The Battle for America 2010: What Are GOP Prospects for a Senate Takeover One Week Out?
Pretty much every serious analyst is now projecting that the Republicans will take control of the House, gaining more than the 39 seats they need to win. The forecasts from Larry Sabato, Stuart Rothenberg, Charles Cook, Nate Silver, Jay Cost, and the RealClearPolitics.com average show a range between a 45- and a 61-seat net gain for the GOP. The numbers have been rising as Election Day nears.
But the battle for control of the Senate is a different story, with many close races and greater uncertainty today than was the case a few weeks back.
If the Republican candidates lose every close race, they would pick up only four net Senate seats to get to 45 total seats. If they have a very good day, and run the table in all the closely contested seats, they could gain as many as 11 to get to 52.
Here is my assessment on where the close races now stand.
GOP held seats
The GOP candidates hold solid leads in all of the open seats to replace GOP senators — Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, Kansas, Florida, and Kentucky — and in the two contested incumbent seats in North Carolina and Louisiana. The Ohio race is now a blowout for Rob Portman, which may help the GOP in many of the state’s hard-fought House races.
The Kentucky race between Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway appeared to tighten a week back, but a Conway ad attacking Paul for some alleged college misbehavior has backfired on the Democrat. That said, while Kentucky has given big wins to GOP candidates for president in the last three elections, races for senator have been regularly very close. Paul should win, but this race will likely remain closer than the others listed above.
Certain GOP pickups
The Democrats have all but conceded that they will lose the open seat races in North Dakota (a 30-point lead for Governor John Hoeven) and Indiana (a near 20-point lead for former Senator Dan Coats), and that Congressman John Boozman will win easily against Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas.
GOP leads
Since he won the Republican nomination, Ron Johnson has maintained a six- or seven-point lead over Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. One poll last week showed Johnson’s lead at only 2 %, but no other survey has confirmed that the race is that close. It is very rare for a candidate to win after being down six or seven points in the polls this late in the race.
In Pennsylvania, until last week, former Republican Congressman Pat Toomey held a similar sized lead over Democrat Congressman Joe Sestak for Arlen Specter’s open seat. A few new polls showed the race was a tie, or even put Sestak ahead by a small margin. However, that “trend” seems to have reversed (there was a burst of new ads for Toomey blasting Sestak last weekend), and Toomey seems to have regained control of the race (he has moved from a three-point deficit to a five-point lead in the Morning Call daily tracking poll). He has a narrower lead than Johnson holds in Wisconsin, but this race is leaning to Toomey.
Tossups leaning to the GOP
In two of the four pure tossup races, GOP candidates seem to have solidified their position in the last week. Illinois GOP Congressman Mark Kirk has been ahead in the last four surveys, by 2 to 4%, and now seems to have opened up a bit of daylight on Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. Illinois is a very solid blue state, though the GOP seems poised to have its best year since 1998. Each side has run mostly negative ads against the other candidate, perhaps a partial explanation for why there are still a healthy number of undecided voters, or voters leaning to third party candidates. A “none of the above” option (which is on the ballot in Nevada) might win 5% in Illinois this year. Nate Silver rates Kirk as just shy of a 2 to 1 favorite, which sounds about right.
In Nevada, GOP candidate Sharron Angle has held small leads (two to three points) in the last few public polls, and was generally considered to have won the only debate she had with Senator Harry Reid. Early voting numbers have been favorable to the GOP in Nevada (as in many other states), though this race is still very close, and a higher than expected Hispanic turnout could lift Reid to victory. Reid has been damaged by Nevada’s high unemployment rate and the unpopularity of the health care reform bill he championed .
