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Tom Cole Deathwatch Thread, No. 5

by: James L.

Sat May 03, 2008 at 11:03 PM EDT


James L. :: Tom Cole Deathwatch Thread, No. 5
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Tom Cole Deathwatch Thread, No. 5 | 53 comments
So how's that permenant republican majority work out Mr. Rove?

Hahahahah
Looks like we had THE math tonight!
[ Parent ]
I knew it was coming
As usual, you are on top of your game, James :P

Ding dong The Republicans are Screweeeed!

Politics and Other Random Topics

24, Male, Democrat, NM-01, Chairman of the Atheist Caucus, and Majority Leader of the "Going to Hell" caucus!

I love the maps
Loved it with Texas-23 and Illinois-14

am hoping to love it for Mississippi-01 too.  

Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens

And what do you know? No outright majority!
 Steve Singiser called the race at 49-45-6 earlier. Not bad.
Thanks!! But I Must Confess....
As the numbers were coming in, and the numbers were not great in some of the early parishes, I called Jenkins as the winner.

East Baton Rouge came up HUGE for Cazayoux tonight!!

"You share your young with the wolves of the nation, there's nothing left til you pray for salvation."

--Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

"American X"

[ Parent ]
so did I...
But I like doing it that way... I figured he was going to lose, went out to dinner hopeful and wondering, came back to find a new Democratic Congressman from the great state of Louisiana... Win-win! Of course, I was so full of sushi, that I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I would have liked too. Mmmm... Sushi... now I need to go get a latte in my volvo while picking up some fancy smansy cheeses! lol Oh, I love living on the West Coast! haha
[ Parent ]
I love the West Coast too!
I can't wait to come home!

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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
don't forget to put on your birkenstocks! (eom)

[ Parent ]
*cocks shotgun*
"I think ya'll need to just move along now. We don't take much to kindly to you folk in these parts. Keep movin' on to Austin, or Dallas, or what ever sinful place it is you come from with you and your crazy liberal loving ideas now."

/Texas snark

26, Male, Democrat, TX-26

[ Parent ]
lol


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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
I'll make sure I pack mine!


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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
I felt the same way for a while

[ Parent ]
Yeah same here...
It basically all came down to East Baton Rouge though and luckily Cazayoux's supporters delivered!
[ Parent ]
AND
SSP's big chart is now updated!
MS-01
Now the attention turns to my home state.  We need Travis Childers in Washington. I am so excited I can't hardly type.  The South, my beloved home, is coming around, finally.  

Cotton Mouth
I tend to temper my enthusiasm
about a guy like Childers. Certainly he's better than any Republican would be from Mississippi, but I'm pretty sure his election would not signify that the south is "coming around."  
[ Parent ]
Well
He's going to be good on trade and other economic issues and he supports a plan to get out of Iraq. And imagine what two wins in heavily Republican seats would do to the RNCC cash inflow.
[ Parent ]
On trade I differ with him and a good part
of the Democratic caucus. He's a probable vote for Speaker and potentially on Iraq, though.  

I disagree with the way SSP has embraced this race in particular, but I respect the motivation.

I suppose Melissa Bean and Travis Childers could, together, make one standard Democrat.  

[ Parent ]
Look
The battle lines are different down here in the deep red states.  We are coming in the righ directioon, but we have to win here before we can get there, so to say.  This is huge.

Cotton Mouth
[ Parent ]
I think
Bean and Childers are different kinds of moderate Dems. Bean represents a rich suburban district and is - like her district  - socially liberal and economically conservative. Childers comes from a southern, more rural district and is economically liberal (populist) and socially conservative.
They will disagree on trade and abortion (or guns), I would suppose.  

33, living in Germany  
[ Parent ]
To my understanding of the word
Childers is not a liberal in any sense. He is a southern populist. That's fine, and there are more than a few Democrats like that. But believing in tariffs and deporting illegal immigrants is not "liberal" unless the word is just a weak synonym for "Democrat."  

I should make it clear that I nevertheless hope he wins.

