise that he’s blocked ever since winning control of the upper chamber in 2006 . . .

Read the whole thing at Hot Air. The aftermath of a wave election always involves a contest by partisans and pundits to seize control of the narrative, to tell us What It Really Means, although usually the truth can only be known with the advantage of hindsight.

(Left to right: That’s Elise Stefanik, the Republican who last night became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress; Mia Love, who last night became the first black Republican woman ever elected to Congress; and Joni Ernst, the Republican who last night was elected Iowa’s first-ever female U.S. Senator.)

Sandra Fluke got beat and, meanwhile, back at the feminist salt mines . . .

Christian Post columnist Rachel Alexander had some delightfully blunt truths about the “catcalling” video that went viral last week:

The truth is, catcalls bother feminists because they’re jealous. One of Rush Limbaugh’s 35 Undeniable Truths of Life is that “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” Feminists are highly critical of women who choose to make a significant effort to look attractive. If they can stop men from complimenting pretty women, they won’t have to observe it and feel pangs of jealousy.
The other dynamic at play here is feminists want to make men just like women. They don’t want to acknowledge there are differences between the genders . . .

Feminists reacted by going completely berserk — even more berserk than usual. There’s crazy feminism and kuh-RAY-zee feminism.

Today I’ve been chilling out most of the day, watching MSNBC and laughing. Elections come and go, but the Culture War never ends.

 

Election 2014 BREAKING: GOP Wins Senate Majority, @AoSHQDD Says

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UPDATE 11 p.m. ET: Always trust the reliable source:

It’s a blowout, folks. A total Republican wave.

UPDATE 1 a.m. ET: Did I say “wave”? No, it’s a tsunami:

UPDATE 9 p.m. ET: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell crushed Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, apparently out-performing polls, perhaps signalling a “surge” for the GOP.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, Republican Shelley Moore Capito defeats Democrat Natalie Tennant and Republican Tom Cotton has defeated incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, so that the GOP so far has a net gain of two seats, needing four more pickups to get to the magic number of 51 to control the Senate.

* * * PREVIOUSLY (4 p.m. ET) * * *

Allahpundit summarizes the likely Senate scenario:

Right now the GOP has 45 seats. You can go ahead and bump that up to 48 because three pick-ups are a fait accompli: Steve Daines will win big in Montana, replacing Max Baucus; Mike Rounds will cruise in South Dakota, replacing Tim Johnson; and Shelley Moore Capito will enjoy a landslide in West Virginia, replacing Jay Rockefeller. With those three in the bank, getting to 51 early in the evening should be easy, no? Tom Cotton’s going to beat Mark Pryor in Arkansas for number 49. Joni Ernst is probably going to beat Bruce Braley in Iowa for number 50. And then Cory Gardner’s going to put Mark Uterus out of his misery in Colorado — or I will take a flamethrower to this place — for number 51. There’s our majority! But wait: If Greg Orman knocks off Pat Roberts in Kansas, as he’s (slightly) favored to do, that knocks us back down to 50. What then?
Well, there’s always Kentucky, where Mitch McConnell is expected to beat Alison Lundergan Grimes. But McConnell is simply protecting his seat; that’s not a pick-up, so we’re still stuck at 50. Ditto for Georgia: Even if David Perdue avoids a runoff and beats Michelle Nunn outright tonight, he’s simply holding Saxby Chambliss’s seat. No pick-up there either. We could get back to 51 if either Thom Tillis beats Kay Hagan in North Carolina or Scott Brown beats Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, but the Democratic incumbents are favored in both races. Assuming they win, we’re still stuck at 50.

Read the whole thing. Without checking my archives, I can assure you that I predicted this basic scenario weeks ago. It’s weird to have ignored all the cable-TV pundit hype about the campaign during the past month, and then return to the subject on Election Day and find out, yeah, all that hype didn’t really change anything.

