Thread: Say It Ain't So, Tingles! MSNBC's Matthews Says Dems Could Lose 10 Senate Seats In Th

bttt

http://www.alipac.us/f9/gallup-presi...stress-299272/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/%93had-enoug...vember-299284/

James Carville’s Pep Talk For Mid-Term Democrats Sounds A Lot Like A Eulogy

March 19, 2014 by Ben Bullard

Former Clinton strategist and Democratic pundit James Carville wrote a strange, self-deceiving piece of empty optimism for The Hill this week, calling on Democrats to look on the bright side of their political plight as the 2014 midterm elections approach.
The piece is, evidently, part of an ongoing relationship between Carville and the Washington, D.C. media outfit. And if the column is any indication of what he’ll bring to the table for the rest of the year, all we can say is…more, please.
Normally an incomparable firebrand, Carville defied his own nature by cherishing every sorry nugget of hypothetical political advantage he could dig up to explain why Democrats should be happy about their chances at the polls this year. Stepping far outside his character as an aggressive, no-apologies liberal who dismisses the opposition by relegating the other guys’ talking points to archaic irrelevancy, Carville found some pauper’s measure of rainy-day cheer in the blind faith that somehow, between now and November, voters’ attitude toward incumbent Democrats might just change for no reason.

The fundamental consideration is this: if the election were held in the current climate, it wouldn’t be hard to argue that the Democrats might have a bad, perhaps even awful, election ahead of them. However, the one thing we know is that it is not going to be held now — it is going to be held in November. This is a case where we don’t know if there is going to be a political climate change or not. Suffice to say, I am pulling for some political climate change.

This is like telling a cop who pulled you over for speeding that everyone else is speeding too. All it does is demonstrate just how busted you really are, while setting the cop up for the classic retort: “But you’re the one I pulled over.” Carville offers no substantive recommendation on how the Democrats can turn things around; he’s simply wishing in the wind. The Democrats are caught in a maelstrom of their own making, and their brightest point of optimism is that they have no idea which way the capricious winds will blow them next.
That’s not optimism; that’s a foxhole prayer to the God you thought you didn’t believe in.
Carville says something similar about the public’s negative reception of Obamacare before helpfully concluding that, by November, “[i]f we continue on this trajectory the climate might be more favorable.”
That level of strategizing is what guides people flying kites. It’s not what guides a superfunded political party planning to win a multi-tiered National election.
Summing up with a timely basketball analogy, Carville sends ‘em out with a bang:
“My advice is to assume improved conditions and to throw the lead pass.”
Yeah, Democrats – go ahead and take that advice.

Filed Under: Liberty News, Staff Reports

http://personalliberty.com/2014/03/1...like-a-eulogy/

Conservative Daily

He's 99% accurate over the past two presidential elections...

Stat Guru That Accurately Predicted All 50 States in 2012 Has Good News for the GOP in 2014

By Caroline Schaeffer 16 hours ago

Video at the Page Link:

Nate Silver, the New York Times statistics whiz and FiveThirtyEight founder and chief editor who accurately predicted every state’s election results in the 2012 election, has some good news for the Grand Old Party: The 2014 midterm Senate election he deemed a toss-up last July now projects a slight edge for the Republicans. Why the switch? He explains that Obama’s shrinking approval ratings and the fact that Republicans have recruited quality candidates have given the party the edge they now enjoy.
Hot Air reports that Silver predicts a has a 60% chance for the GOP to take control of the upper chamber, and a 30% chance of winning it big. Of the 36 Senate races this November, he’s predicting that Republicans will pick up 6 seats, and possibly as many as 11. Senators Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor and Kay Hagan are some of the incumbent Democrats whose seats are considered vulnerable. Montana, West Virginia, Arkansas and South Dakota are Democrat-held seats likely to be picked up by the GOP.
Though this is great news for Republicans, there are still 7 months and a few days standing between now and election day. The GOP needs to keep the pressure on Democrats and maintain the energy high to turn voters out and if they want to make Silver’s prediction a reality.

NRSC Releases Ad Slamming Democrats For Slighting Military Service of Opponents



http://www.ijreview.com/2014/03/1235...takeover-2014/

After we take the Senate, we push for impeachment and we're not taking no for an answer.

