One of the many things about the McCain campaign that aggravated the hell out of me was his writing off many states (particularly Michigan where his crack team headed by the oafish, incompetent Steven Schmidt decided to pull out, Sarah Palin being the fighter that she is was opposed by that, hence her “going rogue”). I find it infuriating that automatically the GOP concedes this huge electoral bloc of New York, New Jersey, California, and Pennsylvania to the Left. What we need are candidates that can go down to the wire and make the Democrats fight for every electoral vote. This is why in my opinion the Republicans need to nominate a conservative but not someone who is seen as a hard core rigid ideologue. Each region has its own kind of electable conservative and Scott Brown is as electable as you can get in Massachusetts, while South Carolina can do better then Lindsey Graham. For those who want to get rid of the Maine twins – think again. This might mean backing off ever so slightly over some of the hard core red meat social issues. The stakes are too high and we must have the most electable Republicans as our candidates.
by Manu Raju and Lisa Lerer
The Republican victory in Massachusetts has sent a wave of fear through the halls of the Senate, with moderate and liberal Democrats second-guessing their party’s agenda — and worrying that they’ll be the next victims of voters’ anger.
“If there’s anybody in this building that doesn’t tell you they’re more worried about elections today, you absolutely should slap them,” said Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).
Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter discontent to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in the race for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat. Republicans moved quickly to capitalize Wednesday, with National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) telling POLITICO that he’s approaching possible candidates who passed up his initial entreaties to join the 2010 field.
“People, I think, are going to sense opportunities that they didn’t sense” Tuesday, Cornyn said.
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called the Massachusetts race a “wake-up call” for his party and said his colleagues were in a “reflective” mood at a private lunch Wednesday.
Several Democratic incumbents said later that none of the 19 Democratic seats up this year are safe — and that fundamental parts of the agenda need to be re-examined to win over voters back home.
“Every state is now in play,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who faces the toughest reelection battle of her career — most likely against wealthy Republican Carly Fiorina.
Boxer is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to control greenhouse gases, but her counterpart from California, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said a “large cap-and-trade bill isn’t going to go ahead at this time.”
“In my view, when people are earning, when their home is secure, when their children are going to school and they’re relatively satisfied with their life, then [when] there’s a problem like health care, they want it solved,” Feinstein said. “It doesn’t threaten them. The size of this bill threatens them, and that’s one of the problems that has to be straightened out.”
Asked if red-state Democrats up in 2010 and 2012 should be nervous about the electorate, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told POLITICO, “Oh, yeah.”
