PrairiePundit

Chicago Sun-Times: Sue Klinkhamer has a problem. It’s called Obamacare. And the irony of her situation is not lost on her. In a recent email addressed to her former boss, Illinois Congressman Bill Foster, and other Democratic colleagues, she wrote: “I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the health care issue, I didn’t have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.” For Klinkhamer, 60, President Obama’s oft-repeated words ring in her ears: “If you like your health plan, you will keep it.” Well, possibly not. When Klinkhamer lost her con...

Politico: Barack Obama has spent well over $1 billion on his political campaigns, but it’s the $20 to $30 million Democrats didn’t shell out three years ago that is costing the White House as he slogs through the first six months of his second term. The GOP’s wildly successful, low-key, and stunningly cheap campaign to seize state capitals in 2010 has come back to haunt Obama and his fellow Democrats. It’s now clear that the party’s loss of 20 state legislative chambers and critical Midwestern governor’s seats represents an ongoing threat every bit as dangerous as the more-publicized Republican take-back of the House that same year. There was no stopping the GOP wave that year — but strategists in both parties say Obama’s team might have blunted it if they had somehow managed to cut into the GOP’s $30-to-$10 million cash advantage in state house races by making campaigns at the very bottom of the ballot a priority. For that seed money, Republicans secured an historic return, cementi...

Washington Times: The tidal wave of anti-debt, anti-big-government voters that swamped Democrats in the 2010 congressional elections is readying itself again, poised to sweep Mitt Romney into the Oval Office, some political observers say. “It’s very, very likely,” veteran Republican campaign pollster John McLaughlin said, predicting a Romney tsunami Tuesday. “ Romney has surged in all the target states,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “The undecided vote is not really undecided. They overwhelmingly disapprove of the job the president has done and will largely vote against the incumbent. It’s a hidden vote that will vote against the president.” His prediction flies in the face of most polling, which shows a tight national race between Mr. Romney and President Obama , and state polls that show Mr. Obama leading in most battlegrounds. The only poll that shows Mr. Romney clearly winning is the respected Gallup national tracking poll of likely voters, which gives the Republican nominee a 5 p...

NY Times: G.O.P. Incumbents, Ex-Outsiders, Run on House Record Many of the 87 Republicans elected in 2010 are now wearing the incumbent’s badge they once scorned. Well, if they want to get reelected it would be hard to avoid telling people they are the incumbent.   Most of them are expected to win, because the Democrat alternatives are worse.

Washington Post: Time and again last year, House Republican leaders faced a nearly in­trac­table opponent: the very freshman class that propelled them into the majority with the historic 2010 midterm elections.  Rebelling from the outset of the 112th Congress and later wreaking internal havoc during talks to increase the  Treasury Department’s ability to borrow funds , the freshman class repeatedly created problems for  House Speaker John A. Boehner  (R-Ohio), according to a new book.  The freshman resistance caused feuds among Boehner and his lieutenants that led some to fear a mutiny, heightened several showdowns with  President Obama  and eventually led to fissures among the rookies, pitting those who seldom trusted the leaders against those who reflexively did, according to “ Do Not Ask What Good We Do ,” an account of the freshman class’s impact by Robert Draper.  The infighting reached such a point in the fall that some newcomers req...

John Podhoretz: With the Supreme Court marathon on ObamaCare in full swing, the politics of ObamaCare remain tricky — but not in the way conventional opinion describes.   You’ll hear that while many people say they don’t like the package as a whole, many also tell pollsters they like  elements  of it — and so ObamaCare can’t really be called unpopular.   This analysis tends to come from ObamaCare’s partisans, who want to believe that the politics of ObamaCare aren’t the disaster for President Obama and the Democrats that all available evidence suggests they have been and will be. At the beginning of 2010, Democrats lost Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat because of Republican longshot Scott Brown’s promise to vote against ObamaCare. November 2010 saw the worst congressional election results for the party in power in 80 years and by some measures in American history — and ObamaCare was the most important issue on the minds of voters.   Yesterday, The...

Washington Post: Democrats: The more people learn, the more they love health-care reform The polls and the 2010 election results tell a different story, but if they want to keep on fooling themselves the Republicans will benefit.

Will we tell tell them we are still coming for them?

Obama attacks those who oppose his agenda rather than defending it.

This ad by AFP demonstrates how Obama delayed telling Solyndra workers they were fired until after election. The ad below makes the connection between Democrat donors and teh government loans.

Yuval Levin: On the night Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in November 2010, John Boehner laid out the new Congress’s key priorities: to restrain the growth of government, cut spending, reform how Congress works, and end the uncertainty in the economy to help get Americans back to work. But then he offered a cautionary note to voters: “While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people’s House, we must remember it is the president who sets the agenda for our government.”   As the first year of the 112th Congress draws to a close, it seems that Boehner, like so many other Americans, may have overestimated Barack Obama’s ability to govern. It would not be easy to say just what the president’s agenda has actually been over the past year. But House Republicans have done an impressive job of using what leverage they have had to pull Washington a bit rightward, and to set the stage for a real change of direction after 2012.   To begin with, Re...

Caucus Blog, NY Times: Sasha Issenberg, a former Boston Globe reporter who has also written for Monocle, Slate, Philadelphia and The New York Times Magazine, has been writing a book about the new science of campaigns, called “The Victory Lab.” It’s scheduled for publication next year. But given the interest in Rick Perry, the Texas governor and new Republican presidential candidate, the portion of “The Victory Lab” about Mr. Perry will be published on Tuesday as an electronic book, “Rick Perry and his Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America.” Mr. Issenberg is previously the author of “The Sushi Economy.” An e-mail exchange between Mr. Issenberg and me — slightly condensed — follows: Q: What makes Rick Perry’s approach to politics different from that of other candidates? Mr. Issenberg: No candidate has ever presided over a political operation so skeptical about the effectiveness of basic campaign tools and so committed to using social-science methods to rig...

