You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
-Election 2012
Dems Give Up on House, Look to 2014 and Crash of TEA Party
2012-10-28
President Obama remains at least an even bet to win reelection. Democrats are favored to hold on to the Senate -- an outcome few prognosticators envisioned at the beginning of the year. And yet, with a little more than a week to go, the party holds almost no chance of winning back the House.
This on the front page of the WaPo, instead of Benghazigate, one presumes.
Analysts cite several factors why the Democrats haven't been able to take advantage. First was a redistricting process that made some Republicans virtually impervious to a challenge and re-election more difficult for about 10 Democrats. A few Democratic incumbents have stumbled in their first competitive races in years. And Republicans have leveraged their majority into a fund-raising operation that has out-muscled the Democrats.
A majority? The Trunks? First time I've seen that suggested!
That means that regardless of who wins the White House, the Republican caucus will remain a critical player in the coming showdowns over tax and spending cuts. Such a result will have defied the chorus of prognosticators who saw so many of these inexperienced freshmen as beneficiaries of blind political luck -- swept up in the 2010 wave of sentiment against Obama and presumably poised to be swept back to sea when the tide went out this November.
To dream, the impossible dream...
Democrats have put a few high profile tea-party lawmakers on the defensive. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), whose confrontational style made him a YouTube sensation and a regular on Fox News, is running behind in his suburban Chicago district.

In Florida, Rep. Allen West (R), a former Army lieutenant colonel, moved north of his previous Palm Beach-based district but still faces stiff competition, even as he declines to tone down his rhetoric.
I have split my contribution so far between Mitt, the Tea Party, and Col. West.
"It's about two different ideologies going forward. It's the opportunity society against the dependency society. It's the constitutional republic against a socialist egalitarian nanny state," the conservative icon, one of just two black Republicans in Congress, said in an interview in St. Lucie.

Beyond the freshmen, Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Steve King (Iowa) are fighting for their political lives. Bachmann's Quixotic presidential campaign left her open to charges of ignoring her district. King is facing Christie Vilsack, the wife of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a still-popular former governor. She is also focusing on local issues rather than King's national conservative platform.

Democrats believe that such high-profile victories could send a signal that hyper-partisanship is not the route to reelection, giving hope for more bipartisan work in 2013.
Maybe if we get rid of the hyper-partisan occupant of the White House the boot...
Posted by:Bobby

#8  Dems didn't give up one the House. The voters gave up on the Dems.
Posted by: Iblis   2012-10-28 21:32  

#7  Notice that the only way the dems debate the Tea Party is with ad hominem attacks. They have nothing in their tool kits except the ad hominem tool. Well, even with the MSM carrying water for the dems, people are getting tired of that juvenile behavior.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2012-10-28 13:58  

#6  The Tea Party is NOT going away. For starters, is is not the Tea PARTY, but a true grass roots amalgamation of hundreds of local Tea Parties, with no national command. They are much more like the original Committees of Correspondence and other local revolutionary groups of the 1770's than anything since. They will continue to work for local candidates and issues, to meet and discuss local and national issues, to educate and organize. If (when?) the 'system' collapses under its own weight, they will be the only thing left between anarchy and dictatorship. Join one.
Posted by: Glenmore   2012-10-28 13:24  

#5  Democrats are favored to hold on to the Senate -- an outcome few prognosticators envisioned at the beginning of the year.

Really? Has the memory hole been topped off?
About that Tea Party -

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle”
― Sun Tzu

When you lie to yourself, you're in the third category.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2012-10-28 11:22  

#4  The crash of the Tea Party? Not so fast. The Tea Party has been demonized by the Left ever since they emerged as a political force. Their demise has been predicted and hoped for and and yet they are still around and their influence felt.
Posted by: JohnQC   2012-10-28 11:17  

#3  I hope the tea party doesn't go away, I hope they redouble their efforts to keep Mitt's feet to the fire in case he gets squishy.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2012-10-28 10:49  

#2  They also failed to mention that Walsh has been a victim of redistricting. THAT's about repudiating hyperpartisanship, y'know.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2012-10-28 10:44  

#1  yeah, it's all about the redistricting. Couldn't possibly be a widespread repudiation of the Pelosi agenda and the bitch herself
Posted by: Frank G   2012-10-28 09:32  

00:00