Great update from the RNC- Republican Senate candidates are sitting pretty with just under 100 days left to go until the election. Across the country Republicans are on offense with Democrats playing defense even in states Obama won. 2014 Democrats can see the writing the on the wall and know that their Senate majority will not survive the midterms. The Wall Street Journal reports: With 100 days to go until the midterm election, unexpectedly strong bids by several Republican candidates and President Barack Obamas continued sagging approval ratings are boosting GOP chances of capturing a Senate majority. A battery of recent polling shows Republican candidates mounting competitive bids for at least 10 Senate seats now held by Democrats, including in Iowa and Colorado, states that have been leaning Democratic in recent years. Many Republican candidates have narrowed their opponents fundraising advantage, according to the latest campaign-finance reports. And a series of international crises has dealt the president some of the lowest approval marks of his second term, weighing on his partys candidates. After almost six years of Obama America’s standing in the world is greatly diminished. Obama’s policy of don’t do stupid stuff has backfired allowing the Middle East to fall into disarray and allowing Russia to once again become a threat to the Western world. The editorial page of the Washington Post writes about how Obama’s blunders have cost our country dearly: A stunning unfolding of international crises, from Iraq to Ukraine to Syria to Gaza, has prompted some less-than-edifying Washington debate: It’s all President Obama’s fault. No, it’s not his fault at all. It would be a pity if partisan fervor kept us from learning from recent events, because in fact the available lessons are stark: We have witnessed as close to a laboratory experiment on the effects of U.S. disengagement as the real world is ever likely to provide. Obama openly and deliberately adopted a strategy, not of isolationism, but of gradual withdrawal, especially from Europe and the Middle East…Obama’s determination to gear down in Europe and the Middle East, regardless of circumstances, guaranteed that the United States would not respond strategically to new opportunities (the Arab Spring) or dangers (Putin’s determination to redraw the map of Europe). But for Obama the tumult in Egypt and elsewhere was a distraction, not a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The West responded timidly and inconsistently, and the moment was lost…But we can see what followed each of those strategic choices. Obama thought he could engineer a cautious, modulated retreat from U.S. leadership. What we have gotten is a far more dangerous world. Obama is a lame duck. USA Today reports on how Obama is a lame duck before his time, which will hurt 2014 Democrats who want to prove they have power in a Washington which is impossible since even their party’s leader is powerless: The woes of a second term are nothing new, but for President Obama they seem to have started sooner and struck harder than for his predecessors. In his State of the Union address, delivered precisely six months ago Monday, Obama outlined a scaled-down agenda for his sixth year in office, acknowledging the difficulty of passing legislation in a gridlocked Congress and vowing to use the pen and the phone to get things done. Now even those circumscribed ambitions have been overshadowed by crises overseas that are demanding his attention and buffeting his presidency. Hes a lame duck and its not even lame-duck time, says Sara Fagen, The architect of ObamaCare is on tape saying that the law’s subsidies are supposed to only apply to state run exchanges which flies in the face of what the White House now claims and is the center of a series of law suits. The Wall Street Journal reports on how Democrats are trying to spin the latest revelations that fly in the face of how they decided to implement the law: As Jonathan Gruber will tell you, the MIT economist helped to write ObamaCare and remains one of its fiercest defenders. So its no surprise that on Friday the Web was full of chatter that Mr. Gruber had at least twice made public assertions that support the latest legal challenge to the health law. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week in Halbig v. Burwell that the plain language of ObamaCare says that subsidies for health insurance can only be delivered through state, not federal, exchanges. The Administration claims this ignores the clear intent of the law, but someone didnt tell Mr. Gruber… Jonathan Cohn, ObamaCares cheerleader at the New Republic, quoted Mr. Gruber on Friday as saying his remark was just a mistake and he didnt recall why he made it. We can think of a reason: It was the truth. Liberals feared some states wouldnt set up exchanges, so they deliberately wrote incentives into the law so the states would do so. This was the conventional liberal wisdom until this year when it suddenly became legally and politically inconvenient for the Administration to admit it. President Obama is not abiding by the constitution which is why the House is suing him. Speaker Boehner writes in USA Today: President Obama has overstepped his constitutional authority — and it is the responsibility of the House of Representatives to defend the Constitution. At the same time, we remain focused on the American peoples top priority: jobs and the economy. I believe the presidents actions in a number of areas — including job-destroying energy regulations, releasing the Taliban 5 from Guantanamo without notice and waiving the work requirements in welfare — exceed his constitutional authority. On the advice of legal experts, the House action will focus on his decision to extend — twice — the deadline to institute the employer mandate in his health care law. We believe this targeted lawsuit offers the best chance of success. Senate Democrats take campaign cash from a pro-Keystone lobbyist who lobbies for Alberta, Canada, yet even with their campaign coffers filled with Keystone cash the Senators are still powerless to make the common sense job creating Keystone XL Pipeline a reality—once again proving the lack of influence Senate Democrats have. The Toronto Star reports: One of Washington’s most influential lobbying firms made thousands of dollars in political contributions to key U.S. lawmakers last year as it worked on behalf of the Alberta government to drum up congressional support for the Keystone XL pipeline, documents reveal. Kelly Bingel, a well-connected lobbyist with Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti Inc. in Washington, D.C., met with members of the staff