[ Parent ]
Liberal
can also mean social and economic fairness, which fair trade polciies certainly can accomplish. No one is saying we shouldn't trade with our allies like the EU, Canada, or Australia, but we need to watch unfair trade deals that hurt workers here and abroad and also have a negative effect on the environent (i.e. WTO and shrimp-turtle, shrimp-dolphin) and human rights issues.
[ Parent ]
I happen to disagree
but I understand that I am outnumbered in the party on this question.  
[ Parent ]
you can be
Socially liberally, but 100% socially conservative at the same time. You have to remember that you have to seperate economic and non-economic issues from one another. Is DC a liberal, sure? Especially when compared to most republican members of congress, absolutely. If he scores 50% on a liberal economic score and 2% on a socially liberal score, he is still FAR more liberal thata conservative who is likely to score 0% and 0%.

Not to mention that you have to remember, even though you don't like his policies on everything, if he pranced down main street screaming from the top of his lungs that all illegal immigrants should be made citizens and the gays allowed to marry he is likely to be shot in Lousiana... lol He wouldn't be all that popular in my neigherborhood in Los Angeles... But if he is tough on coorperations that ship jobs overseas, wants to make sure CEOs aren't making 100xs what their works are making, etc... He is likely to find acceptance among voters in the South. Not to mention as someone mentioned earlier in one of the threats, he'll vote for a democratic speaker of the House, and that is probably one of his most important jobs. lol

[ Parent ]
You hit the nail on the head...
Cazayoux and Childers (if elected) will almost always be with us on the economic issues.  And to my surprise Childers views on foreign policy also appear to be in line with ours for the most part.  I recall reading that he is for a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq ASAP.  

Naturally they will be against us on most social issues, which is understandable given the social views of their districts.  However if you want to blame Democrats in congress for voting against us on social issues I'd suggest targeting reps in solidly Democratic southern districts like Arthur Davis who voted for banning gay marriage before blaming our reps in republican leaning districts.  If all of our reps in liberal districts voted the right way we'd never have to worry about about a Cazayoux or Childers voting with republicans.

[ Parent ]
Whoa there.
I'm pretty sure that even in Artur Davis's safe Democratic district, the Democrats who actually live there are quite against gay marriage also.  FYI, Alabama is the 5th most pro-life state in the Union.  54% are pro-life.  Put it this way, if 54% are already pro-life, the number that are against gay marriage are going to be significantly higher.

You forget what kind of Democrats live in states like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

[ Parent ]
I happen to think
we shouldn't trade at all with countries like Mynamar and China, where people are forced to work in sweatshops for twelve hours a day and very little pay, just so American companies can import their products, sell them cheaper to the ever frivilous public, lay off more and more and workers, and send the extra profit to pad the pockets of the one percent of Americans who control 99% of the wealth.

I believe in fair trade. Why open up free trade with countries like those in CAFTA. All they are going to do is send in their sugar and products at insanely low prices, sending American companies out of business while buying nothing from us. It's one sided, only one side gets anything out of i, them, not us. They're not going to buy our products, by and large they're too expensive. This only increases our trade deficits, which is one of the reasons our economy is going down the tubes. What it's doing is selling America, parcel by parcel to foreign countries.

This is something that continues to worry me. In the North and west coast we have all of these environmental, business Republicans turning Dem, all they care about are social issues, and on the economy they go with Republicans. Well, the only problem is that social issues, like abortion, are rarely legislated, and with the failure of the national Gay Marriage ban and gun control, it's likely that there will be very few important social issue votes in the next few years. Most legislation is economic anyway; the important economic legislation outnumbers the important social ones 10 to one, or even more. Therefore you have the party being corrupted by this DLC, business conservatism, a Clintonian model which I oppose vehemently. Many of the most conservative people you'll ever find in the south can still be taken with economic populism, this is true in the west and midwest as well. Social issues do not really matter to me, they are frivolous issues on the outskirts of politics, always talked about in campaigns, but extremely rarely even brought up, much less changed. Therefore it's completely unneccessary to have Democrats who focus on that, and not on the bigger nature of the party, the economy. Populism is liberalism, (which is a misdefined word anyway, in every other country but america and Canada, Liberal is term for conservative ideals), populism is the standing up of politicians for trompled on poor americans, everyday citizens, on the issues that really come up, that truly matter, the economic ones. This is the cornerstone of the modern Democratic party of the emergence of liberalism period, is you look back to the New Deal, so you can't they're not related.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

[ Parent ]
I have a number of issues with this
First, perhaps you'd like to explain how Arkansas could produce a free trader like Bill Clinton? I thought the south only elected Democrats who appealed to populism?

