Follow The Money

3:04 am EST October 16th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 10 Comments

As I will say until I’m blue in the face – always assume the worst. Especially considering the recent Democratic track record in national elections, to go in to any November without a strong sense of dread is to go in way too cocky.

That said, save for the possibility of the New Jersey senate seat the Republicans are in a purely defensive posture (I still think New Jersey is a likely Democratic retention – like Maryland, New Jersey is structurally friendly to Democrats, so even a less than perfect Democrat has a leg up – the same idea applies for a Republican somewhere like Texas, where being a Dem puts you two steps behind right out of the gate)

In Final Weeks, G.O.P. Focuses on Best Bets

Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.

Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states — Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia
— while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts
where Republicans have a strong historical or registration advantage,
party officials said Sunday.

Some folks are making hay out of the fact that Bush and Rove are "upbeat". Why would you expect anything different? No president or top political strategist of either party is going to publicly say "we think we’ll lose" or "we don’t feel good" going into a midterm election – no matter how good or bad the numbers are.

Another argument I hate seeing is from folks like Rush Limbaugh who point to races like Tennessee to "prove" that Democrats have to be conservative in order to win. In the South, of course Dems will be more socially conservative than us Dems in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. But there’s two sides to that story. A Republican like Lincoln Chaffee or Olympia Snowe wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of survival in the south. There’s a reason the White House supported Chaffee over the far-right Steve Laffey in the Republican primary (and Specter in 2002) – different regions of America differ politically. To most of us this is common sense, to cons it’s some kind of revalation. The west and northeast are the most culturally liberal, while the midwest is moderate-conservative, and the south (except for Florida) is very conservative.

Holy cow, welcome to America.

 

Topic:

Related Posts

«
»

10 Responses to “Follow The Money”

  1. StarkyLuv says:
    October 16, 2006 at 10:51 am

    Rove and Bush are upbeat because they know they have cards yet to play.

    Striking Iran and out and out voter fraud (their old buddies from ’00 and ’04).

    The are upbeat because they think their wicked tactics will work like they did in the past.

    They will be wrong.

  2. william says:
    October 16, 2006 at 7:35 pm

    Follow the Money eh? Two words…Harry Reid.

  3. Rory_Is_Freedom says:
    October 16, 2006 at 10:25 pm

    Our wicked tactics are better than your wicked tactics.

  4. Oliver Willis says:
    October 17, 2006 at 12:24 am

    Sure, follow Sen. Reid’s money. It goes… nowhere (no matter what Rush Limbaugh keeps telling y’all).

  5. Jay says:
    October 17, 2006 at 7:55 am

    Sure, follow Sen. Reid’s money. It goes… nowhere

    Yeah, right. If a Republican had taken a profit of $1.1 million on land he no longer owned and didn’t disclose it and was also found to have been paying out Christmas bonuses with campaign donations, you’d have 94 entries about it already.

  6. Rex Mundane says:
    October 17, 2006 at 9:52 am

    Jay, I cant even be bothered to explain to you why youre full of your own shit on this, though it clearly has much to do with you not understanding the issue. Fortunately, Senator Reid himself is more than willing to explain your idiocy to you, as well as go beyond the call of duty to prove to you that he is, in fact, not guilty of a damn thing. Not that you’ll take objective fact and logic as proof that he’s not really a criminal, of course. If you cannot be bothered to follow the link, allow me to summarize:

    …taken a profit of $1.1 million on land he no longer owned and didn’t disclose it…

    He actually did own the land at the time.

    …and was also found to have been paying out Christmas bonuses with campaign donations…

    Was entirely legal, and he’s since reimbursed the campaign fund for that value.
    Of course though just because Reid didnt break any law doesnt mean he’s not a criminal right? He must be, he’s a democrat. Its just an issue of finding what law he broke, or failing that, make one up.

  7. Jay says:
    October 17, 2006 at 11:24 am

    You know Rex, I find it laughable that you would be so gullibable as to just believe whatever Senator Reid writes.

    He actually did own the land at the time.

    No, he did NOT own the land. Property deeds show he didn’t own the Land and Reid even carefully words his language when he writes:

    As the amended forms make clear, this routine legal move in no way altered my actual ownership of the land. On each disclosure form after 2001, I have added a note to clarify that the land already disclosed in detail on those forms was owned by me through the LLC.

    Reid did not own the LLC. His buddy did. Reid took a financial stake in the company. Therefore, he did not own the land, the LLC did. The land was legally SOLD and he didn’t disclose the sale.

    Was entirely legal, and he’s since reimbursed the campaign fund for that value.

    It was not perfectly legal. If so, why would he even bother reimbursing his campaign?

    Of course, you’re then whittling it down to whether or not what he did was ‘legal.’

  8. Duros62 says:
    October 17, 2006 at 3:20 pm

    Well, shit, Jay, you got one. Good for you. How many is that now?
    3 Dems and what, 14 Rep.? Clearly the Reps. have the higher moral ground.

  9. Jay says:
    October 17, 2006 at 7:46 pm

    Duros, need I remind of the cesspool that was known as the Democratic party in the late 80′s and early 90′s. Power corrupts.

    What kills me is that you people think that if the Democrats take over, everything is going to be balloons and ice cream with Democrats having halos above their heads. Fact is, if they do take back control and hold it for any length of time, we’ll see scandal after scandal break out.

    Smart people know that.

  10. Nimrod Gently says:
    October 17, 2006 at 9:02 pm

    Wooo, bringing up stuff from almost twenty years ago. You’re a biting satirical genius. And of course the Republicans had so much integrity back then themselves.

    And no-one thinks Democrats will be puppies and icecream, but they’ll be better than the current piece of shit leaders of the free world.