Art of War and Warfare:
I received an email from a conservative friend of mine who lives in the People’s Republic of California and he was discussing the current administration and their bungling diplomacies, etc. and discussing chess as a game to plan war strategies, etc. I responded to my good friend with the following and entitled it the Art Of Warfare:
Exactly Doc–First of all, if you find it necessary to go to war, you then have to have as your goal, winning the war. Then, you make a plan. Then, you implement your plan. If your plan is not working, regroup and figure out why said plan did not work, and then make necessary adjustments to said plan, and act on it. And like in any planning, only scrap what does not work, keep what was working well, and then get on with the plan until your goal is achieved. If your original assessment was that war was not only the right thing to do and thus necessary, then you owe it to the cause of good and to your soldiers and to your citizens and allies to achieve the goal of defeating the enemy you found it necessary to go to war with to begin with. And, to date, in history, no wars that involved the forces of perceived good and evil, has the war been won with words and diplomacy. Diplomacy comes after you have defeated your enemy and you let the enemy know what his future rules of civility are going to be if you have any vested interest and right to be involved with his country to begin with. And, if what you are telling the enemy what his rules of civility are going to be, you have to be sure that what those rules are, are acceptable to what the majority of the citizens of said nation want. And, if you do not have the people on your side, maybe you should not be there to begin with, unless the only way to keep the nation from being an aggressor is to occupy them and keep them in check. And, with a place like the middle east where you have Muslim Regimes, who have 20th and 21st century technologies and 10th century BC mentalities, you either have to take away their technologies or capabilities of using said technologies when it comes to warfare technologies. Or, if you are not willing to do this, then you must make sure that you keep their leaders in Check to insure that they will never use those technologies against their neighbors or against any other non-aggressor nation. If the war in Iraq was necessary, then it is our responsibility now to stay in the area long enough to finish the job in the region and that may require the permanent occupation of Iraq with permanent bases to keep the Iranians and other hostiles in perpetual Check Mate. In the meantime, if part of our reason for being there is OIL because we need it, then we need to lessen the need for their oil by extracting and using our own oil which, according to our own geologists, we have plenty of it. And, as a nation, we cannot allow a group of enviro-whack jobs who have their own personalized goals and beliefs and agendas to keep us from extracting our own energy resources wherever those resources are located. And, also, when the enviro-whack jobs are endangering national security, these whack jobs need to be investigated and see which of our other enemies are they either knowingly or unknowingly colluding with. The Liberal Mindset in this country at the highest levels of power is the greatest national security threat this nation faces. And, many of them are knowingly colluding with our enemies, while, I am sure that most of them are just unknowing and ignorant pawns who go along to get along for their own selfish needs for power and approval of the powers that be. Looking at the makeup of our congress, I have never seen such an amassed group of fools and incompetents, who are able to wield so much power with an unlimited Checking Account. The current makeup of our leadership in this country is the biggest assortment of fools, lunatics, incompetents, criminals, subversives, perverts and enemy spies that I have ever witnessed. You could not plan and implement a More Perfect Storm for Disaster than what we have assembled in our government today. And, if we do not recognize this current congress and president for what and who they are, and remove them at the ballot box, and then begin to Down Size their Powers and the Abilities for them to Make another Mess of the sort they have already created, our days as a free an sovereign people living in a free and sovereign nation are numbered. This current government and it’s leadership are in bed with our enemies and in some cases, our enemies are already in positions of power in our government. The downsizing of government is absolutely necessary, and by downsizing, I mean the elimination of some of the major Agencies, Bureaus, Commissions, and Departments that do no good at all and in fact, are doing great harm to our country. And, along with these Major Unconstitutional ABCD’s of Bureaucracy, you eliminate the thousands of Tentacles of these major Bureaucracies that are spread out all over the nation like a massive root ball in a potted plant when the plant outgrows the pot. The major war we now face as a nation is the war at home. And, the citizenry of this nation have to be awakened and educated to the fact that our current government is beyond incompetent, they are criminally and suicidally incompetent. And, if we do not Win The War at home, we will continue to play into the hands of our enemies, and we will deliver the weapons and tools that our enemies will take and then destroy us and our allies with. This is the case in the middle east now. Iran is still using technologies that we gave them. The Iran we have today is the creation of Feel Good Incompetents in this government, both present and past. You can go back to Jimmy Carter, who was another incompetent warm and fuzzy president who had drank the communist kool-aid, and see how his policies put the Islamic Lunatics in power who toppled the Shah who was the head of an elected and civilized society. And, you can mark Jimmy Carter’s Presidency as the Beginning of this Islamic Terrorist War that we are still fighting today. Today, we