U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
December 03, 2008 12:06 PM UTC
23 Comments
You’re celebrating a win in Georgia. If Georgia is competitive (and it clearly is), then the Republican party is having to fight to hang on to it’s safe seats.
This would be like Dems applauding a victory in Massachusetts.
The runoff numbers were 57-43. The first round was 49.9-47-3 more or less, with the third party numbers mostly going to a libertarian. This means that Obama boosted the Democrat by 4-5 percentage points.
But a double digit win is not having to fight anything but too much liberal money.
We need to scrap campaign finance reform, and allow any citizen to give as much as they want to who they want, so long as it is subject to timely disclosure.
By Christopher G. Adamo
December 4, 2008
Georgia voters validated the Reaganite template for victory once again on December 2. In a runoff election for Senate, incumbent Saxby Chambliss won handily over Democrat challenger Jim Martin, with an advantage of nearly fifteen percent.
How could this be? Republicans, and particularly conservatives, we are incessantly told, have been politically exiled since 2006 and are in complete disrepute these days. More often than not, Chambliss is considered a reliable conservative. Worse yet, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whom the media characterizes as a political pariah, vigorously and visibly supported him, especially in the last few days of his runoff campaign.
In contrast Barack Obama, fearing the symbolism of a public rebuke of his empty “change” rhetoric,” never went to Georgia to campaign for Martin. Since Obama did not carry Georgia in the general election, the prospect of supporting a losing candidate posed a definite risk to the “messianic” facade that he has cultivated so meticulously during the past few years.
Instead, he once again essentially voted “present,” producing a commercial or two on behalf of the Georgia Democrat while remaining safely outside of the state. But it is widely known that Obama, as well as the House and Senate Democrats in Washington, held out great hopes of the filibuster proof Senate majority that a Martin victory might have helped facilitate.
These unfolding events are confusing and inconsistent, at least to those who accept the opinions of the “mainstream” Democrat and Republican punditry. According to the “conventional wisdom” of Washington insiders from both parties, John McCain would have done better to ditch Sarah Palin whom they believed to be a drag on his ticket. But in a seemingly contradictory fashion, Chambliss involved Palin heavily, while McCain was only nominally visible. As a result, Chambliss won his race, and with a far wider margin than McCain accrued on Election Day.
Meanwhile, from token “Republican” David Brooks of the New York Times, to his ideological counterpart Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, presumed experts on Republican Party strategy have been busily deriding Palin during and after the 2008 presidential campaign. Their verdict: Immediately expel her and her kind for the good of America and the party.
It is no surprise that Beltway Democrats would loudly promote a losing Republican “strategy” of watering-down and ultimately abandoning conservatism, since such a tack can only improve Democrat fortunes. But it is somewhat puzzling that “Republican” political hacks would journey down the same path.
In complete defiance of their “wisdom,” both prior to November fourth, as well as during the Georgia contest of the past few days, Palin attracted far larger and more enthusiastic crowds than Chambliss could ever have acquired on his own. Few among the political mainstream would dare suggest a comparable public reaction, had Vice-President elect Joe Biden, the candidate of the winning Democrat ticket, attempted a similar campaign stump for Martin.
Such an exuberant response to the losing vice-presidential candidate would, according the D.C. wizards, seem totally contradictory to their regular forecasts of what America wants. In the wake of each Republican setback the “experts” incessantly advocate “moderation” and “moving to the political center.” Yet it is they, and not the straightforward conservatism of the Chambliss campaign, who have been consistently wrong for over three decades.
In the aftermath of the presidential election, McCain staffers leaked derogatory stories about Governor Palin, in a transparent effort to derail any political future to which she might aspire. Yet the reality is that her antagonists were revealing much more about themselves, and the fatal flaws of the McCain political apparatus, than they were about the conservatism of Sarah Palin.
Noisy declarations of the “need” for the GOP to eject its conservative element, and in particular the maligned “religious right,” predictably erupt after every election in which Republicans lose ground. Yet these are regularly contradicted by events such as the December 2 election in Georgia, where both conservatism and the issues of importance to the Evangelicals with whom Palin is closely identified, were forthrightly validated.
By providing the contrast necessary to delineate between traditional Republicans and Democrats, Palin generated an enthusiasm for the McCain ticket that had been completely absent prior to the announcement of her as his running mate. And while her presence on the ticket was not sufficient to neutralize voter disillusionment with McCain, she unquestionably displayed the ability to enhance the standing of an established conservative like Chambliss.
This lesson, so crucial to the future of the GOP, needs to be grasped and learned once and for all. Conservatism, real conservatism, resonates with heartland America, and wins elections. The people of this country have little interest in a Republican party that seeks to define itself as a milder and cheaper version of the societal dissolution and erosion of American greatness offered by the opposition. If voters really want that, they can get it in its undiluted form from the Democrats.
Saxby Chambliss correctly grasps the situation, crediting Palin as the individual whose support and involvement “fired up” the base. He further admonished recalcitrant Republican “moderates” of the need for the GOP to return to “those basic core values” of Reagan conservatism.
