GOP loss in NY-03 special election, not so bad

Was this REALLLLY a loss?

Evidence the GOP may be catching on

A special election victory for Republicans in Pennsylvania might be an indicator that the GOP is starting to get it on how to fight elections using the same tactics as Democrats.  Either that or Republicans simply won a safe district and they haven't really adjusted.  You decide.

Take Ossoff - Dems lose, again

Republicans win, again. Jon Ossoff, the latest Democrat poster boy for anti-Trumpism, and a man who tried to sound like a conservative in his commercials lost to a Republican.  Democrats are proving they cannot beat not only Trump, but in more general terms, elections.

Republicans held on to a hotly contested U.S. House seat in Georgia on Tuesday, beating back an aggressive challenge that showed the Democrats’ inability to turn opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency into electoral gains.

Republican Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, beat Democrat Jon Ossoff, a onetime congressional aide, in the most expensive House race in history and the most significant test of the two parties’ political strength since Mr. Trump’s election.

In nearly complete results, Ms. Handel had almost 53% of the vote to just over 47% for Mr. Ossoff, the Associated Press reported.

In winning the seat, Republicans overcame a Democratic advantage in campaign spending and demonstrated that Mr. Trump retained political capital in the district.

The trend of Democrat losses continues.  This race was a lot closer than it should have been but that's largely attributable to the massive spending Dems threw at trying to win what would have been a mostly symbolic victory.

It's special election day in Georgia. Trump beware.

Democrats once again as in Kansas are predicting a deep red state victory for their candidate in a special election.  In Kansas, Democrats lost.  In Georgia, over a dozen Republicans are running against a sole Democrat who is positioning himself as a conservative.  If no candidate reaches 50% a runoff election among the two top vote getters will occur.  Democrats are banking on REpublican disunity and hoping their candidate can break the 50% threshold.

That's not going to happen.

Democrat Jon Ossoff dismissed concerns Tuesday over the fact that he doesn't live in the Georgia congressional district in which he's running for a House seat.

Just like in Kansas, Democrats are going to be disappointed. Just like with president Bush, Democrats have one playbook while out of power - chip away constantly at the president's approval rating using their compliant media allies.

But this is is a deep red state and while they have media momentum still on their side (for now), it's just too big to overcome a deep red state win. Conservatives in Georgia (and in general would do well to remember that any Democrat, no matter how conservative they portray themselves, vote party line. Regardless, Democrats will claim a win after their candidate leads the pack prior to the runoff election that will surely follow. Expect their glee to be relatively short lived.

In case you missed it Kansas still supports Trump

Democrats claimed the special election in Kansas to replace Trump CIA Director Mike Pompeo's seat in Congress would be proof that president Trump was not a legitimate president.  They fully expected Democrat James Thompson would beat Republican Ron Estes. Except he didn't.  Estes won.  Now the narrative has changed to "he only won by 7 in a district Trump carried by 27 points.  So Trump is not a legitimate president."  Or something like that.

Here are the problems with that 'storyline':

(1) Estes still won. After a constant drumbeat of everything Trump does is wrong in the media, a Republican won the race. He won by less than Trump did and less than the district would indicate, but that is a temporal anomaly so long as president Trump continues to deliver on his promises.  Success speaks louder than rhetoric.

(2) Trump is still president.  Has not changed.

(3) Estes was running, and James Thompson was running - president Trump was not running. Are we entirely discounting the qualities of either nominee as factors in the race? As Hot Air's Ed Morrissey points out, Governor Sam Brownback was likely more of a factor than president Trump.

(4) Because this was a special election, it's akin to an off presidential year congressional election, but moreso because it isn't even a regular election cycle vote.  The party in power does not do well in those cycles (see Obama 2010, Obama 2014, Bush 2006 foo recent evidence).  Republicans did not turn out with the same urgency as if Obama were still president.

No, I'll take this as a win for Trump and a win for the GOP.  Take your liberal spin elsewhere because it's not selling.

Note to Florida conservatives: Go Vote today

Fox News is reporting that so far turnout in this special Congressional election is very low.  That means your vote matters even more than it normally would.  Go vote.  And tell your Republican friends to do the same. This is going to be touted as a referendum on Obamacare, particularly if Sink, the Democrat, wins.

While many pundits are saying that this special election won't be indicative of the November midterms, Politico has another take:

After almost $9 million in outside spending, a storm of attacks and counterattacks and endless speculation about its implications for the midterms, voters will cast their ballots in the Florida special congressional election on Tuesday.

The stakes are particularly high for Democrats. The party has bet big on Alex Sink, Florida’s former chief financial officer and the Democrats’ 2010 gubernatorial nominee, in the race for the swing 13th Congressional District, which encompasses part of the St. Petersburg area. A win, Democrats hope, will deflate the conventional wisdom that 2014 is destined to go south for them.

For the GOP, the race has been an opportunity to test-drive attacks on Obamacare, which are certain to be the centerpiece of its argument in this year’s midterm elections. And while national Republicans complain that their candidate, former Washington lobbyist David Jolly, has been lackluster, public polling suggests the race is tight.

The two candidates are vying to replace GOP Rep. Bill Young, who died in October after representing the seat for more than four decades.

