How Donald Trump Repeated Barack Obama's Biggest Mistake... With Similar Results

As news of the Republican midterm defeat continues to trickle in, it is becoming more apparent that 2018 was a blue anti-Trump wave after all. The Republicans made small gains in the Senate, thanks to an abnormally friendly map, but the GOP lost the House as well as seven gubernatorial seats and numerous seats in state legislatures across the country. How we got to this point is remarkably similar to how Barack Obama led the Democrats to lose more than a thousand seats in his eight years.

As I have written in the past, Donald Trump has echoed many of President Obama’s mistakes and has now yielded similar results. The bottom line is that both Barack Obama, who campaigned as a moderate Democrat, and Donald Trump, who was elected with the support of a minority of voters, both governed as though they had a broad mandate to enact a laundry list of wishes from their most partisan supporters when what voters really wanted was for both parties to work together.  

Barack Obama began his administration with staggering popularity and goodwill. Two years later, he had squandered much of his approval by forcing through an unpopular health care reform law against the will of the people. Opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the way that Democrats enacted the law were prime factors in the Tea Party wave of 2010.

Ironically, Obamacare was unpopular when passed by the Democrats and promises to repeal and replace the law played a major role in the rise of the Republican Congress since 2010. Unfortunately, President Trump and Republicans made a hash of healthcare reform. In fact, Republicans handled health care reform so badly that they managed to do what Obama and the Democrats could not do: They convinced voters that the Affordable Care Act was a good thing.

Obamacare’s protections for pre-existing conditions are so popular that the law directly contributed to the loss of a Republican Senate seat in Arizona. Just before the election, Republican candidate Martha McSally told Sean Hannity that she was getting her “ass kicked” over her vote to reform Obamacare because Democrats were invoking fear that Republicans wanted to eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions. It now appears that McSally has lost her Senate race to Democrat Kirsten Sinema.

In addition to healthcare, the Trump Administration has adopted a number of other unpopular policies as well. The tax reform law that caused the economy to surge is still not popular with voters. Trump’s policy of separating illegal immigrants from their children was widely unpopular. Likewise, Trump’s personal behavior consistently drives down his approval ratings.

In 2010, Democrats took a “shellacking,” in President Obama’s words. Republicans gained six Senate seats, 63 House seats, and six governorships as well as doing well in down-ballot races for state and local offices. The GOP won control of the House but, like Democrats this year, were unable to win the Senate. For Republicans, it took two more elections until the party finally won the Senate in 2014. Now, rather than building on those hard-won gains, Republicans are giving them back.  

To say that the 2018 wave was not as large as the 2010 wave misses the point. Democrats had more seats to give up than Republicans did. Even after losing six Senate seats in 2010, Democrats controlled 53 seats including two Democrat-leaning independents. The House results in 2018 will leave Democrats within a few seats of the 242 that Republicans controlled after 2010.

The bigger picture is that 2018 was a wholesale rejection of President Trump by moderate and suburban voters. USA Today reported that more than 80 suburban counties voted more Democrat this year than in 2016. In 20 of these counties, Democrats saw a double-digit surge. CNN’s exit polls show that Republicans lost female voters as well as minorities, the middle class, and college-educated voters. Republicans lost moderate voters by 26 points this year compared with eight points in 2014.

President Trump, like Barack Obama, has an abrasive style that is much-loved by his ardent supporters but few others. Like Obama, Trump tends to divide up the electorate and focus on turning out his base rather than on winning converts. Also, like Obama, President Trump is apparently incapable of reaching across the aisle to form a bipartisan legislative coalition, preferring instead to use (or overuse) his executive authority to make small, temporary changes rather than sweeping, permanent ones.

Republicans may look at all that and say, “So what? Obama got re-elected.”

That’s true, but Obama also had a large victory than President Trump, who lost the popular vote and only eked out an Electoral College win with skin-of-the-teeth victories in several states. Obama had much more support that he could lose. And lose it he did, just not quite in large enough numbers to lose the 2012 election.

Up until now, Republicans have maintained a narrative that President Trump’s economic success will overcome problems with his personal style. After the midterms, it is painfully obvious that this view is not true. President Trump is overwhelmingly popular with Republicans and unpopular with everyone else. That leaves the Republican Party in a difficult spot.

The GOP has three different options for moving forward. First, its members can convince President Trump to change course. Trump could possibly reach out to the new Congress and become the dealmaker that he claimed to be in 2016. The two parties could work together to resolve the issues that confront the country. Obviously, this won’t happen.

The second alternative is for Republicans to distance themselves from Trump and try to repair the damage with moderate voters. One problem here is that Donald Trump does not take rejection well. Distancing oneself from the president will bring forth the full wrath and fury of the First Tweeter. A second problem is that many polls suggest that today’s Republican voters are more loyal to Donald Trump than to traditional Republican ideals. Unless Republican voters sour on Trump, most Republicans officials who oppose him are likely to be on the losing end of the fight.

Finally, the third option is for Republicans to say, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead,” and go right on doing exactly what they are doing. This is the option that Democrats chose after 2010 and, given President Trump’s claim that the midterms were a “big victory” for Republicans, it seems likely that the GOP will follow this course now.

If the parallels between the Obama and Trump Administrations persist, Trump might be re-elected by following Obama’s model of doing very little aside of issuing Executive Orders and blaming the opposition for their obstructionism. However, given Mr. Trump’s slim victory margin in 2016 and the GOP’s lack of success in the “blue wall” states this year, it seems more likely that the parallels will diverge as the president fails to win a second term.

If President Trump and the Republicans realize the error that they are making, they may be able to break the pattern before the party suffers a series of Obama-like defeats. Although they would have to stand up to factions of the base on issues such as immigration, if Republicans can come together with Democrats to create bipartisan solutions, they might be able to win back their majority. More importantly, they would be helping the country and doing the job that the voters hired them to do.  

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Is Repeating the Obama Administration's History

A wise man once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it definitely rhymes. That seems to be the case these days in politics as both parties stumble along, making the same mistakes as their predecessors.

The Republicans began 2017 with a majority in both houses of Congress. Nevertheless, much like the 2009 Democrats, they were able to accomplish little. Democrats enjoyed a brief Senate supermajority that allowed them to eke out victories on healthcare and financial reform before the Republican wave of 2010, but accomplished little else.

For their part, the fractious GOP coalition could not muster together 51 votes to reform Obamacare, but they did manage to score a win on tax reform. Although opinions were initially unfavorable, the Republican tax overhaul is proving to be more popular than the early Democratic legislation.
Both presidents, Obama and Trump, quickly became unpopular and divisive figures. Rather than being coalition builders, both men practiced identity politics. Obama championed the traditional Democrat constituencies while Donald Trump rides a wave of anti-immigration and protectionist sentiment. Their partisan rhetoric makes it difficult to achieve bipartisan majorities to enable legislative victories.

Both presidents have spending proposals that match their oversized egos. Obama led off with a $787 billion infrastructure stimulus and a new healthcare entitlement. President Trump has proposed an infrastructure bill that costs $1.5 trillion, almost exactly twice as much as Obama’s spending bill, as well as new family leave entitlement.