Here’s my gut hunch: About midnight Eastern time, the cable-TV talking heads will have the GOP at 48 or 49 Senate seats. Election junkies will stay awake until the wee hours and maybe — just maybe — the GOP will get to 50 seats by the time we crash out at 3 a.m. ET. By lunchtime Wednesday, about three of those 50 GOP seats will be within the range of a mandatory recount, and MSNBC talking heads will be screaming “vote fraud” (meaning somehow Republicans cheated) despite the fact that, as every liberal knows, there is no such thing as “vote fraud” (if that phrase means Democrats cheating).

So, while both parties will be scrambling squadrons of lawyers to the recount states, everything will ultimately come down to (a) the possible runoff in Georgia, and (b) the absolutely guaranteed runoff in Louisiana. At best, the Republican majority will be 52-48. At worst, Harry Reid’s Democrats will maintain control by the narrowest of margins, either 51-49 or else 50-50 with Joe Biden casting the deciding vote to keep the Majority Leader’s gavel in Harry’s hand.

All of that’s just gut-hunch stuff, of course.

We’ll see how my shoot-from-the-hip gonzo forecast holds up against the “expert” talking heads on cable TV who have spent the past month wasting their time (and ours) by telling us basically nothing.

UPDATE: The usual suspects, the usual message:

In a recent Democratic National Committee email, actress Scarlett Johansson said if Republicans win control of the Senate they will take away a woman’s right to choose. . . .
In fact, in August she designed a t-shirt on behalf of the abortion giant. As LifeNews previously reported, the pink t-shirt read, “Hey Politicians! The 1950s called …” on the front. And on the back, the shirts say: “They want their sexism back!”  . . .
An article in the Washington Examiner shares more about Johansson’s letter. The author, Ashe Schow, wrote the following:

“Despite the Left’s insistence that abortion is one of the few things women voters care about, the word “abortion” rarely makes it into their campaign ads. The reason abortion supporters call themselves “pro-choice” is that they’d rather not say the word. Abortion isn’t actually as popular as they would have you believe — it doesn’t poll well, and other than the first three months of pregnancy, large majorities of Americans think it should be illegal.
And so it is with a recent Democratic National Committee email sent on behalf of actor Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow from “The Avengers”), which claimed that if the GOP wins control of the Senate, they will take away “a woman’s right to choose.”
The email vaguely describes that choice as the ‘right to make her own personal health care decisions,’ but never says that the only decision they mean is abortion.

Experts predict a big win tonight for heteronormative patriarchy. And you know what that means? Prepare to be oppressed, ladies.

 

Michelle Nunn Pulls a Grimes?

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Trouble for Democrats in Georgia:

Another Democratic Senate candidate has refused to say whether she voted for President Obama: This time it was Michelle Nunn in Georgia.
The same question has tripped up other red-state Democrats on the campaign trail. On two occasions over the past week, Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes has been panned for her refusal to answer the question, twice citing the “sanctity of the ballot box” as her reason for keeping mum.
Nunn was approached by a tracker who asked her if she voted for the president in 2008 or 2012. Nunn did not respond and kept walking towards the venue she was headed to. In the video captured, a member of her entourage faces the tracker and asks, “Would you leave her alone?”?

This could sabotage all hope for Democrats to maintain control of the Senate in next month’s election. After Grimes got “tripped up” over whether she voted for Obama, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pulled its TV ads off the air in Kentucky. Although the Grimes campaign says they’ve still got plenty of money ($4 million), the DSCC move was a clear signal that Grimes’ blunder is viewed as a fatal error. There was only one TV debate between Grimes and Mitch McConnell, she blew it, and Democrats know she blew it. If we can now therefore say Mitch has got Kentucky in the bag, that changes the map in the Senate mid-term campaign.

