Is There a New Republican Momentum?
That's the question Jed Babbin asks
in this column. The simple answer to that question is yes.
The truth is that they recruited some awful candidates. Here in Minnesota, Coleen Rowley will get trounced by John Kline. Patty Wetterling will put up a respectable fight in MN-6 but she'll still lose to Michele Bachmann. Bringing in John Murtha won't help Rowley, either.
Which brings me to another point. Diana Irey will defeat Murtha this November because she's a smart candidate and because Murtha's neverending anti-military diatribe is killing him. Politically speaking, Murtha's a dead man walking. Ms. Irey has also made immigration a secondary issue. (Her primary issues are national security and John Murtha.) She's talked at length about Murtha's badmouthing the Haditha Marines, his voting against renauthorizing the Patriot Act and for not voting for protecting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Meanwhile, more GOP incumbents are either starting to pull ahead or are solidifying their leads. The trio of Connecticut representatives, Rob Simmons, Christopher Shays and Nancy Johnson, are pulling away. RCP shows Shays with a 7 point lead over Nancy Farrell.
A friend of mine in Massachusetts says that Jim Beatty has a shot at defeating William Delahunt, too. Delahunt is the guy that negotiated a deal with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, probably the biggest Western supporter of terrorism. Liberal or not, don't expect that to sit well with Massachusetts voters.
One last thing: I'd tell every Republican running, whether they're an incumbent or challenger, to run on an enforcement first immigration reform platform. Those who do that will clean the Dems' clocks. BIGTIME.
Posted Friday, September 15, 2006 2:23 AM
August 2006 Posts
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But, as Donald Lambro and I wrote last week, and as Rush Limbaugh analyzed with mathematical elegance Tuesday, Democrats are not in as strong a position as they say. The momentum shift of the past six weeks may be profound, and among the things it portends is not Democratic control of congress. The Dems are so worried that a deal reportedly has been struck this week between DNC Chairman Howard Dean and DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel, whose disdain for each other cannot be exaggerated. Dean is giving money to Emanuel for 40 House races on condition that Emanuel stops trashing the DNC. But the breach between them remains: a huge gap between the faux moderates of the Democratic House and their hyper-liberal national party.Mr. Babbin touches on something that I wrote about here, namely that there's a gigantic rift between the DLC wing and the Kos Kidz crowd. But that's really the least of their mounting worries.
The truth is that they recruited some awful candidates. Here in Minnesota, Coleen Rowley will get trounced by John Kline. Patty Wetterling will put up a respectable fight in MN-6 but she'll still lose to Michele Bachmann. Bringing in John Murtha won't help Rowley, either.
Which brings me to another point. Diana Irey will defeat Murtha this November because she's a smart candidate and because Murtha's neverending anti-military diatribe is killing him. Politically speaking, Murtha's a dead man walking. Ms. Irey has also made immigration a secondary issue. (Her primary issues are national security and John Murtha.) She's talked at length about Murtha's badmouthing the Haditha Marines, his voting against renauthorizing the Patriot Act and for not voting for protecting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Meanwhile, more GOP incumbents are either starting to pull ahead or are solidifying their leads. The trio of Connecticut representatives, Rob Simmons, Christopher Shays and Nancy Johnson, are pulling away. RCP shows Shays with a 7 point lead over Nancy Farrell.
A friend of mine in Massachusetts says that Jim Beatty has a shot at defeating William Delahunt, too. Delahunt is the guy that negotiated a deal with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, probably the biggest Western supporter of terrorism. Liberal or not, don't expect that to sit well with Massachusetts voters.
The first ad should weld every Democratic candidate to the identities of their national leaders. It should show Howard Dean at his red-faced "blame America first" shouting worst, Ned Lamont's victory moment, John Kerry accusing American troops of terrorizing Iraqi women and children in the dark of night, and Jack Murtha pronouncing the war unwinnable. Run this on a video background of white flags and the last helicopter lifting off from the roof of our embassy in Saigon.I love this ad but I'd make one slight modification: I'd swap out Dean and plug Harry Reid saying "Just think what happened in there twenty minutes ago. We killed the Patriot Act" to loud applause from Democratic lawmakers. It doesn't get much more damning than that.
One last thing: I'd tell every Republican running, whether they're an incumbent or challenger, to run on an enforcement first immigration reform platform. Those who do that will clean the Dems' clocks. BIGTIME.
Posted Friday, September 15, 2006 2:23 AM
August 2006 Posts
No comments.