Both presidents increased the deficit dramatically. President Obama presided over the first trillion-dollar deficits, which were later pared back by the Republican House. President Trump’s budget also calls for deficits in excess of a trillion dollars annually.

Both presidents also favored the use of executive authority to bypass the stalemated Congress. President Obama is known for his Iran deal and his executive creation of the DACA program while President Trump has issued a plethora of Executive Orders on everything from abortion to immigration.

Both presidents were also plagued by scandals. President Obama had the ATF program that allowed the shipment of guns to Mexico, Solyndra, the IRS harassment of conservative groups, his dealings with Iran and the  Benghazi cover-up. So far, Trump has the Russia scandal, the firing of James Comey, numerous personnel problems in the White House and his daily Twitter feed.

Obama’s excesses led to the Tea Party waves of 2009 and 2014. There are indications, including a wave of Republican congressional retirements, that 2018 may yield similar good fortune for the Democrats. That depends, however, on whether Democrats can break the mold of another historical lesson from the Obama years.

Throughout the Obama Administration, Republicans believed that Obama was so unpopular that all they had to do was be anti-Obama and anti-Obamacare. That worked to some extent, but it failed to win the White House for Mitt Romney. Democrats may be making the same mistake now.
Democrats assume that if they play to their anti-Trump base, they will be assured of victory in 2018 and 2020. That may not be a good assumption.

Polling for Republicans is improving in the wake of the tax cuts and attacks on Trump seem to be yielding diminishing returns. If Democrats, mirroring the Obama-era Republicans, choose to run as anti-Trump rather than championing a positive agenda, they may be disappointed and disillusioned once again in November.

Disappointment for Democrats would continue the parallels between the Trump Administration and the Obama Administration. After all, Republicans spent eight years in the wilderness as they blamed one another for their defeats. Republican rage grew until they finally reached a point where they would rally behind someone -anyone- who would carry the fight unapologetically to the leftist elites, conservative principles and character be damned!

If the pattern of mirror image rhyming of history continues, the next six years will be a wild ride.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Congress is the key to stopping Hillary

A major argument for Donald Trump has been that “He’s not a great candidate or a conservative, but we need him to prevent Hillary from picking Supreme Court justices who will gut the Second Amendment.” Given the numerous questionable characters that Trump has chosen to work on his campaign, the idea that he knows how to “hire the best people” is dubious at best. Now, as the “Trump train” goes off the rails three weeks before the election, it is becoming apparent that conservatives need to find an alternative strategy to save the Court and block Hillary. The key to stopping the liberal agenda for the next four years is Congress, specifically the Senate. 

Let’s face it. Depending on Trump to appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court was always a long shot. The possibility that Trump might appoint good judges outweighs the certainty that Hillary won’t, Trump supporters argue. If one ignores all the other arguments against Trump, it might even be convincing. Yet as Trump goes rogue on the campaign trail, even that slim possibility seems to be vanishing as a Clinton victory grows more and more likely.

The only certain way to stop Hillary’s agenda before it starts is to make sure that the Republican majority in the Senate is preserved. Many Trump supporters will say that the Republicans in Congress didn’t do much to stop Obama for the past six years. They are wrong. The truth is that Republicans in Congress were very successful at stopping Obama’s legislative agenda.

After the Tea Party wave election of 2010, the Democrats did not pass any major legislation for the next six years. Obama’s landmark laws, the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, were passed with Democrat majorities in both houses. Not a single Republican voted for Obamacare or the stimulus.

The Republicans in Congress were remarkably successful at stopping President Obama’s legislative agenda. Obama tried to push through gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre. Republicans stopped him. They actually cut spending in terms of real dollars in consecutive years for the first time since the administration of Dwight Eisenhower. After the death of Antonin Scalia, Republicans in the Senate tabled President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. How much credit did Republicans get for these victories? Approximately zero.

Much of the confusion over the Republican Congress “surrendering” to Obama, as many claim, is the difference between stopping Obama and passing legislation to roll back what Obama has already done. Congress is set up so that it is easier to prevent a bill from becoming a law than to enact a new law. This is particularly true in the Senate.

In the Senate, the first hurdle that a bill must pass to become a law is a cloture vote. Cloture is a gentleman’s filibuster. Rather than speaking for hours on end as they did in the old days, today’s Congressmen can block a bill from coming to a vote by rallying 41 opponents to vote against cloture, or ending the filibuster. Therefore, the 46 Democrats in the Senate could effectively block any Republican bill from ever coming to a vote and that is precisely what they did.

The cloture rule is not part of the Constitution. Senators could decide to eliminate it in favor of a straight majority vote. The problem is that there is an even greater hurdle. If a bill passes both houses of Congress, it still faces a presidential veto. To override a veto requires 67 votes in the Senate. Logically, if a bill can’t pass a cloture vote, the veto can’t be overridden.

When the Republicans blocked Obama legislatively, he began issuing expansive Executive Orders and having regulatory agencies issue rulings with the force of law. Because these tactics bypassed Congress, Republicans could not block them. Stopping these abuses would require passing new laws, but the 54 Republicans could not pass new laws without Democratic support. That reality doesn’t change even with a government shutdown. The situation has effectively been a stalemate with neither side willing to compromise on most issues.

Because of the number of Republican Senate seats up for reelection in swing states this year, it was generally assumed that the Republican majority would be smaller for the next Congress. As recently as a few weeks ago, it looked like Republicans would retain control of the Senate, even if they lost some seats. Then came Trump’s implosion.

Not only have the Trump scandals hurt down ballot Republicans, but Trump and his supporters have attacked his fellow GOP candidates. At this point, it seems increasingly likely that the Democrats will win control of the Senate. Even the large Republican majority in the House may be threatened.

While retaining the House would allow Republicans to block legislation such as gun control measures from becoming law, losing the Senate would mean that Democrats could easily appoint extremist liberal judges to the courts with a simple majority vote. There is no filibuster for most judicial appointees thanks to Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) use of the “nuclear option” in 2013. With a Democrat Congress and a Democrat president, the filibuster might be eliminated entirely.

On the other hand, retaining control of the Senate would allow Republicans to stop Hillary’s agenda right out of the gate. Appointments to the Supreme Court could theoretically be blocked until after the 2020 elections, if necessary. The Senate has already shown its willingness to stop bad treaties and liberal legislation in its tracks.

There should be no illusions, however, that Republicans can roll back eight years of Obama under Hillary. Even if they retain a majority, they will almost certainly be weaker, at least until the midterm elections. Historically, the opposition party gains seats in the midterms, but even then there is almost no chance of a 67 vote Republican majority.

While it would be preferable to have a Republican president to help pass conservative reforms, Donald Trump is no conservative and has shown little inclination to work with his party. If Trump becomes president and Republicans lose Congress, he could not be trusted to nominate constructionist judges or veto gun control bills. He cannot be trusted to support religious liberty. There is a high probability that he would act with liberal Democrats like Bernie Sanders to scuttle free trade agreements and military alliances.

With Trump falling to the 30 percent range in many polls and trailing in most swing states, there is little chance of a recovery. Republican funds would be better spent on tossup congressional races to preserve the Republican majority than in attempting to shore up a candidate who is biting the hand that feeds him.