of 20 U.S. senators between March and May 2013 to “better articulate the benefit of Alberta’s energy resource development,” according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Five of those meetings, the documents show, occurred around the same time that Bingel handed over political contributions to those five senators’ campaign committees. Among the donations was a $3,761 contribution from Bingel to Sen. Kay Hagan, a North Carolina Democrat, on March 25, 10 days after Bingel and Hagan’s legislative assistant met for lunch to discuss the oilsands. Another contribution, amounting to $1,074, was filed by Bingel on the same day to Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. Bingel and senior Udall staffers subsequently held a meeting on April 2. TO THE STATES … In Kentucky Grimes’s first two ads of the campaign have been proven false. The editorial board of the Bowling Green Daily writes about how these dishonest ads prove Grimes is not ready for prime time: When political candidates make a TV ad, they should have their facts straight. Twice in U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes’ first wave of ads, we have watched her run two blatantly untrue, misleading ads against her opponent, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell… The Washington Post Fact Checker called ads of this nature regarding Medicare “laughable” and “discredited” and have called on Democratic candidates such as Grimes to “drop the repeated Medicare references.” They also gave the Grimes claim their toughest rating of Four Pinocchios. The Washington Post also said this ad is as “phony as a three-dollar bill.” The Hill out of Washington, D.C., says “similar claims in other Democratic ads have been debunked by independent fact-checkers.”… [Grimes] is being dishonest with voters. Kentucky voters are intelligent. They see through these phony ads and the pattern of dodging questions. They also see the same people you hold fundraisers with in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York are the one’s waging the war on coal, not McConnell. These ads show a very inexperienced candidate who stands by these ads even after they’ve been discredited by various news organizations. Alison Lundergan Grimes is certainly not ready for prime time. In Georgia Michelle Nunn now knows who her opponent is but still lacks a clear message for voters, which is going to prove problematic as she tries to pull off an upset against Republican businessman David Perdue. The Atlantic Journal Constitution reports: Michelle Nunn’s quiet apprenticeship ended Tuesday night as election returns finally settled who she would face in the battle for a U.S. Senate seat. That person is David Perdue…What Nunn does not yet have — and what she will need — is a clear message. She’s going to run as a centrist problem-solver, a moderate antidote to the bitterness, rancor and extremism of the national Republican Party. And she’ll try to project an air of studied neutrality as Perdue tries to paint her as a poorly disguised liberal intent on doing the bidding of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. I understand the thinking. Neutral may not antagonize people. It may make them feel safe and unthreatened. The problem is, neutral doesn’t get people to turn out at the polls come November. Republicans still have a built-in advantage in this state, and that advantage is amplified in mid-term elections with no presidential race to draw voters. It can only be overcome with turnout. Organization — voter registration, identification and outreach, technology, etc. — can offset some of that advantage. But in the end, you also have to give voters cause to feel excited about and invested in your campaign. Nunn remains the underdog, and underdogs don’t win by doing a Jerry Seinfeld. You can’t run a campaign based on nothing. In Iowa Bruce Braley’s campaign is going through a shake up. Braley’s gaffe prone campaign is struggling against the well run campaign of Jodi Ernst and the firing of Braley’s ad man and strategist are just another sign that with less than 100 days to go until election day Braley’s campaign is grasping at straws. The Iowa Republican reports: Gone are Braley’s ad man Larry Grisolano and pollster Diane Feldman, two well-respected Democrat operatives who played key roles on President Obama’s 2008 campaign. In their place are Philadelphia-based Saul Shorr, who is now responsible for Braley’s ads, and Geoff Garin, Hillary Clinton’s Chief strategist from her 2008 presidential campaign. Garin will serve as the campaign’s new pollster. The shakeup is yet another indication that Republican nominee Joni Ernst is a much more formidable candidate than the Democrats thought they were going to run against in the general election. The campaign changes also indicate that Braley may have not been well served by not having a primary, which would have allowed him time to work out the kinks in his campaign before the general election. Even though Braley has had over a year to introduce himself to Iowa voters while he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, he did very little to define himself. The recent moves made by the Braley campaign indicate that his campaign is in trouble. In Nevada Democrat Lucy Flores’ campaign for Lieutenant Governor has been nose diving, as she is now on her 3rd campaign manager of the cycle. With less than 100 days to go until the election all signs point to trouble for the failing politician. The Review Journal reports: Maybe the third time’s the charm for Assemblywoman Lucy Flores. Flores, D-Las Vegas, has hired her third campaign manager in five months since she announced her bid for Nevada lieutenant governor March 1. In New Hampshire Jeanne Shaheen’s support of ObamaCare proves that she stands with her buddies in Washington more than she stands with Granite Staters. Foster’s Daily Democrat reports: When the Affordable Care Act kicked in, there were only a few carriers remaining to consider joining the ObamaCare health care exchange. For 2014, the only one to sign on was Anthem, which excluded more than one-third of the state’s hospitals from its program. And in 2015 there will be a handful more but far short of the reportedly 26 that competed for our health care business before 1994. Shaheen either knew better, or should have known better, which raises the question as to where her loyalties lie. Are they with those of the Granite State or a president with whom she agrees with on nearly 100 percent of the critical issues — such as the Affordable Care Act?
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 14:19:15 +0000
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