Red Tsunami Sweeps State Legislatures As Well, GOP Picks Up 680 (Most of the Modern Era)

While most of the attention Tuesday was given to the national elections, there were significant gains made and records broken by the GOP in the state elections, as well:

Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures -- the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have unified control -- meaning both chambers -- of 26 state legislatures.

That control is a particularly bad sign for Democrats as they go into the redistricting process. If the GOP is effective in gerrymandering districts in many of these states, it could eventually lead to the GOP actually expanding its majority in 2012.

Republicans now hold the redistricting "trifecta" -- both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship -- in 15 states. They also control the Nebraska governorship and the unicameral legislature, taking the number up to 16. And in North Carolina -- probably the state most gerrymandered to benefit Democrats -- Republicans hold both chambers of the state legislature and the Democratic governor does not have veto power over redistricting proposals.

This is just another sign of how upset Americans are over the direction that the ultra-liberal Democrats have taken this country over the past two years. Obama better heed the voice and will of the American people or there will be a sequel to this year’s red tsunami: Red Wave Part Deux. The 2012 would be more devastating for the Democrats as more Democrats than Republicans will be up for re-elections in the Senate, and another wave would, no doubt, cost the Dems the Senate and, most likely, the White House, as well.

Sore Winner: Barney Frank Goes After Republican Opponent, Fox, Boston Herald During Acceptance Speech

Despite winning, Barney Frank continues to attack Sean Bielat, after the last vote has been cast. Usually when a candidate wins a race, he/she will be gracious to the loser and say that they ran a good campaign but not Barney Frank. He went on a diatribe chastising not only Bielat but also Fox News and the Boston Herald. Um, Barney, don’t “pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel or pixels by the terabyte”:

Exit Polls Shows Gays Breaking For GOP

Exit polls show showed a somewhat surprising trend of gays breaking toward the GOP this past election:

Gay conservative group GOProud points to exit polls showing that the Republican party captured almost one-third of the gay vote in House races as evidence of a gay affinity for the Tea Party.
GOProud hailed the data as proof of gay voters’ role in helping the Republican party achieve historic gains on the way to its House takeover. By extension, the evidence also suggests that many gay Americans embrace the Tea Party’s limited government message, claims the group.
“According to CNN,” says a statement from GOProud, “31% of self-identified gay voters supported Republican candidates for the U.S. House. This number is a dramatic increase from the 19% GOP House candidates won among gay voters in 2008.”

Considering that the GOP is considered “homophobic” for their stance on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and gay marriage, many would not believe that there would be such a think as a gay Republican, but this elections shows that there is many that feel the way that we feel, at least regarding the fiscal side of our platform. This is not good news for the Dems who are already losing women, too, according to exit polling.

Harry Reid Says GOP Wants US to Fail Forgetting That He Chastised Limbaugh For Saying He Wants Obama to Fail

Harry Reid recently had a bowl of sour grapes after Republicans just said “no” to spending an extra $109B that we don’t have to extend unemployment benefits:

The morning after the Senate failed to advance a bill that responded to the recession, Sen. Harry Reid laid into Republicans who blocked it en masse.

Clearly sore after falling three votes short Thursday night of the 60 needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, the Senate majority leader from Nevada charged in a Senate speech that GOP senators "are betting on the our country to fail."
Rather than help Americans, he said, Republicans are more interested in bringing down President Barack Obama.

"The Republicans in the Senate have made the decision to do everything they can to turn the country upside down, to do everything they can to stop economic recovery because they think it may help some of their people running for the Senate around the country.

"They figure as bad as they can make the economy, the better off they will be," Reid said. "That is a pretty difficult view for people who are United States senators."
"As we learned from the health care debate, (Republicans) want everything that Obama wants to be his Waterloo."

Listen, I feel for those that are feeling the pinch of unemployment, but there has to be a point when we have to cut the apron strings and get the out-of-control spending back in black. It is a calculated risk drawing the line in the sand with unemployment benefits. It could bite the Republicans back in November. We’ll see at the polling booth, whether or not it is political suicide as the Democrats are trying to portray it.

Back to Harry Reid’s comment, he is trying to demonize the GOP by saying that they don’t care about playing politics at the expense of the common man. That’s rich for someone that wants to pass cap-and-tax and causing energy prices to skyrocket in the process in order to push their green agenda.

I, also, find it really hypocritical for him to say that they want the GOP to fail, after he went in front of the Senate to chastise Rush Limbaugh for saying that he wants Obama to fail. In fact, it’s worse. Reid implied that the GOP wants the entire country to fail. Rush only said that he wants Obama’s ultra-liberal agenda to fail not the country as a whole. The Democrats just tried to paint Limbaugh’s comment as saying that he wants the country to fail because, if you look at what he said in its entirety, that’s not actually what he said.

Reid must be pretty desperate these days considering that he pretty far behind Sharon Angle in the Nevada Senate race even though his camp denies it.

Coakley Claims There's No More We Can Do in Afghanistan, Our Job There is Done or Something

The special election to replace the recently departed Sen. Ted Kennedy is set to take place in Massachusetts a week from today, January 19th. It has been a brief but intense battle in between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown. Polls have it anywhere in between a Coakley blowout to a Brown 1-point victory. However, it's going to be very tough to turn the very liberal state purple. If the Republicans pull it off it'll break the Democrat's filibuster-proof majority, after holding it for only one year.

