In the first week of January 2010, Rasmussen Reports showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. Scott Brown delivered a stunning upset in the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election a couple of weeks later.
In the last week of October 2010, Rasmussen Reports again showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic ballot. And tomorrow Republicans will send more Republicans to Congress than at any time in the past 80 years.
This isn’t a wave, it’s a tidal shift””and we’ve seen it coming for a long time. Remarkably, there have been plenty of warning signs over the past two years, but Democratic leaders ignored them. At least the captain of the Titanic tried to miss the iceberg. Congressional Democrats aimed right for it.
I enjoy P. J. O’Rourke because he has the same skewed sense of humor that I have. He can also be a sharp observer of politics. Recently, he commented that this is not so much an election as a restraining order. Something that both parties could do well to keep in mind as they examine the new landscape.
Yeah, pretty much. What we the people want is a return to the things that made this country great, and which BOTH parties have seemingly abandoned (like the Constitution!).
Jim
The vote 2 years ago was almost as much a vote against the Republicans, rather than for the Democrats, as this is a vote against the Democrats, rather than for the Republicans. The one exception there is that candidate Obama brought some (though by no means all!) into the voting booths with his message of “change” and “hope”, rather than as protest against his predecessor.
“But none of this means that Republicans are winning.”
But this is most definitely a vote for the “new” Republicans. A lot of the RINO’s have already been dispensed with in the primaries. McCain survived but had to spend gazillions. But we have a new wave of Repubicans who are labeled “wingnuts” by the mainstream media for making [i]outlandish[/i] proposals such as getting rid of the Department of Education. Here’s something that is truly [i]outlandish[/i]: send $10 to Washington for education, have them keep $4 and then “redistribute” the $6.
[blockquote] The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. [/blockquote]
I happen to live in a Congressional district and in a state wherein not one candidate for major office, in any party, appeals to me. So I remind myself, and others who might read this, that if one feels general disgust with the quality of one’s potential political representatives, either by leaving spaces blank, punching no holes, or pulling no levers for particular offices, one’s choice can always be “none of the above” – and such non-votes for particular offices send their own message loudly to those who pour over and analyze voting statistics for the organized political parties.
I think Rasmussen nails it.
I hope robroy (#4) is right and that the New Republicans prove to be genuinely new in how they function once elected (the track record from the huge Republican swing in 1994 isn’t very encouraging). The Tea Party movement, uncooth as it often is, represents the disgust that so many of us have with “business as usual” in politics, and especially our revulsion against the corrupting influence of special interest groups with a lot of money.
Instead of the people fearing the government, it’s time the government (and the two big parties) learned to fear the wrath of the people.
David Handy+
“that the New Republicans prove to be genuinely new in how they function once elected “….
They will be new, pure, and virginal up and until they reach DC. Then the arms of the ruling elite will reach out to grab them. If they stay connected to their districts they will be able to resist the embrace. If they don’t, they will slowly have their conservative brains sucked out and replaced with “bipartisanship” and other lofty sounding terms which lead us down the path we have been on.
As for the Tea Party being “uncooth”? Yep it is, so were the patriots who decided that they could no longer stand the tyranny of the Crown. Uncooth equates with passion, while the gentlemanly dispassionate debates in DC equate with losses of freedom and liberty.
two years of gridlock coming right up.
Ms Magnolia,
Within a few months, gridlock would have developed, even without this election, as the next race for the White House begins. With the probable result of this election, at least there is some degree of checks and balances, as opposed to the lack of any in the last two years.
Alas, the tea party has been coopted by petty monarchies – plutocrats who resist any notion of the common good, that there is such a thing as a common welfare. So they may get elected, privatize government to the highest bidder, and then, through incompetence, disillusion even more people.
Let’s see – “common good” or “common welfare.” I guess that depends on one’s point of view – perhaps preventing further piling of debt on this generation and several generations to come; preventing rise in taxes to further keep the economy in a recession and prevent employment from rebounding; requiring the government to live within its means, like American families are doing – perhaps those things might be for the “common good” and “common welfare.” Or, JW, is forced redistribution of income, from those who worked for it and earned it to those who didn’t, the only “common good” or “common welfare” you can fathom? Can one’s statements about Tea Partiers be biotry the same as one’s statements about one’s views of Muslims on airplanes? big·ot   /ˈbɪgÉ™t/ [big-uht]
–noun
a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.