If the choice is between an unreliable President Trump and a Republican Senate that has shown its mettle, I’ll throw in my lot with the congressional Republicans.

Originally published on The Resurgent

The Republican primary campaign seems to have essentially become a two man race between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. The campaign has become increasingly heated, but there is still the possibility that the two frontrunners may forge an alliance to secure the nomination with a Trump-Cruz unity ticket.

Many Republicans worry about the electability of both of the frontrunners since both have low approval ratings and lose to the Democrat candidates in current polling. Many of these Republicans would like another alternative, but John Kasich, the only other candidate still in the race, has long been mathematically eliminated from any possibility of winning an uncontested nomination at the Republican convention.

It is also unlikely that Kasich could assemble a large enough delegate coalition to win on a subsequent ballot as an establishment candidate. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that Republicans who do not belong to either the Cruz or the Trump camps could attempt to nominate an alternative candidate at the convention by persuading delegates directly. Such an attempt would not sit well with either Trump or Cruz or their supporters.

The easiest way for Cruz and Trump to defend against such an insurgent candidacy would be to work together. While neither candidate is likely to have enough delegates individually to clinch the nomination, together they control an overwhelming number of delegates. In fact, if their delegates are pooled, the pair already have more than the 1,237 delegates needed to nominate a candidate.

In the most likely scenario for a unity ticket, neither Trump nor Cruz would have enough delegates to be nominated on several successive ballots. Sensing a looming disaster, party establishment and moderates would put forth a new candidate to try to break the impasse and offer a more popular choice for the general election. As Cruz and Trump realize that their chances of winning the nomination are slipping away, they may decide that an alliance and partial victory is preferable to a total loss.

The idea of a Cruz-Trump ticket is not as outlandish as it sounds. The two men share a disdain for the party establishment and a harsh outlook on immigration. Both of these factors put them at odds with much of the rest of the party. They also share a base of support among Tea Party voters. In addition, both candidates have shown the ability to shift positions without alienating their supporters.

If you think a Trump-Cruz alliance is out of the question, don’t forget that the two have already had an alliance of sorts in the past. In fact, there were numerous reports of a Trump-Cruz “bro-mance” last fall. The two candidates professed admiration for each other up until the point when Cruz first edged ahead of Trump in the polls. The nonaggression pact was particularly striking because Cruz, known as a strong conservative, refrained from attacking Trump at a time when many other conservatives were calling Trump’s ideology, policies and even party membership into question. In fact, in the early days of the Trump campaign, Ted Cruz was the only Republican candidate who embraced Trump.

The biggest problem in getting Trump and Cruz together might be in deciding who gets to be at the top of the ticket. Both are strong personalities and both will have a strong position going into the convention. Trump is likely to lead on the first ballot, but many Trump delegates will probably shift their allegiance on subsequent ballots. Cruz performs better in polling and has a marginally better approval rating. Cruz also has more experience in government and foreign policy. Nevertheless, Trump is the top vote-getter.

Donald Trump has clearly given Cruz consideration as a potential running mate. Last November, when asked about a running mate, Trump answered, “Ted Cruz is now agreeing with me 100 percent” according to The Hill. Trump refused to rule out sharing the ticket with Cruz in February and rumors persisted into March that the two campaigns were talking about the possibility.

Ted Cruz recently told a Good Morning America audience in Vacaville, Calif. that “I have zero interest, whatsoever,” in being Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee. He continued, “And there are a lot of reasons, but perhaps the simplest is, if Donald is the nominee, Hillary wins, Hillary wins by double digits and I don’t think there’s anything we can do to change that.”

Cruz did not, however, categorically say that he would refuse to be on a Trump ticket. He also did not say that he would refuse a Trump promise to nominate him to the Supreme Court as some have suggested. What’s more, Cruz did not deny that he might consider Trump as his vice presidential nominee.

The likelihood of a Trump-Cruz (or Cruz-Trump) ticket remains a long shot. It may be that there is now simply too much bad blood between the two campaigns to make peace. The candidates may decide that their chances are better individually than together.

Neither candidate has completely closed the door on working with the other. While it seems unlikely that either would reach out to the other, things could change quickly if the two men saw it in their own best interests to do so.

Read it on Conservative Firing Line and Freedom Daily

Ted Cruz is not ready for prime-time

Ted Cruz was elected as senator from Texas in 2012. Yesterday, after serving two years in the Senate he declared his candidacy for president. After serving only one-third of his Senate term, what has Ted Cruz accomplished to win the support of so many conservatives?

Prior to entering the Senate, Cruz worked on the presidential campaign of George W. Bush and served in the Bush Administration as an associate deputy attorney general and director of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission. From 2003 through 2008, Cruz served as the solicitor general for the state of Texas. In that role, he argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, winning five and losing four. From 2009 through 2012, Cruz worked at Houston law firm as a corporate lawyer.

Cruz first achieved national notoriety with a September 2013 filibuster as Senate Democrats prepared to strip language defunding Obamacare from a budget bill. Cruz’s 21 hour speech was technically not a filibuster at all. As The Guardian explained, Cruz was not delaying a vote because then-Majority Leader had already scheduled the vote for the following day. Under Senate rules, Cruz was required to yield the floor when the time for the vote arrived. Reid told Politico, “This is not a filibuster. This is an agreement that he and I made that he could talk.” In one exchange with Democrat Dick Durbin during his soliloquy, Cruz tacitly admitted that he understood that Republicans did not have the votes to stop Obamacare.

A few weeks later, Cruz got a second shot of fame as the Republicans adopted the strategy of defunding Obamacare developed by Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). History will record this strategy as a spectacular failure which resulted in the partial shutdown of the federal government for 16 days in October 2013. Obamacare was implemented on schedule, even as nonessential parts of the government were closed and workers were furloughed. When an agreement was finally reached to reopen the government amid plummeting Republican approval ratings, the Affordable Care Act was unchanged, not as a result of inadequate Republican resolve as Cruz alleged, but as a consequence of 55 Democratic senators outnumbering 45 Republicans.

In February 2014, as Congress faced the decision of whether to raise the federal debt ceiling or allow the government to default, once again it was his Republican colleagues that Cruz singled out for criticism. Once again, even though the outcome was preordained, Cruz took a stand that changed nothing, but hurt his party.

In the debt ceiling negotiations, Cruz insisted on invoking cloture, a real filibuster, that required 60 votes for the bill to pass to avoid a default. Because the Democrats only had 55 votes and because most Republicans did not want the country to default, several Republicans had to make a politically embarrassing and damaging vote to end the Cruz filibuster.

In December 2014, Cruz was at it again. The duo of Cruz and Lee held up a 2015 spending bill to protest President Obama’s executive amnesty. In the end, the spending bill passed and the Obama amnesty stood. The pair only managed to make congressmen come to work for a rare Saturday session and, in the process, allowed Democrats to confirm 23 Obama nominees, including 12 judges, that Republicans had previously blocked.

Cruz’s antics have been popular with the conservative base but have alienated him from other Republicans. He was forced to apologize for his December 2014 strategic error, but persisted in pushing his brinksmanship with the attempt to defund President Obama’s executive amnesty in early 2015, a gambit that failed due to a Democratic filibuster.