can win the war at home with words that educate and awaken The Masses of Americans who are ignorant and are kept that way by our MSM, Hollywood, Politicians and the Public Schools. We have to end the Official Brainwashing, Lying and Propaganda Campaigns that have been waged on this country by our very so-called leaders, and tell folks what is really going on. It is my firm belief as an educator, that people make much better decisions when they are armed with the truth and good information. Mostly what the citizens of our country are being fed today are Lies, Propaganda, and Dis-Information, and it is my belief that the majority of these Lies, Propaganda and Dis-Information is being disseminated purposely by Our Leaders and the MSM and Hollywood is providing the Megaphone to Broadcast these Lies, Propaganda and Dis-Information. And, the majority of the citizens, are merely pawns who have Bought The Lies and believe the lies to be truths, and therefore are making daily decisions based on what they believe to be facts, when in fact, they have been lied to deliberately and dumbed down deliberately by the powers that be. The Liberal Democrats and other Nefarious Enemies of our Freedoms know the level of ignorance and illiteracy that exists in the USA today, because they have purposely engineered this dumbing down and brainwashing campaign over the past 4 decades, and they Prey On This Ignorance, thus the Election of the Likes of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Barney Frank, Al Cee Hastings, John Lewis, Barbara Boxer, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and the rest of the Capitol Hill Gang of thugs, thieves, subversives, perverts, communists and other assorted misfits, criminals, and deadbeats. And, many of them are also Lawyers, who through the writing of laws that only lawyers can understand, are perpetuating the incompetency at the highest levels of government as they perpetuate their own legalistic and litigious culture. What America Needs to Hear is Common Sense spoken In Language that anybody can understand, and what Americans need is Good, Honest and Factual Information. Armed with Good Information, Most Americans, in spite of the decades of dumbing down and brainwashing, will make better decisions. The Only Way to Defeat Our Current Government is to Expose This Government and The Criminals and Incompetents that are perpetuating it. And, you do this by Telling The Public The Truth. Americans Can Handle The Truth if give an opportunity to See and Hear the Truth. It is not that most Americans believe the lies they are being told today, it is just that most Americans today, do not trust what anybody says as they have become cynical and believe that They All Lie, so what’s the difference???? Well, the difference is this: We now have a Marxist President who was Elected By An Illiterate Populace who Believed His Lies and Who Voted in a Politically Correct Way as opposed to Having An Incompetent President if we had elected John McCain. But, the difference is that John McCain’s patriotism and love of this nation cannot be questioned, whereas Mr. Obama’s love of this country can be questioned, and should be questioned based on his past and present words and deeds. Some say that in elections, you only select the lesser of 2 evils, but what you wind up with is still Evil. But, I can assure you that given the difference in evils of Obama and McCain, I will pick McCain’s Mamby Pamby Incompetence anyday of the week over Obama’s Direct Subversion and Hatred of the U.S.A. and our standing in the nation, which he seems to be determined to tear down. Thanks–Have a good day. Jerome
For the Republicans to get 48 or 49 seats in the Senate wouldn’t be bad at all. The Democrats wouldn’t be able to get their 60 votes on anything, even if the two RINOs from Maine decide to vote against a Republican bill. So, basically, the Senate would be paralyzed even if the Democrats held a slim majority. Works for me. The less they do in there means the less damage they can do to the country. God Bless gridlock. If we had gridlock two years ago, there would be no Obamacare, no “Stimulus,” and no GM and Chrysler bailouts, to name just a few, saving us literally trillions of dollars. So bring on the gridlock. It will save a lot of money and it will keep spending down until a Republican can replace Obama in 2012.
Exactly. Gridlock is the best we can hope for. Even if the Republicans win both the House and the Senate, Obama still has veto power over any bill they present, and it’s guaranteed that the GOP won’t have enough people in either chamber to override a veto. The best we can hope for is to stop the insane spending and the other far-left initiatives without handing the momentum back over to the Democrats over the next two years.
I predict that where the governor’s race goes to the Republican, that vote will drag the Republican senator over the finish line.
Maybe if you stomp on a few more women’s heads you’ll get there.
http://crooksandliars.com/
Typical dem staged event. Show me the ‘assailant’ arrested and I’ll consider the alternative.
Typical conservative pussy, unwilling to man up and take responsibility for his own. To that there is no alternative.
hehe, Your Sensensless,
Can you say “gridlock?
Lib-turds are pathetic.
I guess they just got tired of SEIU thugs beating the crap out of them. Sorry, it takes some big stones for a Democratic hack to accuse anybody of encouraging violence. You guys invented the game, now deal with it.
Here you go, boys.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/26/tim-profitt-rand-paul-supporter_n_774285.html
Let me know if you need any more proof.
By the Way, how long have you been looking to the worst possible behavior of people you despise to define your character?
Typical lib; when the facts don’t fit just start the name calling.
Republicans and Independents need to be reminded of what else is at stake if they don’t get out and vote:
A DemocRat majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee and confirmation on the floor of any future SCOTUS nominees by the Alleged Hawaiian.
