PrairiePundit

NY Times: Second Time’s a Charm for Martha McSally in Arizona After a narrow loss in 2012, a rematch gives a Republican, who spent time as an Air Force fighter pilot, the seat once held by Gabrielle Giffords. The former A-10 pilot shows a real sense of strategic and tactical thinking in dealing with the enemy.  I think she would also be an excellent replacement for John McCain in the next Senate election if he chooses not to run.  She is really good.

The Hill: More millennials missing out on recovery, living with parents They were victims of the Obama economy.  They are burdened with education loans poor jobs and having to pay for healthcare they can't afford.  By 2014 they finally started figuring out how badliy they were screwed by Democrats.

Robert Tracinski: 2014: The Year the Democratic Party Death Watch Resumed He makes the case that conservative Republicans were responsible for the wave that tossed Democrats from several seats.

Politico: Republican Martha McSally wins last House race of 2014 The race for Gabrielle Giffords’ former Ariz. seat had gone to a recount. She gives the Republicans their largest majority in decades.  She is a veteran of the war with radical Islam.

Allysia Finley: Behind the GOP Statehouse Juggernaut ... You might say they overachieved: In 2010 Republicans picked up 675 legislative seats, flipped 21 chambers, and won complete control of 25 statehouses. This year Mr. McCollum credits a “perfect storm” of strong candidates, effective strategy and a highly charged political atmosphere that delivered 69 of 99 state legislative chambers to Republican hands, exceeding the party’s previous high-water mark of 64 in 1920. Republicans this year flipped nine state legislative chambers: the Colorado Senate; Maine Senate; Minnesota House; Nevada Senate and Assembly; New Hampshire House; New Mexico House and West Virginia House and Senate. Next year, the GOP will control the legislatures and governorships in 23 states, while Democrats will enjoy hegemony in seven—California, Delaware, Oregon, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Bolstering the GOP’s ranks in state government, Republicans will have 31 lieutenant governors, 28 s...

Washington Examiner: Sen. Mary Landrieu's crushing defeat in Saturday's Louisiana runoff has put the Democratic Party out of its misery across the American South. Her unceremonious ouster ends the process of southern realignment that occurred mostly this century, not last. In 2004, Pelican State Democrats held six of seven statewide constitutional offices (including the governorship), both houses of the state legislature, and both U.S. Senate seats. Today, they have nothing. The result has white liberal writers hopping mad that there are parts of America where their quest to impose their social values has failed. ... ... Democrats regained their House majority in 2006 by moving to the center, making themselves more palatable, and protecting the many southern incumbents they then had. They lost nearly everything there in 2010 after moving leftward and passing Obamacare. And in 2014, voters finished the job ... The red state model of low taxes and low regulation along with s...

Terence Jeffrey: 'Unauthorized' Aliens With Jobs Outnumber Non-College-Grad Adults Seeking One Could this explain why the Democrats are losing the white working class voter?

David Harsanyi: Democrats Haven’t Learned Anything From Midterms They don't get the fact that their voters were turned off by their own performance in power and by the suckee laws they passed like Obamacare.

Any Democrats who voted for this monstrosity can expect similar ads in 2016.  This ad by Americans for Prosperity Is difficult for Democrats to respond to.

AP/NY Times: Court Rejects Incumbent’s Bid on Ballot Count Representative Ron Barber sought to have 133 disqualified ballots counted in the tight election, but the judge ruled to let the 161-vote-margin victory of Martha McSally stand. McSally is a retired Air Force colonel. The decision proceeds a recount.  McSally was the first women to fly combat missions as an A-10 pilot in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Hopefully, she can put more pressure on Congress and the Obama administration to keep this valuable asset in the US arsenal.

Dan Spencer: There is another election runoff in Louisiana this cycle. It’s not getting as much coverage as the U.S. Senate race, but it is being watched by powerful special interests. The race pits incumbent Eric Skrmetta against Forest Wright for a seat on the Public Services Commission . Both are Republicans. But only one, Skrmetta, has been a Republican for more than six months . Wright switched parties to run for the PSC in 2014 because his previous attempt in 2012 as a Democrat met with failure. Columnist Jeremy Alford went so far as to call Wright “ one bright spot for the Democrats ” this cycle because his victory “could create a quasi-Democratic majority on the PSC. Yeah, you’re thinking Wright is one of those old school southern Democrats, right? No. He’s very much new school. He’s an advocate for solar power and a vocal supporter of the state’s net metering policy. As we have reported before , net metering is the controversial policy that requires middle- and lower-cl...

Red States: While there is plenty to analyze from the elections as a whole, one of the most important lessons that we can glean from the 2014 mid-terms is on taxes. The message sent this election cycle to the nation’s governors is unmistakable . Governors who enacted bold tax reforms were reelected, even when facing daunting odds. Many governors who raised taxes, or even showed support for increased taxes, were ousted by voters. Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of this point was the reelection of Governor Sam Brownback in Kansas. In 2012, Governor Brownback signed significant tax cuts into law that were aimed at decreasing the overall tax burden on Kansas residents and especially jumpstarting small business. The main planks of the tax plan included the following: Simplified personal income taxes from a three-tiered system to a two-tiered system Reduced the top tax rate (on income over $15,000) from 6.25 percent to 4.8 percent Reduced the tax rate on income below $15,000 fro...