Originally Posted by Reciprocity

After we take the Senate, we push for impeachment and we're not taking no for an answer.

they need to have their Passports collected.... don't go to far slick rick... someone's got some splain'n to do

Nate Silver: GOP Has 60 Percent Chance to Take Senate in 2014

Christine Rousselle | Mar 23, 2014



Nate Silver, aka the stats genius who correctly predicted nearly everything about the 2012 election, told ABC that things are looking positive for the Republican's quest to retake the Senate. According to Silver, Republicans could win as many as 11 seats.



Writing on his blog FiveThirtyEight, Silver described what needs to happen in November if the Republicans want to regain the Senate:

Republicans have great opportunities in a number of states, but only in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana and Arkansas do we rate the races as clearly leaning their way. Republicans will also have to win at least two toss-up races, perhaps in Alaska, North Carolina or Michigan, or to convert states such as New Hampshire into that category. And they’ll have to avoid taking losses of their own in Georgia and Kentucky, where the fundamentals favor them but recent polls show extremely competitive races.

Silver looked at a variety of factors in making this forecast, including candidate quality, incumbency, and polls.

While it's still very early, this is definitely a good sign.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christi...campaign=nl_pm

The Briefing: Polls worse and worse for Senate Dems

By: David Freddoso

The Briefing: GOP Senate prospects continue to brighten; Dems lose one top and one middling House recruit; Conservative Intel talks to Milton Wolf, longshot primary challenger in #KSSen.

March 24, 2014

THE BRIEFING: VOLUME 2, ISSUE X
To: Our readers
From: David Freddoso, editor, Conservative Intelligence

This week:

• How Obamacare is turning demographics against the Democrats
• Obamacare: The invisible hand of the 2014 election
• Interview with Milton Wolf

Senate 2014

This weekend, Nate Silver’s re-launched Five Thirty Eight blog posted its Senate projections. Based on their model, they see “a Republican gain of six seats — plus or minus five.” Here’s a part of their graphic, which includes a tally of which seats are at least remotely in play to switch hands, and the odds they give of each party winning:



Obviously, this sort of prediction is only worth so much, no matter how well modeled. But think of it as a picture of where things are now. In many races near the bottom, the potential pickup races are already the Republicans’ to lose. Other races (Alaska, Colorado, Michigan) are definitely winnable, but not easily won. In still others (Iowa, New Hampshire) it will take a lot more work to put them in serious contention, but it’s not out of the question. Behind this chart lurks the continuing deterioration of Obamacare in the public eye. A recent Pew poll showed the law near its all-time high in terms of disapproval (53 to 41 percent) just as it reached its fourth anniversary yesterday.

Unsurprisingly, its unpopularity spiked when the website launched, and it has not ebbed since. Each of the incumbent Democrats on this chart (except John Walsh, D-Mont., who was just appointed to a vacant seat) can be said to have cast the deciding vote for Obamacare. (And yes, you’ll hear that in quite a few ads.) For each of them, this is the first election they have faced since casting that vote.

The Pew survey, which has a large sample size, suggests important swing groups with whom Democrats must make inroads have become less and less supportive of the law as it has gone into effect. Hispanics are now evenly split on its merits, with 47 percent on each side, approving and disapproving. White women disapprove, 57 to 36 percent.

Non-college educated white women disapprove even more strongly — 63 percent versus 29 percent approval. Even worse, 18 percent of blacks disapprove of Obamacare, 10 percent of them “very strongly.” To understand the significance of this, bear in mind that President Obama’s five-point victory in 2012 depended on both heavy turnout among black voters and on extraordinarily large margins among blacks.

Both Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan received 96 percent of the black vote in their respective states in 2008, according to exit polls. If the Republican Party wants to break out of its status as the party of white men (as party leaders have explicitly said it does) it couldn’t ask for a better environment than this one.

Not that Republicans are going to win majorities among all of these dissatisfied groups — rather, they should focus on improving their margins. If they fail to make this pitch now, they have no one to blame but themselves. Obamacare is the great invisible hand in this year’s Midterm. It is already playing a role by making it impossible for Democrats to shift the focus to minimum wage (CBO provided a nice assist here), global warming (which voters don’t care about) or local issues.