Plus…a cock-blocking of convicting and removing him from office should he be impeached.
Been there, done that with Bill, “Dude! I got high and lost the nuclear launch codes!”, Clinton.
FYI, it takes 2/3 of the Senate to convict on an article of impeachment. So even if the House were to impeach, it would be nothing more than a futile gesture, as it was against Slick Willie.
It is so frustrating here in WA. Rossi is a good guy, but a lousy campaigner. He always responds to the negative nonsense and drifts away from the issues. He also used most of the money I gave him to solicit me for yet more money. I do not like some of his politics, either, but the man is a true government fiscal hawk!
The biggest problem we have is we have possibly the highest percentage in the country of college graduates in our populace here. Thoroughly indoctrinated in the “Green” brand. One of our House races is between the Dem and the radical Green. (sigh)
I have to laugh when the pundit says Ken Buck is a 2-1 favorite in the Colorado Senate race. Buck has done worse than just a poor performance in his debate with appointed Senator Bennet. Buck has done more flip-flopping than John Kerry did in the 2004 presidential race. A new term has been coined for this race called “buckpedaling.”
Buck is viewed as being anti-womens’ issues. He’s against abortion in all circumstances including incest and rape. He’s supported a “personhood” amendment that would define a fertilized egg as a human being. Never mind that a similar amendment failed in 2008 by a 27% to 73% vote and the 2010 proposal appears headed for a similar sized defeat. He publicly stated in the Republican primary that he was better qualified to be the nominee than his female opponent because he doesn’t wear high heels. That quote made it onto YouTube.
He declined to prosecute a rape case several years ago, as the county DA, because the victim was having “buyers’ remorse. He claims to have set up a rape victims’ counseling program but never did in fact. Buck states global warming is a hoax; even Bill O’Reilly on Fox News says climate change is real, he just isn’t sure of the amount of human causation. Most recently, Buck says he doesn’t believe in separation of church and state.
We Republicans had a great opportunity to pick up this Senate seat. Unfortunately, an inept candidate who keeps stepping on his male appendage is just what the Dems wanted to have. Ugh!!
Nobody here believes you’re a Republican – to do so, we’d have to be as stupid as you, and we’re not.
Gee, Smoke. I’m not sure you would recognize a Republican if Reagan came back and was sitting in your living room quaffing a brew. Seriously, Buck has flip-flopped on all the issues I cited. Problem is, independents outnumber both Repubs and Dems in Colorado. One runs to their base in the primary, then tries to move to the center in the general election to attract moderates and independents. Buck has done a poor job of that as he has continued to stick his foot in his mouth long after his primary win.
I stand by my statements and will add: if Buck loses, it will be a case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. As it now stands, the pundit is wrong in saying Buck is up by a 2-1 margin. Maybe two months ago; last poll shows him and the Dem tied at 47% each.
If you want higher deficits, higher unemplyment, more welfare (think serfdom), Iran with nukes (and the US less safe) and less freedom vote for the suicidal Demss.
The Fine Art of Political Flip-Flopping “by Kate Evans”
Easily the most renouned political flipflopper in the last few decades was the Democrat nominee for president in 2004, Senator John Kerry, who will go down in history as the man who wanted it both ways on the Iraq War and ended up losing that election in part because he tried to flimflam the electorate.
His classic line is usually quoted as, “I voted for the war before I voted against it” but his flip-flopping went far beyond that equivocation.
He voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq in October, 2002, supported President G.W. Bush in May, 2003 and later that year contended he merely voted to “threaten” Saddam Hussein, then, 5 months after that declared to Chris Matthews that he was anti-war, saying emphatically that “I don’t believe the president took us to war as he should have, yes, absolutely.”
As he should have?
It’s not nice to try to fool Mother Nature and even less nice to try to fool the American people.
There’s a whole lot of fooling, flim-famming, flip-flopping in progress during the current election cycle chiefly on the part of Democrat candidates on the November ballot and mainly involving Obamacare.
Those Democrats who voted for the misleadingly-titled Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2009. PPAHCA aka Obamacare, heve been scurrying about seeking cover and have been downplaying, i.e., attempting to hide that vote. Those few Dems who voted against the measure are proudly touting their opposition as if it were a badge of honor. Those, like West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin who weren’t in Congress to vote yea or nay, are busily engaged in Kerry-esque flip-flopping. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2227)