In contrast to his high profile battles which were full of sound and fury, but actually signified nothing, Cruz’s one notable senatorial success was achieved with bipartisanship and was largely off the national radar. Govtrack notes that Cruz sponsored two bills that became law. One renamed a post office, but the other, S.2195, denied admission to the United States to any UN representatives who had engaged in espionage or terror against the US. The bill’s support was so broad that it passed without opposition and was signed into law by President Obama in 2014. Sadly, Cruz seems not to have learned from this success and returned to attacking Republicans for not having the votes to impose their will on Democrats.

Cruz is an excellent speaker and much of his support stems from his uncompromising attitude. The problem is that, when the results of his actions are examined, he has hurt his own party far more than he has hurt President Obama and the Democrats. His repeated failed attempts to use the budget to get around the Democratic majority and the Obama veto have detracted from the ability of Republicans to find a strategy that might actually work. It is surprising that Cruz, the constitutional lawyer, continues to pursue the same failed strategy over and over.

A majority of Republican voters seem to realize the damage that Cruz has done. Cruz typically hovers at about three to five percent approval according to Politico. A CBS News poll found Republicans almost evenly split on whether they would support Cruz. The poor showing put Cruz in 10^th place, ahead of only Bobby Jindal. The Real Clear Politics roundup of polls confirms the shallowness of Cruz’s support with an eighth place showing among Republicans and an average of 4.6 percent support. Cruz also does the worst of any Republican polled in head-to-head matchups against Hillary Clinton, losing by double digit margins in every poll according to Real Clear Politics.

In fact, Senator Cruz has united a broad spectrum of conservatives against his candidacy. Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post writes “Either Cruz is not as smart as some people say, or he has decided to give up on being a serious national Republican in favor of becoming the next Sarah Palin.” Thomas Sowell wrote, “Senator Ted Cruz has not yet reached the point where he can make policy, rather than just make political trouble. But there are already disquieting signs that he is looking out for Ted Cruz — even if that sets back the causes he claims to be serving.” Even Anne Coulter called Cruz “a disaster on illegal immigration.”

Ted Cruz is an inspiring speaker and is very popular among a small contingent of Tea Party Republicans. His tactics are excellent for ginning up his own support among this Tea Party base, but makes it almost impossible for him to gain traction within the party at large. To have a future beyond the Senate, Cruz must find a way to promote himself without further dividing Republicans.

 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Winning Republican strategies for 2015

Since the recent failure of the Republican attempt to defund President Obama’s executive immigration amnesty, much has been written, most of if it unflattering, about the future of the Republican Party. Many on the Tea Party right doubt the “backbone” of the Republican leadership and question their commitment to opposing President Obama’s policies.

What these critics do not provide is an answer to how the Republicans can overcome the Democratic filibuster that derailed the attempt to defund the amnesty. The problem was not “lack of backbone” on the part of the Republican leadership. The problem was mathematics. The Republicans lacked the 60 votes required by Senate procedural rules to end a filibuster.

The Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress, but the majority is only meaningful if conservatives understand that it is a limited majority. Voters vested control of the Senate and House of Representatives with the Republicans, but they did not issue them a carte blanche to impose a conservative agenda.

The Republican majority is limited in two important ways. First, Senate rules require 60 votes for cloture to end debate on a bill. The Republicans have only 54 votes so it is axiomatic that a cloture vote will require at least six Democrats. Second, the Republicans are limited by President Obama’s veto. Even if a bill passes both houses of Congress, the president can veto it. Congress can override a presidential veto, but this requires 67 votes in the Senate and 288 in the House. Democratic votes (13 in the Senate and 41 in the House) would be required. To avoid wasting two years of a majority, Republicans need to take these limitations to heart and adapt a strategy to defeat them.

The first step is in casting aside unworkable strategies of the past. Defunding is a dead idea that should not be considered in the future. As with any other legislation, the idea is unworkable without a bipartisan majority. If Republicans have the votes to defund something, it would be better to simply repeal it outright.

Shutting the government down as a consequence of the House’s “power of the purse” has also proved unsuccessful in the past. A government shutdown is useful only as leverage if Democrats want to keep the government open. With a president who relishes the idea of using a shutdown to pummel Republicans, the strategy of a shutdown is pointless masochism. Republican leaders have quite sensibly rejected this course.

A successful Republican strategy will require one thing above all: a bipartisan majority. No conservative legislation can become law without Democratic votes. Republicans must peel off at least six Democratic senators for cloture and 13 to override Obama’s veto. This is a mathematical and constitutional fact. The question is how to do so.

The answer is to learn from the Democrats themselves. The Democrats in Congress have been successful because they stay united and split the Republicans over divisive issues like immigration. Republicans should ask themselves what issues can be used to divide the Democrats.

One such issue is the medical device tax imposed by Obamacare. This very unpopular tax is imposed on the manufacturers of such items as prosthetic limbs and pacemakers. It threatens thousands of American jobs as well as hurting the sick and disabled. There is bipartisan support for a repeal of the medical device tax, if not for Obamacare in its entirety.

If Republicans bring a repeal of the medical device tax to vote in Congress, Democrats would be forced to choose between voting to tax the sick or deserting to the Republican side. If the vote passes, Obama must allow it or publicly defend a veto. In either case, a vote to sustain the tax would be fodder for campaign ads by Republican challengers.

A second method for creating a bipartisan majority is to sweeten the pot with a compromise. Bill Clinton famously said that the Constitution could be subtitled “let’s make a deal.” If Republicans want to pass their agenda, they must induce the Democrats to vote with them, rather than simply expecting them to bow down before superior numbers.

One area where such a concession could be made is on the minimum wage. The minimum wage is an issue where the public supports the Democratic position. Recent polling has found strong support for raising the minimum wage, even in red states. In the 2014 elections, voters in four states that sent Republicans to the Senate enacted increases to their state minimum wages.

Trading a modest increase in the federal minimum wage for Democratic votes on Republican bills is a compromise that would defuse a popular Democratic issue while, at the same time, helping to advance conservative policies. The Republicans should not give in to a sharp increase in the minimum wage to $10 or $15 per hour, but a modest increase to the $8 to $9 range could be phased in over time.
Numerous studies, including one that looks at unemployment during the Great Recession, have shown that raising the minimum wage hurts low-skilled workers, but the economic effects of a modest increase to the minimum wage would be negligible. Thirty states already have minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage according to the National Conference on State Legislatures. At least 14 states have already enacted or scheduled minimum wages that are $9.00 per hour or higher. Further, a 2013 study of minimum wage earners by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only 4.3 percent of workers earn the minimum wage. An increase to the minimum wage would affect few workers in a small number of states.

Negative effects on the economy could be further minimized by incorporating a separate minimum wage for teenagers. The BLS study reports that only three percent of workers over age 25 earn the minimum wage, compared with 20 percent of teenagers. Instituting a lower minimum wage for teens would protect their ability to find entry-level, part-time jobs.

For Obama’s executive immigration amnesty, the contentious issue that led to the almost-shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, there is the low-yield nuclear option. In the Wall St. Journal, Curt Levey, a constitutional attorney with the Committee for Justice, called on Republicans to block Mr. Obama’s judicial nominees until he reneges on his executive action.

