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| Matthews' Rosy Prediction: Five GOP Seats Republicans' Rosy Prediction: Ten GOP Seats |
What are 2014 Republican operatives worried about? Considering the dour outlook from liberal Chris Matthew’s perspective, they may have nothing to worry about at all:
“For the Democrats, a rosy scenario is to lose five seats. They could lose ten.”
If liberal talking-heads are shaking in their shoes about the Democrats’ chances of holding the US Senate, then Republicans should be filling a tingle up their. . .everything, everywhere!
However, for the sake of honoring all concerns, as nothing is certain until the final ballots are tallied on election day, let us respect the reasons in abstracto why Republican operatives are taking no chances.
They are looking over their shoulders at the wreckage of 2012, in which President Obama was running against a moderate Republican Governor from a blue state, who had sponsored and signed into law a blue print health insurance mandate, the template for the national Affordable Care Act.
Let’s review the autopsy report.
A presidential year, with a middling Republican standard-bearer hurt Republicans nationally, including winnable races for US Senate in North Dakota and Montana, as well as Congressional races in California. 2012 witnessed a weak field of Presidential candidates, all of which were better in some ways compared to the weak, and weakened front-runner. Media flubs from a virulent, pro-Obama media sunk qualified candidates in Indiana and Missouri, too.
Besides, President Obama faced no lingering primary challenges, and no third party spoilers. Political scientists will affirm that no incumbent without those setbacks ever lost a reelection bid for the White House. Ever.
Now facing 2014, an off-year election, Republicans can wager that voter turnout will be diminished. Still, wise political operators never rest the hopes of the Republic on how low the voter turnout turns. Voter fraud is always lurking to spoil an election, yet even now Texas Electoral registrars have beaten back “Battleground Texas” affronts to the political process.
While the prior RNC Chairman Michael Steele fomented controversy around his tenure, the current leader Reince Preibus is fighting back against current media bias and future debate-debasing, as he and his leadership caucus have limited the number of debates, shortened the primary season, and scheduled an earlier National Convention in 2016. He also slammed MSNBC’s frequent race-baiting tweets toward conservatives and Republicans, and has called for a party-wide boycott against the left-leaning MSNBC. Punching back twice as hard, National Republicans are not playing defense with an indefensible media. Even former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s “sugar daddy” remark actually vaulted him briefly to Presidential front-runner status, with conservative advocates declaring that the best defense against “War on Women” rhetoric is a strong offense.
The leadership has paid attention to 2012 failures, and that National Party affiliates are pouring money into races all over the country. Perhaps they are heeding Rove’s suggestion, by way of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean: time to enact a fifty-state strategy.
And the fifty-state strategy is in full spin. For the first time in more than a decade, the Republican Party can capture a US Senate seat in Michigan, where the party also holds every major statewide office. The Detroit bankruptcy has exposed the bankruptcy of failed class warfare commissioned by a half-century of embittered liberal malcontents. Democratic US Senator Max Baucus of Montana has resigned to become ambassador to China, and the strongest Democratic candidate, former governor Brian Schweizter, has declined to run. The interim Senator of Montana is already losing to the current Republican, the at-large House Rep Steve Daines. South Dakota will flip red, guaranteed, and as long as Susan Collins remains in the running, Maine will have one Republican senator (albeit a more liberal one).
The Southern Strategy is in full swing, too, as Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana fend off sharp challenges to their tenure. Red states with blue senators have greater propensity to push their representation completely into the red. Arkansas lost one Democrat, Blanche Lincoln, in 2010 by thirty points. Pryor will share the same fate. As for Landrieu, Rhode Island US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, of climate alarmism infamy, has suggested that the red-state blue senator will help forge environmental restrictions as the incoming Chair of the US Senate Energy Committee. With such liberal cheerleading, the Republicans challenging Landrieu won’t have to fight.
ObamaCare is in full swing, ravaging like an inglorious mental patient, ruining health care, forcing the cancellations of millions of health insurance plans, and pushing doctors out of the profession. I wonder which party physicians will endorse in 2014.
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| Jeff Merkley: Trying to put on a happy face for 2014 Obamacare Backlash |
Even liberal bastions Oregon and Illinois will sponsor strong Republican challengers. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley has been targeted in billboards throughout the Beaver State, where the state Obamacare exchange has failed miserably. As for DIICK Durbin, despite his failed media spin about Obamacare enrollees, he has conceded that the Democrats cannot keep up with the 2014 GOP momentum for take over.
Forgetting the failures of 2012, election year 2014 is looking like a GOP tidal wave. Even Chris Matthews says so!
Do you feel a tingle up your leg, GOP?