As of today, 10 Senate races are rated toss-ups by Real Clear Politics, where the ratings are based on poll averages. Of those 10 seats, seven are held by Democrats and three by Republicans, while each party holds 46 seats rated either “likely” or “leaning.” If we rule out any unexpected meltdowns in one of those “likely/leaning” races, we see that the odds of a Republican takeover are roughly 2-to-1: The GOP must get to 51 seats to control a Senate majority; 46 seats are more or less locked up for them; and of the 10 “toss-ups,” 70% are held by Democrats, who are more that twice as vulnerable of losing half of those 10.

The seven toss-up states where the Senate seat is currently held by Democrats are: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.  The three toss-up states where the Senate seat is currently held by Republicans are: Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky. But as we have seen, Kentucky just started looking like a loser for Democrats; if so, that would effectively put Republicans at 47 seats; and what if Nunn’s blunder takes Georgia off the map?

Polls had shown Nunn, daughter of Georgia’s legendary Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn, gaining ground against Republican businessman David Perdue. The difficulty facing the GOP in Georgia is that Michelle Nunn doesn’t have a prior legislative record, so she can play the “moderate” card and thereby avoid debating any issue where Democrat policies are controversial. However, now the question is asked, “Did you vote for Obama?” She can’t run away from it, you see, and if she tries to run away from it, she looks like a phony.

It’s too early to tell whether Nunn can recover in Georgia, but if she can’t, a Perdue win there and a McConnell win in Kentucky — assuming all the “likely/leaning” states break as predicted — puts the GOP at 48 seats, meaning they only need to win three of the remaining eight toss-up races to take control of the Senate. Now, let’s suppose that troubled Republican incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts can’t hang on in Kansas. That would be bad for the GOP, but it’s likely to be offset by Democrat Sen. Mark Begich’s defeat in Alaska.

Understand we’re counting hypotheticals now, but if the GOP wins both Kentucky and Georgia, if Roberts loses in Kansas and if Begich loses in Alaska, you would then have six remaining toss-ups and Republicans would need to win just two of those to get to 51 seats.

It’s hard to see Democrat Sen. Mark Pryor holding off the challenge from Tom Cotton in Arkansas, and Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu’s hope is obviously fading in Louisiana. Analyzing the battle for the Senate on a race-by-race basis, then, you see that Michelle Nunn’s problems in Georgia could be the crucial linchpin; if Nunn unravels in the final 19 days of the campaign, Harry Reid loses the gavel.

Overall, despite the many hypotheticals and contingencies, the trend is now running strongly against Democrats, in part because of factors beyond control of the rival parties. That is to say, the ISIS threat in Iraq and the Ebola threat here — both of which have made President Obama look incompetent — are undermining support for Democrats, no matter what happens in the day-to-day battles between GOP and Democrat candidates in each of the key states.

The latest poll in Iowa, for example, shows Republican Joni Ernst widening her lead over Democrat Bruce Braley. Is that a result of Ernst’s campaign strategy and a reflection of her good qualities as a candidate? Yes and yes. However, Ernst is also a beneficiary of the general trend nationwide, which is anti-Obama and anti-Democrat.

It’s by no means safe to predict a Republican victory on Nov. 4, but Democrats have just two chances of holding the Senate majority — and Slim keeps checking his watch and looking toward the door.

 

Senate Poll Wars

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Less than seven weeks before Election Day 2014, the epic struggle to control the media narrative continues:

Democrats are now (very slightly) favored to hold the Senate majority on Nov. 4, according to Election Lab, The Post’s statistical model of the 2014 midterm elections.
Election Lab puts Democrats’ chances of retaining their majority at 51 percent — a huge change from even a few months ago, when the model predicted that Republicans had a better than 80 percent chance of winning the six seats they need to take control.

What this is about is managing expectations, preventing Democrats (and their reliable allies in the media) from becoming demoralized by the more likely prospect that Republicans will capture control of the Senate in November. Last week, poll wizard Nate Silver gave the GOP a 65% chance of winning the Senate majority, and I cautioned at that time a lot could change between early September and Nov. 4.