Blocking Obama’s appointees has many advantages that defunding lacked. First, it is possible. The Democrats cannot block the Republicans from blocking confirmations. There is no cloture or veto of a blocked confirmation. This strategy negates the two weapons that the Democrats hold.

Second, blocking confirmations is a win-win for Republicans. The optimal outcome would be that Obama reverses his executive action, which would be tantamount to surrender. If he stands firm, however, his nominees will never be seated as judges. This means that there will be more judicial openings for the next president, hopefully a Republican, to fill.

Finally, the potential for blowback is small. With a government shutdown, Republicans always take a hit in public opinion and lose support. That’s why Democrats try to goad them into that course of action. Blocking nominees is much lower profile and would not be noticed by most Americans. There would be no closed offices or parks and no furloughed workers to show on television. Lawyers who cannot get appointed to cushy jobs in federal courts are not sympathetic figures.

Many critics of the Republicans ask, “What was the point of winning the election?” if the Republicans can’t enact their agenda. The election gave the Republicans an advantage; it did not give them the ability to dictate terms to the Democrats.

The Republicans can use their majority over the next two years to further the conservative agenda and roll back pieces of Obama’s legacy, but to do so they must adopt realistic strategies that play to their strengths and work around those of the Democrats. Winning Republican strategies divide the Democrats, not themselves.

 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Can Scott Walker unite the GOP?

The factions of the GOP are split and the Wisconsin governor is one of few candidates that can bring them together.

Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, has generated much buzz as a potential presidential candidate since he addressed the Freedom Summit in Des Moines, Iowa on January 24. Walker has jumped to the front of a crowded Republican field and may be uniquely qualified to unite the various factions of the Republican Party.

There are a number of factions within the GOP, the two most obvious being the establishment and the Tea Party. In addition to these groups, there are also religious conservatives, foreign policy conservatives, and libertarians. Most of the potential Republican nominees are championed by only one or two of these groups. For example, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush fall into the establishment category. Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Sarah Palin are prominent candidates from the Tea Party. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum have the support of the religious wing of the GOP. Rand Paul is the obvious libertarian choice and no strong foreign policy candidates have yet emerged. Scott Walker is one of few candidates with the potential to bridge the divides between these groups.

Establishment excitement

Establishment Republicans like Scott Walker for his effectiveness and his experience as the governor of Wisconsin. Many conservatives favor a governor with proven leadership abilities after two terms of the meanderings of a former community organizer who was never tasked with a management position until he won the White House. The proven ability to get things done and forge majorities is a big plus for the next Republican nominee.

Additionally, establishment Republicans appreciate the fact that Walker is the best vetted candidate in the country. Likewise, after successfully managing three hotly contested campaigns (two gubernatorial campaigns and recall attempt), the potential for unforced errors is less likely than with untested candidates. Both areas have plagued many Tea Party candidates in the past and caused Republicans to lose races that should have been easily winnable.

Terrific Tea Partier

From the Tea Party point of view, Scott Walker is a fighter. He faced down Wisconsin’s public employee unions and won. He also cut taxes and moved the state budget from a deficit to a surplus. According to National Review, 95 percent of the state’s employers think that Wisconsin is on the right track, reflecting Walker’s pro-business and limited government policies. Walker’s new budget proposal also bans the use of Common Core assessment tests in Wisconsin’s public schools.

Walker’s views largely match those of Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz, but, unlike Cruz, Walker has a record of accomplishment. Where Cruz has made a name for himself in making principled, but ultimately unsuccessful stands against Obamacare and the debt ceiling, Scott Walker can point to a record of accomplishments in Wisconsin.

Religious, but not radical

Walker can also appeal to both religious and secular Republicans. He grew up as the son of Baptist pastor, notes the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. As a boy in Iowa he even started a “Jesus USA” club to do good deeds. In March 2014, he attracted the ire of the Freedom from Religion Foundation when he posted Philippians 4:13 on his official state Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Walker is pro-life and a defender of traditional marriage as well. In an October 2014 letter described in the Journal-Sentinel, Walker described how he signed a bill requiring ultrasounds for women seeking abortions and hospital-admitting privileges for doctors at abortion clinics. Walker also cut off state funding for abortion providers. With respect to marriage, Walker supports traditional marriage, but a court decision establishing gay marriage in Wisconsin meant that the issue was not prominent in his reelection campaign. As the governor of a blue state, Walker is seen as more mainstream in his faith than Huckabee and Santorum by secular Republicans.

As governor, Walker also had support from libertarians. Walker’s limited government policies and challenges to public unions drew the endorsement of the national Libertarian Party in 2012. When foreign policy becomes an issue in a national campaign, support from libertarians might become more problematic, especially if the pacifist Rand Paul runs.

Aggressive on foreign policy

On foreign policy, Walker has begun to stake out a claim that is decidedly not pacifist. He recently told ABC News, “I think aggressively, we need to take the fight to ISIS and any other radical Islamic terrorist in and around the world, because it’s not a matter of when they attempt an attack on American soil, or not if I should say, it’s when, and we need leadership that says clearly, not only amongst the United States but amongst our allies, that we’re willing to take appropriate action.”

Walker went on to say, “We have to look at other surgical methods. And ultimately, we have to be prepared to put boots on the ground if that’s what it takes.” He continued, “I don’t think that’s an immediate plan. [But] I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

Walker’s sharp comments come after months of executions by ISIS and the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. Polling shows that voters are sharply critical of President Obama’s tepid response to Islamic terror, but are not necessarily ready to commit U.S. ground forces to the fight in Syria.

Immigration impasse

On immigration reform, Walker opposes an amnesty, but does see the need for immigration reform and securing the border. He told ABC News, “We need to enforce the laws in the United States, and we need to find a way for people to have a legitimate legal immigration system in this country, and that does not mean amnesty.”

So far, Walker has been vague about his position on immigration, but at various times has voiced opposition to the idea of deporting all illegal aliens and support for a pathway to legalization. With some conservatives decrying any suggestion of reform as “amnesty,” the issue of immigration is likely to be the most difficult for Walker to negotiate in the Republican primaries.

Other possible uniters

Scott Walker is not the only candidate with the potential to unite the GOP. Several other candidates might possibly bring the establishment and Tea Party, the two largest factions, together, but each has their own weakness. Marco Rubio has broad support, but as a one-term senator has little leadership experience. Rick Perry is a successful governor of Texas, but is under indictment for abuse of official capacity and must overcome his poor performance from 2012. Bobby Jindal is the two-term governor of Louisiana, but faces questions of effectiveness and experience at the national level.

The down side

There are several potential problems that might affect a Walker campaign. A simmering investigation in Wisconsin has searched for illegal coordination between conservative groups and Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. A recent Washington Post column hinted at how Democrats might respond to a Walker candidacy. Points of attack include Walker’s cuts to the University of Wisconsin and the state’s Seniorcare prescription drug program. Walker’s response to a projected budget shortfall was a round of spending cuts. Additionally, Walker is one of the few politicians at the national level without a college degree.

Walker’s largest obstacle at this point is coming to terms with immigration reform. While a small, vocal minority in the GOP opposes any change to immigration laws, a large majority of Americans want the system fixed. According to a Beyond the Beltway poll from December, 48 percent, a plurality, favor “a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers if they undergo a background check, pay taxes, and learn English.” This is one area where Republicans are out of step with the rest of the country.