A shift of focus away from the health care law could make them more competitive in their own difficult open seats (Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia), all three of which are probably just gone in the current environment. And for the incumbents, its worst effects are yet to come later this year, with 2015 premium hike announcements and campaign ad season.

Conservative Leaders Series

#KSSen: Interview with Milton Wolf: There are a lot of longshot Tea Party Senate candidates out there who haven’t caught fire in 2014.

Until recently, radiologist Milton Wolf of Kansas seemed destined to be just one more of them.Then it came out that Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., whom he is challenging, hasn’t had a residence in his own state for more than a decade. Immediately, comparisons were drawn with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who lost his primary in 2012 after a similar residency issue arose – even though Roberts would seem less vulnerable on his right flank, having a substantially more conservative voting record than Lugar did.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R, chairman of the NRSC, has perhaps made this revelation even worse for Roberts, just by doing what he’s done for years. As a member of the U.S. House, Moran visited all 69 of the counties in his enormous western congressional district every year, and he has expanded this since being elected to the U.S. Senate, visiting all 105 counties annually. Rightly or wrongly, the residency issue in Roberts’ case paints a very unflattering contrasting picture – it has breathed life into Wolf’s candidacy where there probably had been none.

I sat down with Wolf earlier this month to talk about his longshot challenge to Roberts. Wolf argued that his mere presence in the race has already forced Roberts to move rightward. He did, however, come close to acknowledging that that one of Roberts’ controversial votes – on the 2013 fiscal cliff deal – might be at least somewhat defensible.

Polling from February suggests that the race is still Roberts’ to lose, but his 26-point lead is not insurmountable, given that Wolf’s name recognition was only about 21 percent at that point. That may be one reason a Wolf nomination would make the seat more competitive against Shawnee County D.A. Chad Taylor, the likely Democratic nominee.

Against both Republicans, Taylor drew 32 percent. Wolf led him by one point, Roberts led him by 16.Interestingly, Democratic former Gov. and current HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (who is mentioned below in the interview) is so unpopular in her home state that against her, the little-known Wolf would start at 46 percent with a seven-point lead.

+++

Conservative Intel: Dr. Wolf, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Why, if I live in Kansas, or for my readers who live in Kansas, why would I vote for this doctor over Senator Roberts who’s been my senator for years?

Dr. Wolf: I have voted for Pat Roberts. In fact, I’ve voted for him for about as long as I can remember. I think that’s part of the problem. Pat Roberts has been in Washington longer than I’ve been alive. I have a few grey hairs. I’m a Constitutional Conservative Republican. I’m not a politician. I’ve never run for office before. I’m a practicing doctor.

Our country’s in trouble. In some ways, I think we’re hanging by a thread. Frankly, I think it’s the career of politicians in both parties who’ve gotten us here. I’ve been a Republican all my life. I’ve been loyal to our party. The problem is our party has not been loyal to its own principles.

The establishment Republicans tell us today, we just need to elect more Republicans and all will be right with the world. Just more people with Rs behind their names, as though that will solve the problems.

We’ve tried it. I can’t be the only one who remembers the 2000s.

Americans entrusted themselves to the Republicans. Gave the Republicans the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, even the Supreme Court and look what we got in return; the largest expansion of government in our nation’s history until Barack Obama came along.

The most spending, the fastest growth in debt, no bureaucrat left behind for our schools, the largest expansion of Medicare in the program’s history, the bank bailouts, the auto bailouts. This was our party. This was the Republicans who did this. They called themselves conservatives.

They still to this day call themselves conservatives. Frankly, perhaps their biggest transgression is they opened up the doors and rolled out the red carpet and allowed Barack Obama to waltz in. It’s because of their failed governing, their failed management.

I don’t want a career in politics. I really don’t. I would rather practice medicine. That really is the calling of my life.Our country’s in deep trouble. If we don’t get people in that Congress and particularly in that Senate who will stand by our Constitution and stand by the American idea itself that divinely inspired American idea of individual liberty, limited government, free market values – then we’re going to suffer.

That’s what made America great. We’ve abandoned those in large part in our country. We suffer as a direct result.

