Campaign

A big majority of you — 73% against 27% — think Sen. Larry Craig's last ditch efforts to save his political career will fail. Those percentages represent the No/Yes breakdown in our last Quick Poll! We asked whether you thought Craig would still be a U.S. senator after Sept. 30. Shortly after he announced that he would step down on that date, he began to have second thoughts and started saying it was merely his intention to do so, not an absolute promise. He then launched an effort to reverse his guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge after being caught in a police sex sting at Minneapolis airport. Now he has a hearing. Who knows where that will go? Either way, you're confident he won't be a federal lawmaker by the end of the month.

The resounding Democratic victory in the 2006 Senate campaign creates a historic anomaly in which the Senate Democratic Caucus could increase to more than 60 senators, with historic implications for American politics and all three branches of government.  Read more...

Democrats — gotta love 'em. In their panic over a proposed ballot initiative in California that would reapportion the state’s electoral votes by congressional district, they’ve proposed their own ballot language that, had it been law during the 2004 presidential election, would have awarded all of the state’s electoral votes to … George W. Bush.   Read more...

Tony Fabrizio is one of the smartest Republican pollsters around today. A veteran who has been chief strategist for Bob Dole’s presidential campaign and many statewide campaigns, Fabrizio has just completed a landmark study on the structure and image of the Republican Party. The study was conducted as a follow-up to Fabrizio’s  similar effort on the party 10 years ago, in 1997.  Read more...

If you notice the growing number of foaming-mouth attacks from Tony Snow and some of our Republican brothers and sisters, here is why: There is landslide in the air.

New polls are starting to show the leading Democrats doing better and better than the leading Republicans in the presidential campaign. Senate Republicans face a true debacle; 22 of them face reelection battles in 2008, and almost all of them are acting like Bush-lite, Bush-heavy, or Bush-44.  Read more...

The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to hold White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress after they refused to testify about the firing of U.S. attorneys. The administration claims executive privilege. Our new Quick Poll! question is therefore: "Is Dem talk of contempt charges against the administration justified or is it just partisan politics?"

Scroll down and vote.

Nearly half of you expect House Democrats to win big in the next congressional election and return to Capitol Hill with a majority of 50 seats or more. Our latest Quick Poll! question asked: What will the Dem or GOP majority be in the House in 111th Congress? There were a few anomalies, but the clear tendency among respondents was to expect another round of pain inflicted on Republicans.

Here are the results:

* Dem 50 seats or more — 49%
* Dem 30-40 seats — 20%
* Dem 20-30 seats — 7%
* GOP 10-20 seats — 5%
* Dem 10-20 seats — 4%
* GOP 0-10 seats — 4%
* Dem 0-10 seats — 3%
* GOP 50 seats or more — 3%
* Dem 40-50 seats — 2%
* GOP 20-30 seats — 1%
* GOP 30-40 seats — 1%
* GOP 40-50 seats — 0%

I had the opportunity to read Mr. Budowsky’s post over the weekend and am happy to keep this important dialogue alive — the results of which may well surprise Brent.

First, I think candidates from both sides of the aisle make a major mistake of not attending conventions/functions sponsored by groups such as the Urban League and the NAACP. I think that the Democrats have taken the black vote for granted over the years and show up just in time for an election to pander for the vote. Republicans, for their part, tend to ignore such gatherings altogether.

If one wants to be the president of the United States or any other elected official, he or she ought to find the time to meet with as many potential constituents as possible. My friend, former Rep. J.C. Watts, is absolutely right in urging Republicans to attend such meetings as the NAACP and Urban League candidate forums. Couldn’t agree with him or Brent more there. Read more...

There was a massive response to the last Quick Poll! question, when we asked you to predict the number of Senate seats that would be won and lost next year. So we're sticking with that theme while asking you to turn your attention to the House of Representatives. Scroll down the home page and vote for the GOP or Dem majority that you think will be put in place by the Nov. 2008 congressional elections.

10. The AP reports that half of the faculty of the University of Alabama will be denied Crimson Tide football tickets for the coming year. Wouldn’t it be better if a college administration really put the brakes on faculty excess by, say, denying tenure to left-wing professors who don’t really teach?

9. Speaking of left-wing professors, what will occur sooner, John Edwards going to the Hair Cuttery or the president of Duke taking ANY action against the “Duke 88” who signed hateful letters against the Duke Lacrosse players? The left wing is firmly in control of American college campuses.

8. Why so little mention that the federal deficit is projected to fall substantially again in 2007 without a tax increase? Could it be that the national media is interested in the deficit only as an excuse to raise taxes? Read more...