David Freddosa: Democratic pollster PPP, whose very accurate surveys of the recent races in Wisconsin have won it plaudits, poses a new problem to the Democrats -- or rather, an old problem that's back. Their base is demoralized : Only 48% of Democrats on our most recent national survey said they were 'very excited' about voting in 2012. On the survey before that the figure was 49%. Those last two polls are the only times all year the 'very excited' number has dipped below 50%. In 13 polls before August the average level of Democrats 'very excited' about voting next year had averaged 57%. It had been as high as 65% and only twice had the number even dipped below 55%. It had seemed earlier in the year like Democrats had overcome the 'enthusiasm gap' that caused so much of their trouble in last year's elections. But now 54% of Republicans say they're 'very excited' about casting their ballots next year, indicating that the proble...

Michael Barone: My Examiner colleague Conn Carroll notes that Gallup’s polling over the last six months shows Barack Obama with an approval rating over 50% in only 11 states, with 169 electoral votes (Conn has 173, but I think he’s including Maine where Obama’s job approval is right at but not above 50%). They include just three of the ten largest states, California, New York and Illinois. I find these results highly congruent with the popular vote for the House in November 2010, the subject of my July 21 article in american.com. The popular vote for the House, I argued, has become a good proxy for party and presidential standing since the mid-1990s. What’s interesting here is that the list of states where Democrats carried the popular vote for the House in 2010 looks very much like the list of states where Obama’s Gallup job approval has been over 50% this year. ... The bottom line is that Democrats are looking at another shellacking in 2012 if things do not change.

James W. Ceaser and John York: With the breakdown of negotiations on a so-called grand bargain on the debt limit demanded by President Obama, liberal commentators have sought a convenient scapegoat to account for the impasse. Not surprisingly, they have begun by rounding up the usual suspect: the Tea Party. Its intransigence, so the line goes, has sunk this great deal. For two years now, “Blame the Tea Party First” has been the Democrats’ favorite mantra. “Firsters” invoke the Tea Party to make sense–for themselves–of the otherwise inexplicable fact of large-scale public opposition to President Obama, and they hold the Tea Party responsible for many of the nation’s deeper problems, from incivility in our discourse to an inability to set aside intransigent partisanship. Generosity in describing one’s foes is a rarity, especially among conspiracy theorists. But Firsters have carried their animus against the Tea Party to unprecedented heights by failing to credit it with what is to...

Image via Wikipedia From the Caucus Blog, NY Times: Tough Budget Talk May Not Bring Political Victory The last election was won by the Republicans precisely because they opposed Obama and the Democrats' big spending ways which included the health care monstrosity.  While things may change by November 2012, there is little indication in current polling that people want more spending.  I think the Republicans are doing what they said they would do.  The Democrats lost the last election because they were big spending control freaks.  They act like they did not get that message.  Perhaps it will be reinforced in 2012. The people will have a stark choice between those who look at the spending problem seriously and those who want to continue an irresponsible approach that Obama and the Democrats have pushed until now.. Related articles Democrats Told to Embrace Spending Cuts, or Else (businessweek.com) Memories Of 1995 Haunt GOP As Shutdown Talk Grows ...

The freshmen Representatives and Senators are invited to the White House, the Washington Post reports .

Image by cliff1066™ via Flickr From The Hill: DNC chairman says 2010 midterm was a call for bipartisanship Funny, I don't recall any Democrats campaigning for bipartisanship.  In fact campaigns are the ultimate partisan experience for both parties.  Where is the Democrat bipartisan proposal on spending reduction or repeal of health care? Related articles Former Senators Appeal for Bipartisanship on Health Care (blogs.abcnews.com)

Image via Wikipedia Times-Tribune: U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski sometimes talks now as if he's free to say anything. The Nanticoke Democrat has finally achieved a certain stature as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee 's capital markets subcommittee, having written key parts of the Wall Street reform bill. He apparently chats fairly regularly with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden or their staffs. He's good friends with former President Bill Clinton, who will campaign locally for him again Tuesday. ... This week Mr. Kanjorski told The Times-Tribune editorial board about how large companies don't want the government changing the way it does business because they make big money off the government, and about how he's getting closer to supporting a single-payer health care system "because the health insurance industry is about as corrupt as you can ask for as an industry." "They're blood suckers," he sa...

Image via Wikipedia Houston Chronicle: When the 112th Congress opens today, Texas' three Republican freshmen plan to use their newfound midterm election muscle to bust the cycle of politics-as-usual in the nation's capital. "We were sent here as a message by American voters," said Rep.-elect Bill Flores , who trounced veteran Rep. Chet Edwards , D-Waco, in one of the country's most heralded midterm match-ups. "They don't like the way things were done in Washington before, and they want to see America restored." Republican leaders, with input from the newcomers, have laid out an ambitious blueprint that makes good on campaign pledges to repeal the health care act and cut federal spending. "The work starts now," said Rep.-elect Francisco "Quico" Canseco, a Texas banker who campaigned on repeal of the health care bill and, with tea party support, won election as a Republican. Canseco, Flores and Rep.-elect Blake Farentho...