How much of a role do you think the Iraq war played in bringing about the Democratic takeover between 2006-2008?

Wolf: It certainly loomed large. It certainly harmed President Bush’s standing with the American people; by extension the entire party. To try to separate that from the outrage of spending binge that the Republican Party had been on is difficult.

Do you think that Americans today think twice about those kinds of foreign policy interventions? If you were a senator, how would you view such future interventions, should they come up?

Wolf: They will come up. We live in a dangerous world. There are forces out there, there are folks out there who mean us harm. I think the foreign policy of America should be that we should be the unapologetic single super power of the world. It doesn’t mean that we’re the policemen of the world.

A half century ago, America didn’t have the Department of Defense. We had the Department of War. It had one job, to win wars. It did it. We did that in constitutional ways. We had a Congress that declared the war.

We were unambiguous about it. We won. Today, we get into these military skirmishes, these military conflicts, we give them all kinds of creative names, like “kinetic military action.”

What do we have to show in return for it? We still have the finest military in the world. We absolutely should. What we need to be more careful about just getting into every skirmish and civil war around the world.

I think one of the best ways to honor a soldier is to treat him or her like a soldier, not like a UN peacekeeper. War is of course their last option.

There’s plenty of leverage America can exert before going to war. Open-heart surgery is the last option too. Thank goodness we have the means to have open-heart surgery if we need it. If we’re gonna go to war then we need to do it constitutionally. We need to have Congress declare war.

We need to win it unambiguously.

Should Congress have declared war in Iraq?

Dr. Wolf: If you’re asking should we have gone without a declaration of war or – No, should we have gone period?

Dr. Wolf: Let me kind of rephrase your question, if you will, because it’s really not even fair to ask me a hindsight question, because you can always get those correct. How about what lessons we learned? What lessons should we learn from Iraq?

We should learn that we don’t just send our military in with ambiguous missions. Our military performed marvelously in Iraq. If you recall, we toppled that government within just a few weeks. I believe we went in in March and we were pulling down the statute – or the citizens were pulling down the statute in April, if I recall. That is a remarkable feat by the U.S. military.

In some ways, and not to oversimplify this, but in some ways I think a nice analogy is almost like being a parent of a toddler. There are times when you need to spank a toddler and then you need to threaten a spanking if they were to grab a hot stove, for example. Don’t be threatening a spanking unless it’s actually worth it, unless you’re willing to carry it through. We send our military in there. We topple them. We really don’t have the stomach for actually winning that war. Winning a war’s a difficult thing. Let’s talk about it in unambiguous terms. Winning war means killing people and breaking things. If it’s not worth doing that, let’s not do it.

The only time it’s worth doing that is when America’s vital national security interests is at stake. We could have differences of opinion of when that is. Too often what we see are other reasons to go into war.

We see going into war because for humanitarian reasons or other – sometimes even nation building reasons. I think the only reason to going to war is when your national vital security interests are at stake. Your national vital security interests are at stake. We see conflicts like Syria, for example, most recently. Of course, President Obama wanted to strike, surgical strikes and whatnot.

Senator Roberts, in [August] of this year while he was in Kansas, visited multiple places and, it was reported in multiple Kansas newspapers, that he was ready to go into Syria. In fact, he said there’s no way that we couldn’t do that, that there’s no way that he couldn’t do that meaning President Obama….

A few days later, Pat Roberts got back to Washington and released a video that said, “I remain firmly opposed to our intervention,” even though two days before that he had said we have to go in.

In fact, he wanted to go in stronger than what Obama wanted to go in. He wanted to actually change the outcome of the war, whereas Obama was just talking about surgical strikes. I think when you give those kind of mixed signals, especially when it comes from a United States Senator and a United States President; I think it makes America weaker….

If you were in the Senate now, what do you propose to deal with the Ukraine situation?

Dr. Wolf: There are hopefully a whole host of – there are a whole host of things that can be attempted before you need to send a military in.

Again, I haven’t heard anyone make the case that’s in our vital national security interest. I am something of a – my formative years were the Reagan years. A lot of my thinking when it comes now to the former Soviet Republics comes from the lessons we learned during the Cold War. We should show that we’re allies to some of – particularly some of those former Republics….I don’t mean simply writing checks to them – I mean the opening of free trade where we could help our economy grow, help their economy grow.