Politico: How the Democrats Lost Texas The truth is, they never really had a chance. Bad candidates did not help, but the idea of Battleground Texas seemed offensive to many Texans.

Washington Times: ... The most striking result may have been at the lowest level: Republicans elected a net of 47 more women to state legislatures, while Democrats lost a net of 75 women in office. ... One of the things that has struck me about the war on women meme is how it discounts Republican women.  I know many of them and several are activist who work hard to get out the vote.   Since the success of women like Sarah Palin and Joni Ernst we have seen Democrats try to denigrate them and suggest they are not real women.  They have done the same with successful black Republican.  That is ultimately and insulting and losing strategy.

PJ Media: The Republican Party’s big wins in the 2014 midterm elections are due to the GOP’s substantial advantage among white, working-class voters, a recent poll indicates. Sixty-one percent of white, working-class voters – those earning an hourly wage and without a college degree – said they voted for Republicans in 2014, while only a quarter supported Democratic candidates, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The poll surveyed 1,399 individuals before and after the midterm elections. There was a significant drop-off in white, working-class support for Democratic candidates from 2012. That year, Democratic candidates received 35 percent of the white, working-class vote. In comparison, 55 percent of voters in this group supported Republican candidates, giving the GOP a six percentage point gain in this demographic in 2014. Democrats have long been losing their hold on white, working-class areas, where incomes lag behind the national average and ...

Michael Barone: Where the polls were wrong --- and, maybe, why He looks at the post election analysis of poll failure which showed the national pollsters did a better job of finding Democrats than Republicans.  I think this hurt Republicans in their  spending where they were devoting millions to races where they were well ahead and missed opportunities in close states like Virginia and New Hampshire where the money could have made a difference.  The New Hampshire polls showed a close race, but the Virginia polls were way off.  Barone says the local polling proved more accurate than the national in states like Iowa and Wisconsin both of which swung Republican.

NY Times: The Democrats’ widespread losses last week have revived a debate inside the party about its fundamental identity, a long-running feud between center and left that has taken on new urgency in the aftermath of a disastrous election and in a time of deeply felt economic anxiety. The discussion is taking place in post-election meetings, conference calls and dueling memos from liberals and moderates. But it will soon grow louder, shaping the actions of congressional Democrats in President Obama’s final two years and, more notably, defining the party’s presidential primary in 2016. “The debate will ultimately play out in a battle for the soul of the Clinton campaign,” said Matt Bennett, a senior official at Third Way, the centrist political group. Hillary Rodham Clinton , should she run, will face tension between the business-friendly wing of the party that was ascendant in the economic boom during her husband’s administration and the populism of Senator Elizabeth Warren , Democr...

Daily Mail: 'Her campaign is running on fumes': Final Senate race looks to be a Louisiana laugher as internal polls show GOP's Bill Cassidy opening up 16-point lead over Sen. Mary Landrieu Poll commissioned by GOP candidate's campaign shows massive advantage leading up to Dec. 6 runoff Win by GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy would bring total Republican pickup to a whopping 10 seats Landrieu is hoping a long-awaited vote on the Keystone XL pipeline will improve her fortunes Poll was leaked in Washington to send a message to energy lobbyists who think she can prevail Survey is an 'automated' phone poll that Landrieu's campaign considers less credible than traditional surveys conducted by voice 'Her campaign is running on fumes,' the pollster told MailOnline With just a few weeks to go there does not appear to be anything that will turn the race around for her.  Even if the Congress passes the Keystone XL, Obama has threatened to veto it which will onl...

National Journal: Battleground Texas is determined to make Texas a Democratic battleground, but the midterm elections prove Republicans aren't ceding Latino voters in Texas to Democrats without a fight. It's no surprise that Texas Republicans easily won statewide races in an election cycle when President Obama's approval rating was underwater and low turnout favored the GOP. But the highlight for Republicans is that statewide candidates gained ground with Hispanic voters, a group that Battleground Texas was counting on to turn Texas from red to blue. Battleground's founder and former Obama campaign operative Jeremy Bird had long pointed out that if the 4.2 million eligible Latino voters in Texas were all registered to vote, and the majority showed up to the polls, the demographic shift would be enough to empower Democrats in the state. That assumed, however, that Texas Republicans were not going to make a successful play for the Latino vote. The Republican Party of T...

Edward Stewart: Sometimes the irony's so thick you can cut it with a knife. Try this on for size: a black Texas Republican wins the protected Democratic House seat in a district that was redrawn by Supreme Court decree to create an "opportunity" under the Voting Rights Act -- for Hispanics. It just doesn't get any worse than that for the Democrats and their robed enablers. I'm not making this up. Congressman-elect Will Hurd won his House seat from Democratic incumbent Pete Gallego in District 23, the same congressional district the Supremes found fault with in the 2003 Texas redistricting case (LULAC) because it had enough Hispanics, but not the right kind of Hispanics to ensure polarized (the good kind) voting. Makes you wonder if those white racist Republicans just forgot they were supposed to be suppressing the black vote with terrorism and photo ID way out in Southwest Texas. That's a question worth pondering. After all, a federal district judge ( Nelva ...