Will recent Republican politics increase or decrease their seats in congress?

Great Debates
1

The fight over the stimulus package (admittedly still raging) has been only a little more bitter than I expected, but the staunch devotion to tax cuts as the basis of the Republican dissent was startling to me. With the Republicans sending what – to me – seems to be a resounding chorus of "NO"s to the fundamental spirit of the Dem’s chosen method of stimulus, what message is it sending to the people? And, in particular, their own constituents?

With Gregg now stepping out and Republican congressmen ever more vocal about their disagreement with the bill and the theories behind it, with Republican attacks on the Democratic congress (when the Dems are considerably more popular currently than the Republicans), etc., how will all these things effect Republican seats during upcoming house and senate elections?

Will people start to think of the Republicans as the Party of No! to the detriment of Republican seats?

Will Republican constituents rally behind the message of less government spending and more tax cuts in a significant way?

Will moderates be further turned off to the Republican party by these maneuvers or by supposed party-supported kowtowing to fringe voices like Rush Limbaugh?

Will fiscally conservative moderates identify with the current Republican rhetoric and create a stronger voice in the party?

Will the appointment of Michael Steele have any meaningful effect on Republican draw?

Etc.

In other words, in the near future and based off of how the Republicans have handled things since the last election, will we be seeing (in your opinion) more Dems or more Repubs?

2

I figure the calculation the Republicans are making is that if Obama’s policies are successful, they’ll remain out of power no matter how they respond, whereas if they present themselves as strongly opposed to whatever he does, they can be in a position to capitalize when his approval numbers falter.

I don’t see how moderates (that are paying attention) can not be turned off by their antics. The cynicism is just too clear, like it was with Sarah Palin. But ultimately there’s also too many variables involved to directly pin their policies to positive or negative electoral effects. How Obama responds will also be a huge part of how the Republicans are viewed, and subjects like economic success/failure also inevitably play in, plus the Rumsfeldian “unknown unknown” topics. So maybe this topic is a little too broad?

If I had to make a prediction, I’d say that the economy will not get catastrophically worse by 2010, and so while Obama may lose some seats due to the natural progression of parties in power, this effort won’t help it and it definitely won’t be enough to throw control back to the Republicans. It’s easy for Obama to come back after this and make the point that, look, we’re trying to fix the country here, and all the Republicans want to do is play politics to make themselves look good.

Oh, and massive tax cuts while already suffering from a huge debt+deficit are not remotely fiscally conservative, so it’ll only attract the type who just wants to pay less taxes regardless of good sense. Is that all “fiscal conservatism” is these days? As I see it, neither party is a good example of fiscal conservatism, but at least the Democrats know what a balanced budget is.

3

The house is a toss up. Yes, political tactics may turn some people off but absent redistricting most of the seats that are demographically vulnerable have already gone in the last two cycles.

The Senate I’m expecting 2-4 losses for the Republicans just because of the defense/retirement numbers. The Republican party is defending a LOT more seats or retirees than the Democrats and that should spell a cloture-proof majority for the Democrats beginning in 2011 unless something truly odd happens.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the various state houses, too. Remember, we have a census coming up and that means redistricting. That, more than anything, can screw over entrenched members of the House.

2007 census numbers for control of State Legislatures, which will control redistricting, 22 being Democratics, 15 being Republican, and 12 being split. If that didn’t tilt again last November I’d be surprised. That could lead to five or more House retirements for Republicans.

4

I think it will split down party lines. Die-hard Republicans will likely see Gregg as heroic for not drinking the Obama Kool-Aid. Democrats will ask what happened to the concept of “we must support our president during a crisis” that I seem to recall was thrown around a lot during the Bush days.

5

The repubs are a top down party. They hold their people together by a powerful organization, that threatens anyone who steps out of line. The 3 repubs who went for the rescue pkg. are being hammered at traitors. They are called RINOs .Republicans in name only. The party is raising money to defeat them. If the rescue eases things , the repubs will be in jeopardy. They will do everything they can to prevent that.

6

“A people who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Welcome to “1933: The Remix.” :slight_smile:

7

Good luck to them replacing Spector, Snowe, or Collins with another Republican in Maine or Pennsylvania. Defeating any of them in the primary with a harder line Republican is the most straightforward way I know to make sure all three seats end up in Democratic hands.

8

I’m kind of hoping Pat Toomey primaries Specter and wins. I can’t really think of anything that would make Election Day 2010 as satisfying as Election Day 2008 more than being able to cast a vote against Pat Toomey.

9

I’d have thought that too, then I went looking at House seats by Cook PVI.

Thanks especially to the past two cycles, the Dems are now competitive in districts up to R+7. There are 65 GOP-held seats with a Cook PVI that’s either Dem-leaning (8), even (2), or between R+1 and R+7 (55). The Dems have a 24-16 majority of seats between R+1 and R+3, while the GOP has a 24-12 edge in seats of R+4 or R+5, but the R+6 and R+7 seats are split almost evenly, with the GOP having a 15-14 edge. Only at R+8 and above does the GOP control a solid majority of the seats. So as long as the country as a whole doesn’t swing back to being a 50-50 country, the Dems still have a target-rich environment in the House in 2010. Not as target-rich as it’s been, but still not without abundant opportunities.