Veering right on immigration in the GOP primary may prove fatal in the general election. Some observers believe that Mitt Romney’s fate was sealed in 2012 by his comments in the primary about “self-deportation.” Romney ended up losing the Hispanic vote by 44 percent according to CNN, a worse performance than any Republican candidate since Bob Dole.

So early into the 2016 race, anything can happen. At this point, Walker is not even a declared candidate yet. Nevertheless, he is well positioned to bring Republicans together, an important first step taking back the White House.

 

Read the full article on Elections Examiner.com

Minority voters put GOP over the top

Exit polls reveal the surprising statistic that shows the source of the Republican surge.

The Republican sweep of the battleground Senate seats left conservatives both elated and shocked. No one had predicted the enormity of the Democratic rout that left pundits and politicians scrambling for explanations. An analysis of exit polls from around the country reveals the answer.

Practical Politicking compared CNN exit polls from 2014 to three previous elections, the 2008 and 2012 presidential races as well as the 2010 midterm elections in which the Tea Party revolution reached its zenith as the GOP captured the House, but fell short of taking control of the Senate. The result shows why the Republican Party performed so well this year when compared to previous elections and also provides clues about the upcoming presidential election of 2016.

“Older, whiter and richer” is true… as far as it goes

It has been said that the 2014 electorate was “older, whiter and richer” than the 2012 electorate that returned President Obama to the White House for a second term. This explanation, often made by liberal pundits such as those at Think Progress, ignores the fact that President Obama almost split the vote of people who earned more than $100,000 with Mitt Romney (44-54 percent). In 2008, Obama tied this segment 49-49 with John McCain. Democrats have done well with the wealthy in the recent past. This year the Democrats lost this group by 16 points, which was less than their 18 point deficit from 2010.

Voting statistics show that the old stereotype about young people trending liberal and becoming more conservative as they grow older is true. Nevertheless, President Obama did well among older voters, losing the demographic by only eight points in both 2008 and 2012. The Republicans did better among older voters in 2010 when they won seniors by 21 points as opposed to this year’s 16 points.

Likewise, Obama lost white voters by 12 points in 2008 and 20 points in 2012. This year’s margin (22 points) was not markedly different from 2012 and was almost identical to 2010 (23 points). It is also interesting to note that the share of white voters actually declined this year from 2010 by two points.

The “older, whiter and richer” explanation is true as far as it goes. While it underscores the well-established fact that the electorate in a midterm election is almost totally different from the voters who come out to vote for a president in the highest profile election, it falls short of convincingly explaining this year’s Democratic debacle. Nevertheless, this myth, like that of 2012’s “missing Republicans” seems destined to live as a salve to soothe liberal disappointment and channel anger toward whites and rich people, two common Democratic bogeymen.

No gender bender

There was also no appreciable shift in gender voting patterns. Women traditionally favor the Democrats and that was true this year as well. Democrats won 51 percent of the female vote, less than the 55 percent of 2012, but more than 2010 when Republicans won women by one point. The peak was in 2008 when 56 percent of women voted for Barack Obama.

Obama won men in 2008 by one point, but the Democrats lost the male vote in the other three elections. Fifty-five percent of men voted Republican in 2010 and 52 percent in 2012. The male vote peaked this year with a whopping 57 percent of men voting GOP and only 41 percent voting Democrat. While men seemed to be responding to a Democratic “war on men,” the bottom line is very similar to 2010 and is not enough to explain this year’s landslide.

“Look to the cookie.”

The key to understanding the shift in the electorate from 2010 to 2014 is with the racial demographics of voters. It is true that the electorate was whiter than 2012, but that is only part of the story. As Jerry Seinfeld said, we must “look to the cookie” of race relations for the true answer.

The following table shows the percentage of each demographic group voting Republican:

Year	White	Black	Latino	Asian
2008	55	4	31	35
2010	60	9	38	40
2012	59	6	27	26
2014	60	10	36	50

The following table shows the percentage of each demographic group as a percentage of the electorate:

Year	White	Black	Latino	Asian
2008	74	13	9	2
2010	77	11	8	2
2012	72	13	10	3
2014	75	12	8	3

The nearby charts show the percentage of each ethnic group voting Republican in each election along with each group's share of the electorate. When all the information is examined, we find that the “white” part of the “old, white and rich” explanation is not true in several important ways. There were more white voters than in 2012, but, as noted earlier, the share of white voters declined from 2010 to 2014. The share of black voters increased one point between the midterm elections, but was one point lower than in 2012 and 2008. Black voters didn’t stay home, but came out as a greater share of the electorate than in the previous midterm election.

The liberal pundits totally fail to take into account that this year saw Republicans do much better among minority voters than in any election of the Obama era. Republican candidates faired marginally better this year than four years ago in the last midterm and dramatically better than the pathetic performances of both John McCain and Mitt Romney. It was this improved performance with nonwhite voters that put the GOP contenders over the top.

What does this mean for 2016?

The lesson for 2016 is that the coalition of minorities, women, and young people that elected Obama both times won’t necessarily turn out to elect other Democrats. While these groups all voted Democrat this year, the margins were far narrower than in 2008 when Obama was seen as a hip, new, “post-partisan” politician and hope was in the air. Six years later, many minorities and young people are still jobless and the “war on women” has worn thin.

This year also saw the election of several new minority Republicans. Tim Scott is the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction. Mia Love is the first ever black Republican woman in the House. As more and more minorities “come out” as conservatives, it will be easier for others to do so in the future.

Likely Democratic contenders for 2016 such as Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren lack Barack Obama’s minority connections as well as his hipness and charisma. If Republican solutions resonate with voters over the next two years, the next wave of candidates may find that even more minority members are willing to pull the lever for a Republican.

Originally published on Examiner.com

Independent and third party candidates may spoil Senate races

With control of the Senate coming down to a few seats that are too close to call, independent and third party candidates are positioned to play the spoiler in a number of races. In an unusual development, two independent candidates are making strong campaigns in two states. In several other states, Libertarian candidates are gaining just enough traction to affect the outcome of a close race. One three-way race pits a Tea Party favorite against another Republican and a Democrat.

The biggest outside threat to a race comes in Kansas, where independent Greg Orman is in a statistical tie with Republican incumbent Pat Roberts. The Democratic candidate, Chad Taylor, dropped out under pressure from national Democrats to step aside for Orman, a longtime Democrat supporter according to the Washington Examiner. Orman refuses say which party he would caucus with if he becomes the deciding vote in the Senate.

Another independent candidate is South Dakota’s Larry Pressler. Pressler is a former Republican congressman and Senator who supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Pressler, whose policy agenda closely aligns with Democratic positions these days, polled almost even with Mike Rounds (R), a former governor and the favorite to win the seat in early October. The poll, from Survey USA, also found that Pressler voters preferred Rick Weiland, the Democratic candidate, over Mike Rounds by almost a two-to-one margin.