Energy independence; Putin, you gotta keep in mind that Russia is a First World military but a Third World economy. That’s his weakness. How do we strike at that? He’s being propped up by these oil oligarchs. If America was truly independent in our energy and there’s no reason we shouldn’t be then we would undermine his sphere of influence.

We supply gas and oil?

Dr. Wolf: We should at least be using our own resources. We should build that Keystone pipeline. We should be tapping our own oil reserves.

We should be using our own natural gas, coal, all of the above. We’ve become energy independent and no longer become beholden to these forces around the world that frankly don’t have America’s best interest at heart but wanna sell us energy and then use that against us, use our own money against us. It’s a foolish foreign policy and we see the ramifications of it in all host of ways in no small parts things like Ukraine.

Senator Roberts usually ends up voting the right way. Make the case against him for me.

Dr. Wolf: He makes the case against himself. All you have to do is realize he’s been in Washington not just for one year. He wants you to remember one year worth of votes. Pat Roberts has been in Washington for 47 years. He needs to take ownership of that. He has a record. His record is not that of a conservative.

We call it, he’s on “Cruz control” this year. He looks at Ted Cruz and votes however Senator Cruz votes. Before I came along however, he wasn’t so conservative. He claims now he’s one of the top five conservatives in the Senate because of this Cruz control he’s on. He has some ratings – he has some scorecards in the 80s and 90s in 2013. But in 2012…the Club for Growth had him at 55. FreedomWorks had him at 54. That’s not conservative.You look at the actual votes. Look what he’s voted for. A year ago he voted for Barack Obama’s $600 billion fiscal cliff tax hike. That had 80 percent of Kansans paying more in taxes. Pat Roberts has voted to raise our debt ceiling not just once or twice but 11 times. When Pat Roberts came to Washington, when he was first elected into the Congress, the debt was less than a trillion dollars. We could’ve grown our way out of that. Now we’re $17 trillion. Here’s the one that probably gets me the most, the one that gets me because I see the effect of this on my patients and the effect of this on the hospitals.

Pat Roberts voted to put Kathleen Sebelius in charge of Obamacare.

That’s no small thing. Kathleen Sebelius has been an absolute disaster in Washington. Kansans aren’t surprised by that because she was an absolute disaster in Kansas. Pat Roberts publicly endorsed her, ushered that nomination through the Senate and he voted for her not just once but twice in the committee and one the floor….A conservative wouldn’t do that.

If you had been in the Senate with the fiscal cliff deal, would you have voted against the deal if you knew that its failure meant everybody’s taxes were going to go up?

Dr. Wolf: I’m in agreement with the entire Kansas congressional House of Representatives delegation that the fiscal cliff deal was a disaster because spending and taxes went up. I’m not going to vote to increase taxes. If taxes went up from one day to the next by $600 billion, Washington has a great way of playing their games….

Is it ever appropriate, though, to take a vote based on the consideration of what might happen otherwise? You’d agree that having all the tax rates go up would be worse than what happened, right?

Dr. Wolf: Right.

So isn’t it at least slightly defensible to vote for that?

Dr. Wolf: If you’ve been there for 47 years and you create these situations and you’re a part of that and you vote for these tax increases or tax cuts and you put these expirations on it and then you get to turn around and try to vote it on both sides, you can’t have it both ways.

You’re referring to 2001-2003 when they put a ten-year window on the tax rates? [Editor's note: This was done to skirt the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.]

Dr. Wolf: Right. If Pat Roberts was really a conservative champion, where was he then? That’s the thing. I look at that Senate. I think there are three senators in particular that I have the most respect for, the ones that I will stand with. It’s Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul. Ted Cruz in particular, if we just single him out for a moment. Ted Cruz has been in Washington for one year. Pat Roberts has been in Washington for 47 years. Yet, Pat Roberts is following the lead of Ted Cruz.All this supposed experience that you get by being in Washington as though it’s a great thing, Pat Roberts fails to understand something that Ted Cruz understands, that a senator should have something far more powerful than just a vote. He should have a voice. He should use it. He should use it fearlessly. That’s not Pat Roberts. Pat Roberts is more of a go along to get along. It’s hard to find where he’s ever stood up to the Democrats.