My WAG is Dem net gains in the high single digits.

A pickup of four seats would be HUGE, because not only would the GOP not be able to filibuster on their own, but you’d need a bloc of 4 Dems to join in as well. Ben Nelson, who’s getting rather tiresome, would need to round up Lieberman AND Landrieu AND a Dorgan or a Lincoln or a Baucus to block a bill.

Put me down for a Dem pickup of 4-6 seats.

The question here is, how many House Dems will be willing to put up with being redistricted down from ultra-safe to very safe, in order to move a number of more competitive seats a bit more Democratic? There are 30 seats with a PVI of D+27 or more; there are ZERO with a PVI of R+27 or more. There are 23 seats with PVI of D+20 to D+26, and only 11 with PVI of R+20 to R+26. This is, quite simply, wastage of a lot of perfectly good Dem votes: the GOP occupies only two seats with a PVI > D+4: the Louisiana seat that Cao won from Dollar Bill Jefferson last year, and the Delaware seat that will go Dem whenever Mike Castle retires.

If 52 Dem Congresscritters were willing to downgrade to D+20 in the redistricting, a whole bunch of reliably Dem neighborhoods could be moved into currently GOP-leaning districts, which would give the Dems an opportunity to have yet another good year in the House in 2012, the first election after redistricting. I’d say ‘great year,’ except that some very Democratic states will lose a number of House seats in reapportionment.

10

How the hell does anyone expect to defeat Snowe? Seriously, that just makes no sense.

11

Wikipedia has a nice summary of several different Senate prediction sites.

Safe by all analyses are 8 Dem held seats and 7 GOP ones. Almost all have more on the Dem than on the GOP side and most importantly almost all of the five or six “toss-up” states are states currently held by the GOP. (The only exception is the Cook Reports putting IL in toss up but be real.) Just playing it as leans and splitting the toss-ups and the Dems gain 2 or 3 seats. Of those toss-ups 538 puts New Hampshire and Missouri actually likely Dem and has, as usual, some cogent analysis. I go with a pick-up +D of 3-4 seats.

As a matter of political theater they need to stand for something and if they aren’t going to stand against spending huge amounts of money what are they going to use? They know that defining themselves as the RR and Southern Party is a losing game … It doesn’t help them but I think it plays fine enough. Those who are prone to dislike them already see it as a cynical obstructionism and those prone to see them favorably see it as being true to their beliefs. Problem for them is that right now the deck is stacked with the former rather than the latter.

12

One thing that was mentioned on NPR the other day was that many of the seats that have sifted from R to D used to be moderate. That was one reason it was so hard to get enough Republicans in the Senate to switch. Basically if this trend continues, the Republicans left in Congress will be the most conservative. Bipartisanship may not be possible soon.

If any of the three Senators who voted for the stimulus bill go down in primary, they will be replaced by either more conservative Republicans, who would have campaigned on how bad it is to compromise with the majority, or Democrats. Basically, every D win means one less R who is willing to work with the President and the majority.

Jonathan

13

The only one up is Specter and his main primary competitor says that he’s going for Guv instead.

If the GOP loses the capacity to filibuster then they really have no option that matters anyway: they can work with Obama to get some of what they want which he’ll do just because he wants to be bipartisan; or they can not work with him and get nothing.

14

Toomey’s not doing that again, but someone else may.

Replacing Snowe or Collins would be especially neat, since Snowe was reelected last year and Collins in 2006. And I think Collins and Snowe also have room to be a little more conservative, judging by how popular they are in Maine.

15

Hmmm…if Toomey does run for Republican candidate for governor, it could be an interesting Republican primary. Rumor has it that Rick “Man-on-Dog” Santorum is also looking at the possibility. It seriously sounds like a shoo-in Dem governor again.

16

In this unstable political climate, none of us knows what will happen two years from now.

I remember when Clinton was elected, and Democrats were talking about a new golden age in their rule, and an end to Republicanism. It was obvious to everyone that the Republicans were burned out, irrelevant, the cold war was over so they were going to lose their built-in constituency on defense, yada yada.

Two years later, they swept out the House and Senate and set the stage for 12 years of solid control.

Politics can change on a dime. In 1992, George HW Bush went from a 91% approval rating to losing the election in a little over a year.

Of course, the economy is going to be king. If it’s worse than it is today, and the ‘stimulus’ bill is widely seen as having failed, the Democrats are going to get hammered. If the economy is picking up steam and the Democrats can plausibly claim that the stimulus did it, then they’ll build on their majority.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

17

This is one of the reasons so many seats were picked up by the Democrats, that the Republicans were incapable of being bipartisan when they had control. Not letting Democrats read bills, threatening the Nuclear option, changing committee rules so minority dissent did not matter, etc… It was this kind of shit that got the Republicans out of power, you would think they would learn something by it.

18

I don’t remember this at all… What newspapers were you reading?

Meh, doesn’t matter. I am sure that this type of rhetoric is always in evidence after an election where the power shifts, but I cannot remember the Democrats crowing like the Republicans did with President Bush. Permanent Republican majority, a clear mandate, and all that Jazz.

19

he other way round methinks, but the point stands. Only Specter is up.

20

Possibly. From my perspective, at least, they’re pretty much interchangeable.