A.B. Stoddard and Republican strategist John Feehery discuss how the Republican Party could open itself up to a centrist base, and how the abortion amendment might be the downfall of the Democrats' healthcare bill.
Progressives who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the inauguration of the president to bring the change they thought they had won in election 2008 are asking: What kind of change did we win?
Now the House of Representatives has passed the healthcare bill, though the most transforming policy, a single-payer system, was not even brought to a vote! For the base of the Democratic Party, it was bad enough there was never a push for the most progressive policy, members were afraid to even vote on it!
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told us all we needed to know this week about the divide that threatens the Democratic Party's majorities in next year's midterm elections.
"We got walloped," said Warner, a former governor of Virginia, about Democrats losing both gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, in his home state by 17 points.
Sarah Palin couldn't
deliver New York's 23rd district for Republicans with her endorsement of Conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman, but candidates across the
country are still scared of the power of Palin, Tea Parties and the Club
for Growth combined.
The morning after
Hoffman went down and a Democrat was elected in NY-23 for the first time since
1870, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) got to work soliciting an endorsement from Palin
for his campaign to win President Barack Obama's old Senate seat next year. Read more...
“OK, we’ve intimidated the moderates in the Republican
Party, and that hasn’t worked out very well, so let’s try to put the squeeze on
the moderate Democrats!” Can they be serious?
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and other Republican operatives
actually believe that they can pressure Democrats to join their “Party of No”
and stop progress on healthcare, education, climate change, you name it.
The GOP’s sweep of gubernatorial elections in Virginia and
New Jersey yesterday sent clear signs of fermenting discontent with the Obama
administration.
In New Jersey, the Republicans recaptured a seat that has
been Democratic for over a decade. The GOP sweep of statewide races in Virginia
represented a sharp departure from a year ago when the state voted for a
Democratic president for the first time since 1964. Read more...
The Hill's A.B.
Stoddard and Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis consider what the future will
hold for the Democratic agenda on Capitol Hill and in the White House after the
2009 elections if the majority party starts slipping in numbers.
Are Republicans drinking the Kool-Aid again? In the late
1970s they did their best to purge their party of the Ed Brookes, Jacob Javits,
Clifford Cases, Chuck Percys. Strange how some of those hard-right heirs stood
around to give Brooke the highest award the Senate bestows when an extreme
conservative of their ilk named Ari Nelson challenged him in his own primary
back in 1978. Stranger still that many of the moderates the party now wants to
exorcise were preceded by good and decent members who actually got things done
in government.
“Rockefeller Republican” became a swear word to the hard-line
faithful. Well, here we go again. But now even Newt Gingrich is worried — he
sees where this is headed.
Whatever happens tomorrow in the NY-23 race will be anticlimactic. Now that Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate, has dropped out, there has already been a clear and historic victory for the Conservative Party.
The Republican Party is now a third party in NY-23. The Conservative Party of New York was formed in 1962, but is the focus now of national interest. And it cannot be denied that Sarah Palin was the first major national political figure to cross the river to NY-23. The new energy heading to NY-23 is formed out of the Tea Party and Town Hall movements. We can possibly see now the fledgling beginning of a third major party in America, the Conservative Party.
With just days to the 2009 election, we can prepare for ourselves an avalanche of media reports, blog posts, tweets, e-mails (OK, you get the idea) of what the results in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races mean for President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
Truth to be told, it won’t mean much no matter what happens. Why, you say? First, with about a year to the 2010 midterm elections and three years to the presidential elections, the results of what happens in Virginia (McDonnell will win, unfortunately), and New Jersey (Corzine will win, fortunately) will be long forgotten. Second, as much as people want to make state races in an off-year about the incumbent president’s popularity or lack thereof, they really come down to state issues (not national ones), and how candidates and campaigns ran against each other. That being said, nothing will stop the avalanche of stories and comments by the political intelligentsia, who will try to extract national meaning from two state races that at best can be described as traditionally blue (New Jersey) and purple (Virginia).
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