In Georgia at least, Chambliss restored the traditionally conservative image of the GOP, thus cementing a resounding victory. And no amount of biased media coverage, contrived financial calamity, or voter fraud from ACORN could derail his effort. The viability of the Republican Party depends on its willingness to adopt this approach to modern politics as the key to its future.
—
Christopher G. Adamo is a freelance writer and staff writer for the New Media Alliance. He lives in southeastern Wyoming. He has been active in local and state politics for many years and is a managing partner in Best American Buy (www.bestamericanbuy.com), an e-commerce business that markets products exclusively made in America. His contact information and archives can be found at http://www.chrisadamo.com
just a prolonged and costly protection campaign. If Chambliss is a bright spot for R’s, you’re admitting the party has degenerated well past its prime.
Keep him and send MM down there to join him.
Beer, wine and moderately priced champagne are available for $6.
No, it means we’d only need to get one Republican Senator to join a cloture vote to get anything passed, along with holding all of our own Senators. Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe are about as likely to vote with us as Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.
Check out this very cool list of all cloture motions in the Senate. You can clearly see that almost always the filibuster either gets less than 46 votes or more than 50, meaning that at least three Republican Senators almost always defect on a cloture vote, or we lose Senators on our side anyway.
I expect very few successful filibusters in this Senate, even if Franken loses. But if Franken wins, it will take party discipline like Senate Republicans have never seen before to sustain even a single filibuster.
on how far left the big O goes. Right now, he looks like a centrist.
He looks like a centrist now because he’s always been a pragmatic politician. He’s never been the fire breathing Marxist that the far-right (and Joe Lieberman) made him out to be.
It shows just how far to the right the base of the GOP is that we were inundated with cries of socialism for weeks on end about as pragmatic and moderate in temperament a politician as Obama.
The socialist thing didn’t get legs until then-Senator-Obama told a guy ‘it works better when you spread the wealth around’.
I hope you lefties keep thinking to yourselves that the country has changed to a left-leaning entity overnight. It hasn’t. America is a center-right country and will be for many years to come. You had a terrible Republican candidate following a hated Republican President after 7 years of war in the middle of an economic implosion, and it still wasn’t even close to the ass-whipping Reagan gave you guys 20 years ago.
The exposure of being in power without exception is going to speed the swing of the pendulum.
I hope Obama won’t start taking you righties seriously.
I saw a poll in this morning’s USA Today that said 58% approve of Obama’s massive government spending plan, while only 30% disapprove. With all the conservatives frothing about how government spending never helps the economy and only made the Great Depression worse, isn’t it surprising that only 30% of the country is taking them seriously?
That 30% can keep imagining they represent the whole country, but the country is seriously leaving them behind. (Well, except for the media which keeps putting these loons on TV.)
If you ask people to self-identify, we’re a center-right country. If you ask people for their position on policies, where a left-leaning country.
What I think Obama will do is call his policies conservative while pushing liberal solutions. That way most will be happy with what he’s doing, and what he’s calling it.
Let’s see what the numbers are when they have to pay for the massive spending plan he’s put forth, and its consequences start rolling in.
Up to $700 billion or so, which is huge. (Some people are still pissed off about the last $700 billion for the financial bailout, and certainly you never had a clear majority supporting that plan.)
People like it anyway. Know why? Cause deep down inside, in the place they won’t tell the pollsters, they’re all SPARTACISTS.
I can’t wait to meet you. You are freaking great. I’m glad we called a truce and started over.
What’s kind of funny, to me at least, is that I actually went through the list of socialist groups I know and thought to myself, “which ones are the hardest of the hardcore?” Every far-far-left person you know would agree it’s the Spartacists. And also that they’re all assholes.
Maybe it was not many years ago. Not now.
The electorate has discovered what happens when you remove and minimize good government.
The electorate WANTS an effective government to help them through their lives. That includes fairness in commerce, a clean environmnent, and now, universal health care.
The center-right component of the electorate also has another moniker: In denial.
what the electorate wants. Unfortunately, Laughing Boy is right, too. No one’s going happy paying for it.
If Obama’s smart about it, I think he will be, he’ll start by adjusting the taxes on the wealthiest (already plans to do that), then gently adjust the middle class. Ultimately most of us will probably still have a lower rate than we did with Bush.
The good news, if the programs work the rich aren’t going to convince us to elect a super-conservative to re-instate their cuts.
He stumbled into a cliche. It DOES work best from the base up. Probably why the economy goes south mainly under the elitist, let the workers eat cake GOP. When the broad middle does well everybody does well. He shouldn’t have used a phrase that makes righties froth, that’s all. But hey, he got elected decisively anyway so big deal.
He’s never been or campaigned as a lefty. And as for the whole 60 thing that’s a mirage. How often does EVERY Dem vote the same way anyway? It’s not much more or less veto proof whether it’s high fifties or 60.
I like that!
But Oscar Robertson will have to give up his claim on the term first:
http://www.thebigo.com/main.php
What a classy dude.
Only player to average a triple-double over a season, right?
Particularly in the Senate, what matters are the individual people at the median+1 and 60th spot, not the political parties, and it varies meaningfully issue to issue.
Franken is a coin toss at this point.