The Libertarian Party is also positioned to spoil a number of races. The Libertarian website notes that there are Libertarian candidates on the ballot in nearly every battleground Senate race. These include Mark Fish in Alaska, Nathan LaFrane in Arkansas, Gaylon Kent in Colorado, Amanda Swafford in Georgia, Doug Butzier in Iowa, Randall Batson in Kansas, David Patterson in Kentucky, Roger Roots in Montana, and Sean Hough in North Carolina.

These Libertarian candidates have no chance of winning. Most don’t even show up in the polls, but they do have the potential to throw close races to the Democrats. Libertarian candidates often draw support disproportionately from voters who would otherwise support the Republican candidate.  This was the case last year in the Virginia gubernatorial election where a Libertarian candidate helped Democrat Terry McAuliffe eke out a three point victory over Ken Cuccinelli. In the Virginia race, and likely in others as well, Democratic fundraisers bankrolled the Libertarian candidate in order to dilute conservative votes according to campaign finance filings published by The Blaze.

In Georgia and Louisiana, candidates are required to get over 50 percent of the vote to win. If no candidate gets 50 percent, the top two finishers will compete in a runoff election. At this point, no candidate in either state is polling at more than 50 percent.

In Georgia, the most recent poll, by Landmark Communications, shows David Perdue (R) and Michelle Nunn (D) in a dead heat with 47 percent each. Amanda Swafford, the Libertarian candidate is at three percent and two percent are undecided. With Swafford in the race, it is likely that Perdue and Nunn will face each other in a runoff in January.

In Lousiana, incumbent Mary Landrieu (D) faces two Republicans. The Real Clear Politics average shows Landrieu with a slight lead over her two opponents, but falling far short of the necessary 50 percent. The leading Republican, Bill Cassidy, trails Landrieu by three points while Rob Maness, the Tea Party favorite, is a distant third with eight percent. Polling shows that Cassidy leads Landrieu in a two-way race and should and should have an edge in the runoff in December.

In both cases, a runoff would favor Republicans says analyst Dick Morris. Republican voters tend to be more motivated to vote in runoff elections and the absence of the third candidate would likely shift more votes to the GOP candidates. Additionally, Morris speculates that momentum after the Nov. 4 general election will likely favor Republicans, especially if the party captures the necessary six seats to control the Senate in the first round of elections.

In every race, with the sole exception of Kansas, the final victor is certain to be either a Democrat or a Republican. The question is whether enough voters will vote for independent and third party candidates to affect the outcome of the other races and perhaps the balance of the Senate.

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Why the Tea Party fizzled in 2014

2010 was the year of the Tea Party. It seems now that the movement’s impact was a flash in the pan, however. The once mighty grassroots effort flopped in 2012 and continued to slide toward irrelevance in 2014. How did the spontaneous uprising against President Obama’s liberal policies fizzle so quickly, especially since President Obama himself is more unpopular than ever?

In 2010, it seemed that the grass roots conservative movement would shake the nation and upend the Obama Administration. That year saw the Democrats take a “shellacking” as Republicans took control the House of Representatives in a landslide of historic proportions. The Republican class of 2010 included such notable names as Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

In the wake of 2010, many conservatives expected the Tea Party sweep to continue into 2012 and beyond. The Tea Party’s winning streak would end only two years later in 2012, however. That year began for conservatives with high hopes for not only unseating President Obama, but for winning control of the Senate as well. In the final tally, Republicans not only lost the presidential election but two additional Senate seats as well.

While the targeting of Tea Party groups by President Obama’s IRS had an impact on the election, a number of the 2012 losses can be directly attributed to the unforced errors and amateurish campaigns of poorly vetted Tea Party candidates. The names of Christine O’Donnell, Todd Aiken, and Richard Mourdock will live in infamy among conservatives. The roots of the Tea Party’s 2014 losses can be found in these failures of 2012.

The Tea Party’s biggest mistake of the 2014 cycle was pitting itself against the Republican establishment rather than maintaining a focus on unseating Democrats and fielding primary candidates for open seats. In 2014, the highest profile Tea Party candidates were fielded against Republican incumbents, many with sterling conservative voting records. There was Matt Bevin who ran against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, Steve Sterling who tried to unseat John Cornyn in Texas, Milton Wolf who challenged Pat Roberts in Kansas and Chris McDaniel who ran a strong campaign against Thad Cochran in Mississippi. All of these candidates lost in hotly contested races in spite of being heavily supported by Tea Party groups.

These Tea Partiers failed to unseat the incumbent Republicans for largely the same reasons that 2012 Tea Partiers failed against the Democrats. There was poor vetting in the case of Milton Wolf, who, as it was revealed late in the campaign, liked to post graphic x-ray pictures of serious injuries on Facebook and joke about them, and Chris McDaniel, whose talk radio recordings proved a treasure trove of embarrassing comments. There were unforced errors such as Matt Bevin’s appearance at a rally to legalize cockfighting. Steve Stockman, who Christopher Hooks of Politico called “the Lone Star state’s weirdest lawmaker,” ran a campaign that may not have included a single public appearance.

It seems that Republican primary voters have learned to stop casting aside perfectly good candidates for the flavor-of-the-month just because they have an established and successful career in politics. When in a life-or-death struggle with liberal Democrats, experience in Washington can be a good thing. This is especially true when the incumbents have strong conservative voting records as McConnell, Cornyn and Roberts do.

The value of experience may have been driven home to Republican voters in October 2013 with the defund debacle. The attempt to defund Obamacare last year was led by Tea Party favorites Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah). The pair browbeat reticent Republicans into falling in line with their plan to defund the Affordable Care Act, which had, in reality, included its own funding.

The flaw in the Cruz-Lee plan was that the Republicans did not hold a Senate majority, let alone one that could override an Obama veto. Compounding their error, the pair made no attempt to swing the support of vulnerable Democrats to their cause. When the Democrats predictably refused to defund their pet project, the Republicans eventually were forced to cave on their demands to prevent a federal default. Because Obamacare was self-funded, it was implemented on schedule even as national parks were closed. To add insult to injury, the government shutdown distracted the media from the story of Obamacare’s disastrous rollout.

Ironically, the biggest Tea Party successes of 2014 had little support from national Tea Party groups. Dave Brat, the insurgent candidate who unseated Eric Cantor in the largest upset of the Republican primary season, was not funded or backed by national Tea Party groups until after he won. Another so-called Tea Party candidate, Ben Sasse, who won the Republican Senate nomination for a vacant seat in Nebraska, was actually supported by both “establishment” and Tea Party Republicans according to The Atlantic. Sasse was the second choice of Tea Party groups and was attacked by FreedomWorks before the group changed its mind and supported him.

Polling by Gallup shows that that in its early days, the Tea Party found strong support among Republicans. Between 2010 and 2014, Tea Party support among Republicans fell by 20 points (to 41 percent) and opponents doubled (to 11 percent).

Among Americans at large, the story is much the same. The Tea Party had the support of about one in three Americans in 2010. Opposition surged ahead of the 2012 elections and again in late 2013 in the wake of the government shutdown. Going into the 2014 election season, Tea Party opponents outnumbered supporters by 27-23 percent according to Gallup. An even larger segment of the population simply does not care about the Tea Party.