Go vote today.

PA12 - Vote for Tim Burns

I'm just saying, unlike former President Bill Clinton, that you follow your gut instinct and vote for this guy tomorrow.  And if you aren't in PA12 but know someone there, call and tell them to go vote for Burns.  Conservatives can win this one, and it would be a big win, just like Scott Brown was.  So do your thing. Do what you gotta do...

Martha Come Lately

Democrat Martha Coakley's latest attempt to win back voters in her faltering race against Scott Brown, and perhaps destiny - claiming she's for the little guy.

"I'm standing with Main Street on this one. Scott Brown stands with Wall Street," Coakley charged.

The laughability of that statement is undeniable, but you can't win an election on comedy (Al Franken arguably didn't win in Minnesota and unarguably, is not funny).  In the same Breitbart article, via the AP (emphasis added):

Brown, a little-known Republican state senator with a limited record who had never before run statewide, shed his party markings and downplayed his conservative credentials throughout the monthlong campaign. He spent weeks campaigning not just against Coakley but against Capitol Hill.


"If you want someone who's going to lower your taxes and bring common sense back to Washington, then join with me," he says.Coakley, the state's popular Democratic attorney general, comes right out of the establishment and has embraced her stature within the party. She has run a Rose Garden inevitability strategy, largely shunned retail politics, and dashed to Washington for an oh-so-insider fundraiser.

Now, with the race tight in its final days, Coakley's trying to appeal to an anti-Washington, pro-populism electorate by seizing the fight-for-the-little-guy mantle in hopes of thwarting a Republican victory. The White House and Coakley are hammering Brown for opposing Obama's just-announced plan to tax large Wall Street firms.

Should Brown maintain momentum and pull off the upset, wait for the spin. It's already started. Obama isn't going to Massachusetts, where the prospects are lose-lose for him personsonally. And Democrats want to portray an increasingly feasible loss as being about Coakleyand not Obama. The decidedly pro-liberal AP would not be party to portraying Coakley as an elitist in that same article were it not trying to place blame squarely on her.

The iront of that is also quite rich - an elitist, smarter-than-thou party throwing one of their own under the bus for displaying the same attitude herself is obviously hypocritical. But there's subtle hypocrisy in it as well - should she win, they would expect, or rather demand, that she march lockstep with them in voting for health care, cap and trade and huge spending bills. She shouldn't given the anathematic way she'll be treated over the next few days, but in yet another twist, she surely would. She's a die hard liberal and believes the same things as the 'progressive' elite. Even her own career is secondary to the radical agenda.

And that same die hard progressive attitude is what makes the election in Massachusetts so critical. Coakley's Martha come lately ploy is the same playbook as Obama's "we're here for the little guy" deceit. They are elitists there for two things - themselves and their radical agenda. Falling for it means Democrats can go full speed ahead on that agenda with no brakes. The country knows that. Democrats, Republicans, Coakley and Brown know that. The anything-to-win approach is reaching a breaking point, and that's the real reason to smile.

Big ripples from Massachusetts

The special election next week for the Senate seat left empty by the death of Ted Kennedy has more, far-reaching, implication than just a single Senate seat. It has national implications that will ripple throughout the nation, and ripple throughout 2010, and beyond. The Democrats, realizing this, have sent in some of their top guns to pull this race out of the fire for their party. So why aren't the Republicans all over this too?

Firstly, consider the impacts of another Republican Senator. With the current tally of Republicans at 40, and 60 votes required to stop a filibuster, the GOP needs one more Republican to be able to thwart a Democrat supermajority. The election of Scott Brown over Martha Coakley would provide that inertia dampening one extra vote that the Democrats swindled by sneaking in Al Frankenberry. It means poorly designed health care reform can be slowed if not stopped. It means cap and trade can be slowed so that real debate can take place. It's not a panacea but it might slow the bleeding on the national debt - or at least stop it from quickening even more.

But that's not the only consideration. With the GOP sweep in Virginia last November, along with the win for Governor in New Jersey, and the near upset of the Conservative Party candidate in NY23, conservatism, and to a slightly lesser extent the GOP has been on a roll. Combine that with a victory in Massachusetts of all places next week, and you have the making of true, surprising momentum. It sets the tone for the 2010 elections. For example, it gives the Republican National Committee a good position to work from for 2010 if there are any recruiting needs still outstanding.

And the momentum has a spinoff effect as well that serves to compound the prospects for the GOP in 2010 - Democrat retirements. If some House or Senate Democrats were on the fence about retirement, imagine how news of Republican Senator from Massachusetts might impact their decisions. It helps ease the incumbency advantage the Democrats possess (in theory), and it might cause the DNC to have to scramble for replacements, thereby taking them out of their 2010 game plan.

So yeah, this special election is a big deal. Special indeed. And the outcome is not a guaranteed Democratic win.



So where the heck is the RNC? After all, just as Sarah Palin pitched in for Hoffman in the NY23 Congressional race, Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney have both pitched for Brown in Massachusetts. Steele? Well, he's on a book tour. Even if he has a team working around the clock behind the scenes to help out Brown, the optics are terrible.