Movement in poll averages for eight Senate races over the last week overwhelmingly favored Republican candidates, affirming the prevailing wisdom that a stiff wind is blowing and gaining force that will make the elections this fall very difficult for Democrats.
The GOP still faces an enormous uphill climb to take back control of the Senate. Republican candidates lead in only 5 of the 10 Democratic-held seats they would need to win to gain the majority. But a Republican Senate is not outside the realm of possibility, since their candidates are within striking distance in enough races that a perfect storm could sweep them in.
Two Democrats – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal – saw their leads over Republican candidates reduced. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running as an independent but is expected to caucus with Democrats if he wins and they retain the majority – also saw his lead over Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio downsized. And four Republican candidates saw their advantages increase.
One Republican candidate – Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois – saw his slim 2.3 point lead of a week ago, as measured by the Real Clear Politics average, dissolve. RCP moved Kirk’s contest with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the state treasurer who benefitted from President Obama’s Aug. 5 fundraiser, to a toss up.
Showing posts with label Senate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Senate. Show all posts
Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Fiorina up 5 and gaining on Boxer; Whitman up 2 on Brown
California Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina has increased her lead over Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer to five percentage points according to a new CBS 5 KPIX-TV poll released Thursday, which also shows gubernatorial candidates Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman in a dead heat.
The CBS 5 poll, conducted by the research firm SurveyUSA, showed Fiorina edging Boxer 47 percent to 42 percent, compared to a CBS 5 poll one month ago showing Fiorina over Boxer 47 to 45 percent.
The poll results indicated Fiorina's support was essentially unchanged among men and women, young and old, white and Hispanic while Boxer had lost small ground among men, younger voters, and independents.
The poll also showed Fiorina tripling her lead in the Central Valley, from seven points one month ago to 21 points in this latest poll.
Meanwhile, the CBS 5 poll has gubernatorial candidates Whitman and Brown at 44 and 43 percent, respectively, effectively even within the poll's 4.1 percent error margin. Compared to a CBS 5 poll one month ago, Whitman is down two percent, while, Brown is up four percent.
The CBS 5 poll, conducted by the research firm SurveyUSA, showed Fiorina edging Boxer 47 percent to 42 percent, compared to a CBS 5 poll one month ago showing Fiorina over Boxer 47 to 45 percent.
The poll results indicated Fiorina's support was essentially unchanged among men and women, young and old, white and Hispanic while Boxer had lost small ground among men, younger voters, and independents.
The poll also showed Fiorina tripling her lead in the Central Valley, from seven points one month ago to 21 points in this latest poll.
Meanwhile, the CBS 5 poll has gubernatorial candidates Whitman and Brown at 44 and 43 percent, respectively, effectively even within the poll's 4.1 percent error margin. Compared to a CBS 5 poll one month ago, Whitman is down two percent, while, Brown is up four percent.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Tea Party Express shows muscle in nomination of Sharron Angle
Republican voters in Nevada on Tuesday nominated Sharron Angle to take on Democratic Sen. Harry Reid — something that was unimaginable just two months ago when Angle was polling in the single digits and having a hard time getting anybody to pay attention to her campaign. Then came the Tea Party Express (TPX).
Everything changed when the group, run by longtime Republican operatives in California, threw its weight behind Angle in Washington D.C. at a Tax Day conference heavily attended by the national media.
“When the Tea Party Express endorsed her, everybody took a second look,” said Larry Hart, a campaign consultant for Angle, in an interview with The Daily Caller. “And that changed the whole dynamic of the campaign. So, yes, they do get a lot of credit for giving her the credibility to really build her support up to where it is now.”
Angle defeated frontrunner and establishment choice Sue Lowden, Danny Tarkanian and a host of other Republicans Tuesday night. She will face Harry Reid — perhaps the most wanted of Democratic incumbents by Republicans this cycle — in November.
Everything changed when the group, run by longtime Republican operatives in California, threw its weight behind Angle in Washington D.C. at a Tax Day conference heavily attended by the national media.
“When the Tea Party Express endorsed her, everybody took a second look,” said Larry Hart, a campaign consultant for Angle, in an interview with The Daily Caller. “And that changed the whole dynamic of the campaign. So, yes, they do get a lot of credit for giving her the credibility to really build her support up to where it is now.”
Angle defeated frontrunner and establishment choice Sue Lowden, Danny Tarkanian and a host of other Republicans Tuesday night. She will face Harry Reid — perhaps the most wanted of Democratic incumbents by Republicans this cycle — in November.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Senate to vote Thursday on massive EPA power grab that would empower the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant
On Thursday, the Senate will vote on S.J.Res.26, a resolution to block EPA from usurping powers never delegated to it by Congress. Failure means allowing EPA to go forward, apparently in flagrant violation of our constitutional traditions simply because too many in Congress desire, but can’t bear to take responsibility for, more of the Obama agenda.
EPA’s breathtaking Power Grab raises questions critical to our form of governance. The powers EPA has claimed for itself include staking out national policy on the contentious “climate” issue, and even amending the Clean Air Act on its own initiative and authority.
S.J.Res. 26 was originated by Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). It is co-sponsored by 40 others, mostly Republicans but including three Democrats (the math of which also tells you that three Republicans are not on board: Sens. Brown, Collins and Snowe). It seeks to exercise, for just the second time, the Congressional Review Act passed in 1996 as part of the “Contract with America”. That law allows legislators to check bureaucrats gone wild by vetoing a “major rule” within 60 days of an agency publishing it.