Second, at the time of the New Deal, Conservative Republicans were the ones interested in high tariffs and trade barriers, not Democrats. Look up Smoot-Hawley.

Third, the ignorance expressed in this statement:

Why open up free trade with countries like those in CAFTA. All they are going to do is send in their sugar and products at insanely low prices, sending American companies out of business while buying nothing from us. It's one sided, only one side gets anything out of i, them, not us.

makes me wonder whether you know anything about economics. Saying that America doesn't get anything out of trade is simply ridiculous.

Fourth and finally, I'm very happy to hear that my rights, and my sister's rights, are of no concern to you. But let me be clear: the social issues that you dismiss are an integral part of the reason why Jews, women, and gays vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. You might not think these people matter, but in states like Pennsylvania and Florida, they're often the difference between winning and losing.  

[ Parent ]
No...
they elect Blue Dog Democrats, who are hardly considered "populist".

In the 1950s, I'd probably have been a Republican.  Citing what the party was like back in 1930 doesn't help with the context of 2008.

And these free trade deals have been quite horrible to workers in other countries in terms of safety and environmental standards.  Are you OK with that?  On a more fundamental level, since it's natural for each side in a free trade deal to want to maximize their profits (hello, human nature), we end up in a Prisoner's Dilemma.

But anyway, this is getting way beside the main point, which is that Cazayoux will be with the Democrats more than people think.

[ Parent ]
Absolutely.
Our Democratic Party isn't the same as the one of our grandparents or of their grandparents.  Affirmative action and school busing in the 70s, civil rights in the 50s/60s, the New Deal and government as the employer of last resort in the 30s, have all changed the philosophy of the party and, yes, the type of people who support the party.

Remember, the Emancipation Proclamation was written by a...Republican.  Try to imagine a Republican today giving a speech anything like Obama's 'More Perfect Union'.

[ Parent ]
I too would likely be Republican in the 50s
The last Republican president I would have voted for would have been Ike.

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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
Well
Does the average American gain from a trade deal? Maybe corporate America and MNCs, which just causes the inquality gap to rise even more. I would also argue developing countries don't benefit as a whole, just the few who manage to get the industrial jobs.
[ Parent ]
that's because we don't profit much
only the wealthiest people and port cities to a small degree get profit out of these trade deals. You don't seem to understand we are creating huge trade deficits with these countries, and it's leading to tens of thousands more Americans losing their jobs than jobs gained, and its selling out our economy to foreign interests. You running on a flawed assumption that all trade is good trade, even if it's completely, 99% one sided. That's not true, fair trade is good   trade. This one sided trade profits corporate America and our wealthiest citizens, while hurting the very poor working class citizens. I'm not the only one using these arguments, extremely intelligent Senators Dorgan and Brown are also using these very arguments in the Senate. I could give the exact stats and figures they gave from U.S. Department of Commerce on the harmful effects of one-sided trade, but I don't remember them precisely. We got the short end of the stick in these deals and you think that that's fair? That that's good? This drive for cheapness also drives terrible working conditions for workers in many countries, like Myanmar and China, where most ordinary workers have absolutely no rights, and in Myanmar especially the prison camps where almost 300,000 of it's people are held, make a great deal of cheap products for American. I don't think it's right for us to trade with countries that don't have minimum wage, and don't have any basic rights for their workers, because it encourages American companies to skirt our laws on these issues by going there, and that encourages these countries not to change there practices.

On another note, I didn't mean that I don't care about your rights, I meant that the issues are overplayed. They rarely come up, and it is not often that a critical piece of legislation comes up. On abortion, which I assume you are referring to, there have been only two critical pieces of national legislation over the past twenty years. On gun control all there's been was the Bradley Assault Weapon bill. On stem cell research there's been only two bills, (though stem cell research is important to me). With the gay marriage movement moving down to the state level, there won't be another national ban. See my point?  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

[ Parent ]
I'm not so sure about that
I think it's more that Democrats are fielding canidates who instead of outrepublicaning Republicans on everything are focusing on there economic populisim and taking socially conservative positions but not stressing them.

Also Bush has been a complete disaster for the Republicans.

I think this could be a HUGE election. 40+ seats gained.