They had their final debate yesterday. Coakley, of course, played the "Bush Sucks" card that all Democrats have been using to garner support for the past three years.

Brown went after Coakley for being soft on terrorists, which is a normal talking point to hit Democrats with during campaigns. However, Coakley said something about the War on Terror that seemed to justify all of Brown's accusations:

Coakley, the state attorney general, said she disagreed with Obama's decision and believes there are better ways to fight terrorist organizations than sending troops into every country where they have a presence. She also said it's time to bring home the troops still in Afghanistan.

"This is not about sending troops everywhere where we think al-Qaida is," she said. "I think we have done what we can in Afghanistan."

She is, basically, wanting to waive the white flag in Afghanistan. This would be a disaster as the Taliban and Al-Quaeda would no doubt return more emboldened then ever. They would claim a victorty over their "Great Satan", the United States. There would be no stopping them as they would feel like they could get away with pulling off further attacks as America would eventually cave.

In contrast, Brown supported the troop surge in Afghanistan and spoke out against letting captured terrorists "lawyer up".

Healthcare reform bill was, also, debated as, predictably, Brown opposed and Coakley unequivocally supports the bill, but it was the Afghanistan issue that really brought out how liberal Martha Coakley really is.

PS: Here's a video that I thought was really telling of this point:

Democrats Hit Replay Button: Candidates Re-Use Bush As GOP Bogeyman

Every time I hear a Democrat talk, I keep having to look at my calendar to make sure that I did step through a time portal and leap back to 2008. No, it turns out that I haven't. It is now 2010, and the Democrats are still blaming Bush for their lack of results:

Democrats swear its not 1994 all over. From the way they're talking, you'd think it was 2006.

Top Democrats are reformatting one of the main talking points from the year they took back the House and Senate, tying opponents in local elections to George W. Bush.

“The only playbook [Republicans] have is the playbook they had for the previous eight years, which drove the economy into a ditch that we're continuing to dig ourselves out of,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The Daily Caller.

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, cast the election in similar terms.

"Either we return to the failed economic policies of the past or we press forward and continue to focus on what’s most important, which is jobs, jobs, jobs,” he said, in a phone interview.

“If we allow this election to simply be a referendum on us, and not be one in which we remind the electorate where Republicans left the country when Barack Obama took office … then we will face the consequences of not having an election of contrasts,” Menendez said. “If we have an election of contrasts, which we clearly will — our candidates fully understand that this will be an election of contrasts in each and every state — we will fare well.”

Apparently, their only play in their playbook is the "Bush sucks" play.

They want to keep blaming Bush for the bad economy that Obama inherited, and there was some validity to that argument, at first. Bush didn't do a great job of reigning in companies, like Countrywide, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, when he had the chance. He didn't take a stand against those who were covering for them, like ACORN, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. However, the further we get into Obama's presidency the more it becomes his recession, as well.

Obama and Congress passed the stimulus monstrosity to keep us out of a prolonged recession and keep unemployment from hitting 10%. Unfortunately, neither happened. When will they find a new target and strategy?

How can we trust Democrats, like Markell, who claim that they are all about "jobs, jobs, jobs", when they have such a lousy track record for creating an economic atmosphere for job creation, so far?

N Dakota: Sen Dorgan (D) Won't Run For Re-election, Opens a Huge Door For a Likely Republican Gain

A bombshell was dropped on the newswire late today:

Sen. Byron Dorgan, a 18-year veteran Democrat, dropped a late-day bombshell, announcing he will retire when his term ends this year. Dorgan's announcement represents an opportunity for Republicans: North Dakota is a Republican-leaning state, where President Obama got just 45% of the vote last year.

In a statement just released by his office, Dorgan says he wants "to make time for other priorities" after more than 30 years in public life. He insists he's not disillusioned with politics, though he did express dismay over the increasingly partisan tone on Capitol Hill. Here is what Dorgan, 67, said in his statement:

"This decision does not relate to any dissatisfaction that I have about serving in the Senate. Yes, I wish there was less rancor and more bipartisanship in the U.S. Senate these days. But still, it is a great privilege to serve and I have the utmost respect for all of the men and women with whom I serve. . . And although he inherited an economy in serious trouble, I remain confident that President Obama is making the right decisions to put our country back on track. Further, my decision has no relationship to the prospect of a difficult election contest this year. Frankly, I think if I had decided to run for another term in the Senate I would be reelected."

Up until today, there was no indication that Dorgan might step down. The non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report rated the veteran Democrat as having a lock on re-election, and USA TODAY's Fredreka Schouten reports that Dorgan had a healthy campaign warchest of $3.9 million as of Sept. 30.

He may have more money than any other possible challenger at this time, but they forgot to mention his abysmal polling numbers.

To make matters worse for Dorgan, the former ND Governor Hoeven is said to be taking a serious look at running against him. In a poll from late December, Dorgan was 22 points behind the popular Republican governor in a heads-up race.

His support for Obamacare and vote for the Senate HCR bill aren't helping, either. Almost two-thirds of North Dakotans don't want the current healthcare bill to pass. While his personal approval numbers are as bad as one might think, compared to Hoeven's, it's very lopsided. He won't admit it, but his bad poll numbers and falling popularity of Obama and the Congressional attempts at healthcare reform was probably a huge factor in his decision not to run.