In this case, the rule is the Obama EPA’s effort to delegate to itself inherently legislative powers. These include Congress’s authority—wisely eschewed to date—to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant” under the Clean Air Act, which would make EPA an economic regulatory agency despite having been caught as complicit in promoting scandalous “climate science” in the push to spectacularly expand its budget and powers.
You may recall “ClimateGate” from last year and the series of “-gates” befalling the UN’s big-government project, the IPCC. EPA outsourced its scientific assessment responsibilities in this matter, to principally rely instead on the work of the two disgraced bodies caught sexing up their claims of unfolding climate catastrophe. When caught out, EPA silenced their internal whistleblower.
The Senate is not voting on science, however. The Murkowski resolution merely overturns the legal force and effect of EPA’s claim that carbon dioxide endangers human health and the environment (really). Congress has serially rejected that proposition. Now EPA is saying “so what?” This poses a referendum not on climate science but the constitutional propriety of EPA making climate policy without Congress providing any specific guidance to do so.
That is, the Senate will vote whether to let an agency carry out the most expansive regulatory intervention in American history on its own.
EPA’s breathtaking Power Grab raises questions critical to our form of governance. The powers EPA has claimed for itself include staking out national policy on the contentious “climate” issue, and even amending the Clean Air Act on its own initiative and authority.
S.J.Res. 26 was originated by Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). It is co-sponsored by 40 others, mostly Republicans but including three Democrats (the math of which also tells you that three Republicans are not on board: Sens. Brown, Collins and Snowe). It seeks to exercise, for just the second time, the Congressional Review Act passed in 1996 as part of the “Contract with America”. That law allows legislators to check bureaucrats gone wild by vetoing a “major rule” within 60 days of an agency publishing it.
In this case, the rule is the Obama EPA’s effort to delegate to itself inherently legislative powers. These include Congress’s authority—wisely eschewed to date—to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant” under the Clean Air Act, which would make EPA an economic regulatory agency despite having been caught as complicit in promoting scandalous “climate science” in the push to spectacularly expand its budget and powers.
You may recall “ClimateGate” from last year and the series of “-gates” befalling the UN’s big-government project, the IPCC. EPA outsourced its scientific assessment responsibilities in this matter, to principally rely instead on the work of the two disgraced bodies caught sexing up their claims of unfolding climate catastrophe. When caught out, EPA silenced their internal whistleblower.
The Senate is not voting on science, however. The Murkowski resolution merely overturns the legal force and effect of EPA’s claim that carbon dioxide endangers human health and the environment (really). Congress has serially rejected that proposition. Now EPA is saying “so what?” This poses a referendum not on climate science but the constitutional propriety of EPA making climate policy without Congress providing any specific guidance to do so.
That is, the Senate will vote whether to let an agency carry out the most expansive regulatory intervention in American history on its own.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
If Obamacare passes the House, GOP hopes to deliver a thousand cuts to kill it in the Senate
Democrats might like to think that health care reform is all but a done deal if it clears the House, but the Senate is where Republicans have been plotting for months to sentence it to a painful procedural death.
Republican aides have been mining the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules for an attack that aims at striking elements both broad and narrow from the bill, weakening the measure and ultimately defeating it. Their goal is to force changes that leave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) without 51 votes to pass it, or at the very least, that drive it back to the House for a second vote that drags out the process and saps Democratic resolve.
But the first step in the Republicans’ game plan is making sure they never need to use the rest of it.
“Our initial goal is to stop the bill in the House,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Part of convincing House members to vote for the Senate bill is that it can be fixed by reconciliation, and I think that is a highly questionable proposition.”
It’s a pre-emptive strike meant to scare jittery House Democrats into withholding their support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who needs 216 votes to pass the Senate bill and a companion measure that fixes unpopular elements of the bill. If she falls short, comprehensive health care reform dies.
Republican aides have been mining the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules for an attack that aims at striking elements both broad and narrow from the bill, weakening the measure and ultimately defeating it. Their goal is to force changes that leave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) without 51 votes to pass it, or at the very least, that drive it back to the House for a second vote that drags out the process and saps Democratic resolve.
But the first step in the Republicans’ game plan is making sure they never need to use the rest of it.
“Our initial goal is to stop the bill in the House,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Part of convincing House members to vote for the Senate bill is that it can be fixed by reconciliation, and I think that is a highly questionable proposition.”
It’s a pre-emptive strike meant to scare jittery House Democrats into withholding their support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who needs 216 votes to pass the Senate bill and a companion measure that fixes unpopular elements of the bill. If she falls short, comprehensive health care reform dies.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
NRO simplifies a complex, evil proposal to let government decide who will live and who will die
...if the House passes the Senate bill then Obamacare would become law, complete with its massive, overbearing, costly, intrusive, inefficient, and clumsy combination of mandates, taxes, subsidies, regulations, and new government programs intended to replace the American health-insurance industry with an enormous federal entitlement while failing to address the problem of costs. Just about everything the public hates about the bill is in both versions. The prospect of reconciliation is just one of the means that the Democratic leadership is employing to persuade members of the House to ignore the public’s wishes and their own political future and enact Obamacare.
The fate of Obamacre therefore now rests not in the Senate but in the House. It is members of the House who must decide if it will be enacted, and it needs to be clear to voters exactly where their opposition to the Democrats’ approach to health care should be focused now.
The fate of Obamacre therefore now rests not in the Senate but in the House. It is members of the House who must decide if it will be enacted, and it needs to be clear to voters exactly where their opposition to the Democrats’ approach to health care should be focused now.
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