[ Parent ]
So......
What is the official tally of money wasted by the NRCC, Freedom's Watch, Club For Growth and anyone else in this race?  In particular, what percent of the NRCC's cash-on-hand is now going down the Woody Jenkins sewer system as of tonight?
How Much Did Tom Spend on LA-06?
I heard somewhere it was like 13% of the NRCC Cash-on-Hand, but with the latest buys recently, I wasn't sure if that was the final tally.  

KELL
Here
LA-06:
Don Cazayoux - $809,806
DCCC - $1,185,396
Third Party Total: $150,000
Democrats LA-06 Total - $2,145,202
-------------------------
Woody Jenkins - $462,038
NRCC - $436,000
Third Party Total: $755,000
Republicans LA-06 Total - $1,653,038

LA-06 alone was 6.14% of the NRCC COH, but if you add MS-01 so far, that's another 13.84%

[ Parent ]
?
are you counting freedom watch, club for growth, and lane grigsby in the GOP "third party total"?  I think there total should be higher.
[ Parent ]
Who do you think I meant by third parties?

[ Parent ]
~6%
13% is closer to the MS-01 figure.
[ Parent ]
U R MEEN
I love it.

BTW, I think this officially means you can take the 50/50 line of "R/D + 0" and redraw it around "R + 5" -- any race up to and including R + 5 is likely to be competitive with well-funded challengers.

I wonder if we'll see a few more retirements here in the next few weeks.  

Filing deadlines limit damage
At this point (counting LA-6 as Democratic) filing is open for just 43 Republican held seats (and 77 Democratic seats).  These states have already been hit hard by GOP retirements with 10 counting John Shadegg.  The remaining 33 include a few weak links and scandal candidates and the Republican linchpin among the remainder: 9 seats in Michigan.

The most likely retirees among the remainder: Randy Kuhl, NY; Vito Fossella, NY; Doc Hastings, WA; Don Young, AK; Marilyn Musgrave, CO.  Over/under:1?

[ Parent ]
Randy Kuhl already announced he's seeking re-election
So I'd pull him down.  
[ Parent ]
Thankfully he's running ...
Kuhl will be much easier to defeat than a somewhat sane republican running in an open seat.  I really think we're going to win at least 3 seats in NY this year, maybe 4 depending on how this Fossella thing shakes out.  It would be great to have a 26-3 of 27-2 edge in the New York delegation!
[ Parent ]
Ultimate safeguard: Peter King's money bags
The only thing that seems to be keeping Democrats from at least threatening every seat in NY (McHugh is/was rumored as a possible retiree himself) is Peter King's money bags.  We need to run a stiff challenge against him.  If it doesn't take him out at least it will drain his coffers and set him up for the net cycle.

NJ is only slightly better for Republicans.  Three of the six GOP-held seats are being vigorously pursued and LoBiondo and Smith look like they will eventually get a very hard challenge.  Only Rodney Frelinghuysen's seat at R+6 looks safe.

[ Parent ]
Good point
But I'm guessing there are procedures in numerous states to replace candidates via a party convention/caucus if retirements happen after the filing deadline.

I think Fossella just jumped right to the front of the line with his recent antics, but he's not very old, so maybe not.

It would be a great help if a few of the Michigan R's would do so -- Michigan has to be the most disappointing state for us when you consider makeup of the districts and potential to win (unlike Texas where a number of the uncontested seats wouldn't vote for Jesus Christ himself if he ran as a Democrat).

Anyway, I'll take the over on your bet.  

[ Parent ]
Fossella is lucky he's from New York
I think he has a decent shot at being forgiven. He can now expect serious money to be spent against him, though.
[ Parent ]
Who would want that job?
I think Boehner would fire him if he could find a replacement, but who would possibly want to be RNCC chair when they have no money and are doomed for more losses.
I agree..
I really don't think it's too much Tom Cole's fault in all honesty.  He just has an impossible task, running RNCC is a year that no republican wants anything to do with running for office.  You could put the greatest political minds of all-time running the RNCC this year and they'd still lose at least 10-15 seats.
[ Parent ]
NRCC

[ Parent ]
MS-01,
however, will be tougher and the GOP will fight like mad now.
probably
which will make it so much sweeter when they lose! lol
[ Parent ]
Tom Cole Deathwatch Thread, No. 5 | 53 comments

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