The Tea Party fizzled for two reasons. First, the group tried to take on not one, but both, parties with candidates of poor quality. Second, the group faced a backlash because of the poor strategy involved in the attempt to defund Obamacare. The Tea Party alienated its natural consistency in the Republican Party by attacking party stalwarts with the label of “RINO” and nearly killing the party’s chances in 2014 with the government shutdown.

At this point, with only 41 percent approval in the GOP, the Tea Party label is not necessarily helpful to Republicans even among the party base. With only 23 percent approval among voters, it may well be toxic in a general election. Successful Tea Party candidates must follow the Ben Sasse model and appeal to both factions of the GOP.

Nevertheless, the Tea Party is not dead and will likely live on as a faction of the Republican Party. As Michael Tanner pointed out in National Review, the Tea Party is doing what it set out to do even without any of its candidates winning. The Tea Party has forced the Republican Party back to the right after years of Bush-era spending. The knowledge that they will face a Tea Party challenge from the right if they drift too far toward the center will hold the feet of Republican incumbents to the fire for years to come.

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Kansas senator warns US is ‘headed for socialism’

An incumbent Republican senator has said on two occasions that the United States is “headed for national socialism.” The Washington Times reported on Sept. 24. Sen. Pat Roberts made the initial comments were made last week at a town hall meeting in Dodge City, Kan. Roberts reiterated his to a reporter the next day.

In a Youtube video of the press conference, Sen. Roberts can be seen telling attendees, “There’s a palpable fear among Kansans all across the state that the America that we love and cherish will not be the same America for our kids and grandkids, and that’s wrong. One of the reasons that I’m running is to change that. There’s an easy way to do it. I’ll let you figure it out. But at any rate, we have to change course because our country is headed for national socialism. That’s not right. It’s changing our culture. It’s changing what we’re all about.”

Roberts apparently intended allude to socialism on a national scale and not to invoke Nazis, which were officially called the National Socialist Party.

The Washington Post also reported on Sept. 24 that Roberts had confirmed his fear that the country was becoming socialist the next day when responding to a reporter. “I believe that the direction he is heading the country is more like a European socialistic state,” Roberts answered. “You can’t tell me anything that he [Obama] has not tried to nationalize.”

Roberts, a senator since 1997, is in the midst of a close reelection battle against Greg Orman, a lifelong Democrat who is ostensibly an independent. Real Clear Politics rates the race as a tossup, but Roberts has trailed Orman in several recent polls.

Roberts handily defeated Milton Wolf in the 2014 Kansas Republican primary earlier this year. The race had been close until Wolf, a radiologist, was revealed to have posted and joked about x-ray images of injuries and gunshot wounds on his Facebook page.

Allegations that Roberts is no longer a resident of Kansas have also proved troublesome for his campaign. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Roberts’ house is Kansas is rented out and the senator rents a room in a supporter’s house. A recent revelation is that Roberts’ mortgage documents show his house in Virginia as his principle residence.

The Republican quest for a Senate majority may come down to Kansas. Republicans need to gain six seats to gain control of the Senate. Kansas is one of the few states in which the Democrats have a chance to pick off a Republican incumbent.

Read the full story on Elections Examiner

Tea Party losses bode well for GOP

As the 2014 primary election season draws to a close, it is apparent that voters have rejected the vast majority of Tea Party candidates in favor of traditional Republicans. In spite of much ballyhooed and hard fought challenges against Republican incumbents, only one prominent Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was defeated by a Tea Party challenger, Dave Brat, who was not funded or backed by national Tea Party groups. The Tea Party losses are a good thing for the Republican Party as a whole and make a Republican Senate majority more likely.

As noted before in Examiner, most Republican officeholders are real conservatives. Charges that they are “RINOs” or “closet liberals” do not stand up to the scrutiny of their voting records. Nevertheless, Tea Party challengers leveled these and other charges against Republican incumbents in their campaign attacks from the right.

Contrary to the belief of many on the right, elections are not merely won by marshaling the conservative base. While getting out the conservative vote is important, conservatives do not make up a majority in any state except Wyoming according to a January 2014 Gallup poll. Elections are decided by the moderate and independent voters who do not adhere to either party. For many Republican candidates, having fended off challengers from the right may make them more appealing to the undecided voters in the middle of political spectrum.

Second, while some Tea Party candidates have been very qualified and successful, think Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, others have made serious mistakes that caused the Republican Party to lose elections that should have been easily winnable. The names of past Tea Party losers include Todd Akin of Missouri (“legitimate rape”), Richard Mourdock of Indiana (pregnancy from rape is “something God intended”), and Christine O’Donnell of Maryland (“I dabbled in witchcraft”). Tea Party support for such candidates was one of the factors that cost Republicans control of the Senate in both 2010 and 2012. While candidates like Aiken and O’Donnell failed to win Democratic seats for the GOP, Mourdock transferred a Republican seat to the Democrats after defeating incumbent Richard Lugar in the primary.

Recent elections may show that Republican voters are becoming more discerning about who to vote for. In the current primary season, Republican voters have voted down a number of Tea Party nominees who would have almost certainly gone down to defeat in the general election. In Kentucky, Matt Bevin, challenger to Senator Mitch McConnell, was caught on video attending a rally to support the legalization of cockfighting. Bevin also was revealed to have supported TARP in 2008. The Tea Party challenger to Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Dr. Milton Wolf, was revealed to have posted numerous x-ray images of deceased patients on his Facebook page. Wolf then joked about the pictures with his Facebook friends. Even Chris McDaniel, who lost the hotly contested and controversial primary in Mississippi, would have been troubled in the general election by recordings of his talk radio show. By rejecting such flawed candidates, Republican voters increase the chances that Republicans will win control of the Senate.

Third, Tea Party identification is not helpful to moderate and independent voters. In June, a Gallup poll found that only 24 percent of registered voters considered themselves Tea Party supporters. One month earlier, Gallup had noted that Tea Party support among Republicans had declined to 41 percent, down 20 points from 2010. The Tea Party was always a conservative and libertarian movement. At its height, in 2011, only 30 percent of Americans were supporters.

When independent voters were polled, Gallup found an almost even split between supporters and opponents of the Tea Party (14 to 13 percent). More telling, 73 percent of independents had no opinion on the movement. Tea Party endorsements of candidates would have little effect on these voters.

The good news for Republicans is that rejection of the Tea Party is not tantamount to a rejection of conservatism. Recent polls show that two-thirds of Americans are not satisfied with how American government works (Gallup) and 72 percent thought that big government was a greater threat than big business or big labor (Gallup). Voters consistently say that the country is on the wrong track by a greater than two-to-one margin (Rasmussen).

In the end, the Tea Party has not failed. The Tea Party, combined with the failure of President Obama’s agenda, moved the Republican Party to the right. National Journal called the current Congress the “most divided ever” with very few moderates left in either party. This is confirmed by a University of Georgia researcher whose research indicates that the Republican Party is at its most conservative point in 100 years.

There is still a place for the Tea Party within the Republican Party. As Michael Tanner noted in National Review, the Tea Party’s ability to field primary challengers against Republican incumbents will keep the GOP from moving too far toward the left. Even if the Tea Party never elects another candidate, by holding the feet of Republican incumbents to the fire, it has accomplished its purpose.

Read the full article on Elections Examiner