A mid-term election is not like a presidential campaign, where there are two candidate engaged daily in a single contest. A Senate campaign is fought in multiple states, and a shift in any one of those races could have a significant impact on the Big Picture, where the question is whether the Republicans will make a net gain of enough seats to displace Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. Can Republican Sen. Pat Roberts halt his slide in the polls in Kansas? Can the GOP do something to torpedo Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan? These are the kind of questions that will be answered over the next 49 days, and we don’t know what the answer will be.

My hunch — and it is only a hunch — is that we will wake up on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 5, with the issue still in doubt. There will probably still be two or three Senate races within the range of a recount, and all eyes will quickly turn to Louisiana, where the runoff to decide Mary Landrieu’s fate will be the tiebreaker.

 

Nate Silver: Almost 2-to-1 Chance Republicans Win Senate Majority

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The poll guru himself phrases it as a percentage — 65.1% — but the overall situation looks very good for the GOP:

The bottom line is not much has changed. The FiveThirtyEight forecast model gives Republicans a 65.1 percent chance of winning the Senate with the new polling added, similar to the 63.5 percent chance that our previous forecast gave them on Friday.
But the path to a Republican majority is becoming a little clearer — and the problem for Democrats is that it runs through six deeply red states.
Republicans have long been favored to win back the seats in Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota, three states where Democratic incumbents have retired. Montana and West Virginia are virtual locks for Republicans. South Dakota is slightly less certain only because of the presence of a third-party candidate, the former Republican Senator Larry Pressler. However, Pressler was at only 6 percent of the vote in the YouGov poll, lower than in other recent surveys.
The GOP’s next two easiest targets are in Louisiana and Arkansas, where the Democratic incumbents Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor are struggling with electorates that have turned much redder since their tenure in office began.

After going through the key races state-by-state, Silver says:

But we shouldn’t lose sight of the big picture. Republicans can win the Senate solely by winning Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, states which voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by an average of 19 percentage points in 2012.

(Via Memeorandum.) This isn’t saying the GOP is a lead-pipe cinch, however. Two months is a long time in politics, and the Democrats will unleash hell between now and Nov. 4. Still, with the fall campaign season in full swing, the basic advantages belong to Republicans, and polls show that the Senate majority is within the GOP’s reach.

 

Kentucky Democrat Race-Baits McConnell’s Wife; Deletes ‘Asian’ Tweets

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Kathy Groob is a Democrat Party stategist in Kentucky, where Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is fighting for re-election against Democrat Alison Grimes. Saturday, in a complete non sequitur, Groob sent out a series of Twitter messages saying that McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, “isn’t from KY, she is Asian.”

Groob’s tweets quickly disappeared — indeed, she deleted her entire Twitter account — but not before Phillip Bailey, political editor for Louisville public radio station WFPL screen-capped the “Asian” messages. Democrats rushed to condemn the messages, but this certainly isn’t the first time Chao’s ethnicity has made her the target of Democrat race-card tricks in this campaign. They were doing this stuff last year, back when it was still rumored that movie star Ashley Judd was going to seek the Democrat nomination against McConnell.

Question: How is this different from “birther” attacks on Obama?

How is it that Democrats get a free pass for doing this kind of stuff to Republicans, yet object vehemently to anyone who dares mention that the president’s father was a Kenyan socialist? If “the personal is political” — as feminists have been insisting for more than four decades — why is it these kind of identity-politics arguments are only acceptable if they help elect Democrats and advance a left-wing agenda? Far be it from me to argue that one’s personal experience, including perceptions about ethnicity, are always irrelevant to politics. Dinesh D’Souza (who, last time I checked, wasn’t from Kentucky, either) was roundly vilified for arguing that Obama’s worldview was profoundly influenced by his father’s anti-British/anti-colonialist/anti-capitalist attitudes.

