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Headlines….
Just a reminder: the “Headlines” tab right next to the “All Conversations” tab leads to a page that’s got all of the day’s big headlines. Feel free to head over there to comment on a news item — on a busy news day like today, sometimes that might be a more efficient and interesting way to get a conversation going.
Any headline that seems to be generating a bigger conversation will get quickly moved to this page, the main feed, for everyone to participate in.
As I said, there’s lots going on today. Lots to talk about.
Like, for instance, that it looks like Lisa Murkowski wins in Alaska.
Published in General
Re: Murkowski, I don’t have a television, so I haven’t heard this morning’s spin, but surely we are going to hear a lot about how the marquee Tea Party candidates – Miller, O’Donnell, Angle and, presumably, Buck – failed miserably.
This will be spun to mean the Tea Party has no teeth. I say it just means the Tea Party did a lousy job with candidate selection.
And by the way, “kingmaker” Palin endorsed 3 out of 4 of those failed candidates.
I feel like an idiot. More than usual, I mean. I just realized, after you posted this, that when you said to comment, you didn’t mean go to the original site, but Ricochet allows you to comment On Ricochet about the news story.
Duh.
It’s never too early to think about the Senate in 2012. Thanks to wikipedia, here are the seats that will be contested:
Democratic seats
Feinstein California
Carper Delaware
Nelson Florida
Akaka Hawaii
Cardin Maryland
Stabenow Michigan
Klobuchar Minnesota
McCaskill Missouri
Tester Montana
Nelson Nebraska
Menendez NJ
Bingaman NM
Gillibrand NY
Kent Conrad ND
Brown Ohio
Casey Pennsylvania
Whitehouse RI
Webb Virginia
Cantwell Washington
Manchin WV
Kohl Wisconsin
Independents
Lieberman Connecticut
Sanders Vermont
Republican seats
Kyl Arizona
Lugar Indiana
Snowe Maine
Brown Massachusetts
Wicker Mississippi
Ensign Nevada
Corker Tennessee
Hutchison Texas
Hatch Utah
Barrasso Wyoming
Of the R seats, I would put only the Brown seat in danger (Massachusetts being what it is)–maybe Ensign in Nevada, but looks like he’s OK. Lieberman and Sanders stay. Of the D seats, I would put the seats in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, ND, and Ohio as real possibilities for the Republicans. In WV, Manchin had better vote like a Republican. Depending on the situation, you can’t rule out a run at California if Feinstein retires (Fiorina anyone), NM, Pa, and Va.
Would love to know what the experts think.
This will be spun to mean the Tea Party has no teeth. I say it just means the Tea Party did a lousy job with candidate selection.
And by the way, “kingmaker” Palin endorsed 3 out of 4 of those failed candidates. ·Nov 3 at 10:38am
Excellent points, Kenneth. This is exactly why the Tea Party needs to be willing to work with the GOP establishment to choose better candidates and to run smarter campaigns. Candidates need to be thoroughly vetted before the primary without support blindly being thrown to them because they support Policy X. Every single one of those races were winnable, and hopefully some lessons were learned that we can build on in two years.
I’m from California. Today I’m walking around like a bombed-out shell… what on earth will it take for that state to wake up? I’m trying all kinds of mental tricks to keep me sane – the one that works best is knowing that Jerry Brown will own the bankruptcy, although that’s sure to be spun as belonging to somebody or something else. I can’t take this anymore.
Thanks to the failed Democrat policies that taxed the film industry right out of the state, I’m temporarily in Canada for a job and don’t have to watch my tax dollars feeding Sacramento. So there’s one silver lining for me, I guess…
Thanks to the failed Democrat policies that taxed the film industry right out of the state, I’m temporarily in Canada for a job and don’t have to watch my tax dollars feeding Sacramento. So there’s one silver lining for me, I guess… ·Nov 3 at 11:05am
Welcome.
This will be spun to mean the Tea Party has no teeth. I say it just means the Tea Party did a lousy job with candidate selection.
And by the way, “kingmaker” Palin endorsed 3 out of 4 of those failed candidates. ·Nov 3 at 10:38am
Kenneth, I’m surprised at you. We do not have a parliamentary system The Tea Party did not select the candidates. The so-called “tea party candidates” may have been encouraged, supported and inspired by the Tea Party, but were, for the most part Republicans. Most were long shots, I agree. Some are from the fringe. But there was a dearth of electable non establishment Republican candidates in the primary races.
The media will spin this the way the media does. The Tea Party is a fiction anyway. It is a phenomenon that happened to coalesce around the phrase.
Or is it the other way around? The Tea Party folks had no real seat at the table. After Bob Bennett fell in the Utah nominating process the GOP elites moaned and whined and did nothing, passing it off as an aberration. That was May 8th. A month later Sharron Angle wins the GOP primary in Nevada. What did or didn’t the GOP do in that month to head that off? Or did they do nothing until it was too late like they did in Delaware?
and Va.
Edited on Nov 03 at 10:55 am
Webb is beatable in VA. Our state offices went GOP last year, and we did well in this year’s congressional races. That doesn’t bode well for Webb. I’d like to see George Allen take him on again.
Or is it the other way around? The Tea Party folks had no real seat at the table. After Bob Bennett fell in the Utah nominating process the GOP elites moaned and whined and did nothing, passing it off as an aberration. That was May 8th. A month later Sharron Angle wins the GOP primary in Nevada. What did or didn’t the GOP do in that month to head that off? Or did they do nothing until it was too late like they did in Delaware? ·Nov 3 at 11:12am
You are completely right that both sides made mistakes. Both the establishment and the grassroots need to listen to each other and work together. The GOP was complacent and needed to be jolted to attention by the Tea Party, but then the Tea Party decided it knew everything about everything and dismissed all criticism as “elitism”. At the state and Representative level, it worked well because local movements were able to tap strong local candidates, but the Senate races required more broadly appealing, statewide candidates. The antagonism between establishment and upstarts proved costly there.