It’s hard to find where he’s ever stood up to his own party. You wanna stay in Washington for 47 years, you gotta go along with a few things. I think that’s the difference.

You have hit Roberts for his residency issue. Do you think he’s addressed this to your satisfaction or to others’?

Wolf: I would say – my satisfaction probably doesn’t matter but the answer is no, not even close to my satisfaction. What really matters is what Kansans think. His support has plummeted since this was exposed…Pat Roberts has not lived in Kansas and not had a primary residence in Kansas for well over a decade. To this day he likes to say that he owns a home and pays taxes in Kansas. I’d say frankly that’s not true. He doesn’t own a home. He owns a rental property. There’s a difference. Being a landlord of a Kansan does not make you a Kansan.

He owns half of a duplex. For the last dozen years or so, tenants have lived in his duplex. Article I, section 3 of the United States Constitution says you should be an inhabitant to the state you’re elected. I don’t think he’s inhabiting their sofa.The question really ought to be is how was he even eligible to be on the ballot in 2008 and in 2002? By Pat Roberts’ own standard, he knows that he had a problem because he didn’t bother to reestablish a primary residence in Kansas until October of 2013.

Coincidentally, when I announced that I was running for the Senate he did so by renting a room from a donor. To him it’s a joke. When a reporter asked him about this his response was, “I have full access to the recliner.” That’s pretty insulting to think that you consider yourself a Kansan because you have access to a – you have timeshare on a La-Z-Boy.…[I]f he was living in Kansas, he wouldn’t have voted to raise taxes on 80 percent of Kansans. He would’ve known that Kansans didn’t want that. If he was living in Kansas, he would’ve known that Kathleen Sebelius was a disaster in Kansas just like she’s been a disaster in Washington.

When you say 80 percent that includes the restoration of the normal payroll tax rate?

Wolf: Uh-hum, that’s right.

Your own issue that’s come up with the X-rays and the comments you made on Facebook. You have apologized for “insensitivity.” Do you think that’s going to be used heavily against you in a general election – especially by a Democrat – if you were to win this primary?

Wolf: The thing I would ask, of course, urge you to do is to make sure if you do report it report it accurately…..What I’ve done as a published author of radiology images, I have released anonymous x-rays, not photographs of patients and certainly not personal patient information.

I’ve been accused of that. That’s just simply not true.

Pat Roberts knows that’s not true and he’s accusing me of that anyway.

It is well within the boundaries of the law and well within the boundaries of medical ethics to release anonymous x-rays. On a few of them out of the hundreds or even thousands that I have published and released in various ways, a few of them a few years ago I included some insensitive comments and I said I was sorry for that. In fact, I took them down a few years ago.You ever said anything you wish you wouldn’t have said and you wish you could get it back? You know what? I just don’t want to leave that witness. That’s not the kind of witness I want to leave in this life. I don’t want to have those kind of insensitive comments. A few years ago I took it down. I want you all to realize also this was on a private Facebook page. I removed it. That was a few years ago. I said I’m sorry for it and said I’m sorry now.

Pat Roberts will use everything he can. I’ll tell you the one thing he won’t do. He won’t run in his own record.After 47 years in Washington he’s not there trying to defend why he voted for Kathleen Sebelius or his tax increases or debt ceiling increases. I’ll tell you something else. Pat Roberts hasn’t found a single issue that he’ll say I’m wrong about. Not a single one. I’ve been campaigning almost five months. I’ve been out speaking publicly for years and he can’t find a single thing I’m wrong on.

What he has done is he’s flip flopped on a number of issues to match where I am. He’s changed his position on Kathleen Sebelius, on the Fair Tax, on the debt ceilings, on the amount of spending that goes into farm bills, even on gun bans.He’s changing his position to match me. He has not one issue that he’ll say I’m wrong on. All he has to do is act – all he knows to do is act like the career politician that he is and try to assassinate my character. I’m not gonna cower from that. I won’t be bullied by somebody in Washington. I’ll stand up and fight.##

http://www.conservativeintel.com/the...campaign=House