D’Souza’s argument was less “racist” than the arguments of liberals who routinely claim that anyone who opposes Obama is a racist. And certainly, D’Souza’s own worldview has been shaped by his personal experience. In order to be a conservative Indian-American, after all, one must reject the kind of anti-Western attitudes — the residual resentments of colonialism — which D’Souza saw in the attitudes of Obama and Obama’s father. And I would argue that, whatever one’s ethnicity, for any “outsider” or underdog to succeed in America, it is necessary to resist the temptation to resent successful people. If you don’t want to be a loser, you must learn to emulate winners, not envy them.

Whatever your disadvantages in life, or whatever unfair privileges others may enjoy, determination, hard work and an honest character can overcome any obstacle anyone puts in your way. Resolve yourself to work hard despite every discouragement and to learn the lessons of every failure. Study the examples of others who have triumphed over adversity. Make a vow that, whether you ultimately win or lose, no one will ever be able to say that you failed because you didn’t work hard enough. Develop the kind of mental toughness that enables you to survive amid crisis and confusion. Constantly improve your skills, learning whatever you need to know to become better at whatever it is you do. Be flexible and quick to adapt to new circumstances. Learn to recognize opportunity. Become resourceful, so that no problem you encounter leaves you helpless. Most of all, remember that your struggle has a purpose that transcends your narrow selfish desires.

If God has chosen you to do great things, your success will be to His glory. God’s chastisement of your weakness and lack of faith — for this is what your failures really are — should be welcomed with gratitude, for by such chastisement is your faith tested, so that you become more humble, recognizing your debt to God’s grace, even as you grow stronger with each failure. God has some reason for all your toils and setbacks. God is testing you and teaching you, so that you will be ready to fulfill whatever purpose He has for your life. Therefore, thank God for your struggle, and determine to work harder every day to be prepared for whatever He may choose for your task.

This is my belief, and as D’Souza is a Christian, I presume that it is his belief also. Faith in God and a belief in the value of hard work were both crucial to the founding of this nation. We fight to defend our liberty and to defend our faith, and if it should be necessary, we will fight to defend America against any enemy, because we know that America truly represents the last hope for humanity. As Ronald Reagan once said, people come to America in search of freedom, but where will we go if we lose freedom here?

Elaine Chao is not exactly my favorite Republican. She’s not the kind of ferocious, two-fisted, red-meat, right-wing populist who gets me fired up. She’s a Chamber of Commerce type who speaks generally for the interests of big business. Nor is her husband a politician I admire; to be honest, I’m not even sure I would vote for McConnell if I lived in Kentucky. Nevertheless, insofar as Elaine Chao’s ethnicity is of any relevance to this election in Kentucky, it is as an example of how the American Dream is still very much alive. She arrived in America in 1961 as an 8-year-old who didn’t speak English, yet through hard work she got a Harvard MBA, became the Secretary of Labor and married a man who has become the most powerful Republican in Washington.

It is this kind of success story that should make every parent scream at their children: “Turn off that TV! Put down that videogame console! Pick up a book and start studying, you lazy brats! This is America! If Elaine Chao can make it, you’ve got no excuse!”

Such is the true lesson of Elaine Chao’s life, but Democrats . . . well, they’re Democrats, and if appeals to racism or sexism will help elect Democrats, this is what we expect from them. Last summer, when Alison Grimes announced her Democrat candidacy, Kathy Groob gushed all gooey what a wonderful thing it was for women:

Kathy Groob, a Covington-based political consultant and author of the book Pink Politics which focuses on female candidates and the way they can win, is supportive of a Grimes candidacy.
“Alison’s announcement (Monday) is an important step for women in politics in Kentucky and across the country,” said Groob, who attended the press conference in Frankfort. “When a 34-year-old accomplished woman is ready to take on one of the most powerful political men in the country, it’s a great day for women.”

Yeah, “a great day for women.” The feminist message in Kentucky:

“Vote Democrat, because you have a vagina!
And that Republican guy is married to a Chink.”

You stay classy, Kentucky Democrats.