Moe Lane

(H/T: Instapundit) Let me translate this:

For a second straight day, [Speaker of the House John] Boehner refused Thursday to commit to holding a full House vote on Senate-passed gun legislation. But he said the House would not ignore an issue thrust into the spotlight by the December shooting of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.

[snip]

Any Senate bill, he said, would be referred first to the Judiciary Committee for hearings.

Translation: anything that the Senate passes will be sent to Judiciary, where it will be quietly strangled with a silken bowstring. (more…)

Which is pretty close to ‘standing pat.’  I’m not really going to go into the tall weeds on this one – my math isn’t up to the task – but the result is pretty darn close to my own gut call of “single-digit Democratic gains*,” so clearly these people are geniuses.

Moe Lane

*I expect a good bit of churn, though.  We have a large freshman class and redistricting is affecting both sides; but the Democrats have a lackluster lineup this election cycle and the last three cycles have been pure hell on any Congressman who had any visible weakness at all. So we will lose people, and so will they, and the Republicans will retain the House.

He says that it’s not likely to happen, and I agree.

One might have expected that two years after Republicans picked up 63 House seats—the biggest gain in a midterm election since 1938—Democrats would be on track to win back a boatload of those districts that the GOP didn’t have much business winning in the first place. But a little more than four months out from the election, the tides seem about as neutral as they can be. Both parties have surprisingly comparable levels of exposure, largely because of redistricting. The relatively calm surface of this year’s waters belies a lot of offsetting tumult and change underneath. But for House Republicans, who hold a 25-seat majority, a status quo election producing minimal net change would be good news.

I’ve been doing this since 2002; 2006 was probably my first real pay-attention-to-Congress election.  I’ve seen three wave elections, increasingly from the inside.  This… does not feel like one.  It feels like what Charlie said: the waters are still.  (more…)

I need to push back on this cover-their-rear statement by Politico on the ‘surprise’ flipping of the House of Representatives in 2010.

[House Speaker John] Boehner doesn’t play political prognosticator often. But when he does, those close to him say, there’s usually a calculated reason. In April 2010 — almost two years ago exactly — the then-House minority leader said in a radio interview that an astounding 100 seats were in play in that year’s midterm elections, a figure he said was broader than “anything we’ve seen around here during my 20 years” in the House.

Few from either party believed Boehner at the time, but his assessment proved accurate. Republicans put about 100 Democratic-held seats in play, ultimately winning 63 of them to seize the majority.

(Bolding mine) Actually, people who read RedState (or MoeLane) were prepared for that scenario. People who read Sean Trende at RCP were prepared for that scenario. People who read Hot Air and AoSHQ were at least prepared for the possibility.  In fact, people who were following the election using right-leaning sites and news sourcess were by and large prepared for what happened. But the people were relying on the Daily Beast or the Left-blogosphere or, well, Politico for their political content? …Yeah, those folks ended up being kind of surprised in November. Usually unpleasantly. (more…)

Well now.

House panel votes to issue subpoenas to administration officials involved in doctoring a report on the Gulf oil spill to justify a moratorium and in squelching another that concludes EPA regulations will kill jobs.

The 23-17 vote by the House Natural Resources Committee authorizes subpoenas that will go to agencies such as the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency regarding two issues affecting domestic energy production and jobs.

(Via  @streiffredstate)

:sing-song: E-lect-ions mat-ter…

(pause)

Sorry.  I thought that I had more, but that was pretty much everything that I wanted to write.  Because they do.

Moe Lane (more…)

Some unsolicited, un-paid for, and probably unwelcome advice to the Democrats: if it is true – again, if, if, if, if, if, if – that Dale Kildee is in fact guilty of the sexual molestation charges made against him, it will be in the Democratic party’s best interests to force Kildee to resign now.  Consider the following Representatives:

• Mark Foley (R, FL-16).  Resigned due to sex scandal. Seat kept vacant until general election.  Result: seat flipped.
• Eric Massa (D, NY-29).  Resigned due to sex scandal.  Seat kept vacant until general election.  Result: seat flipped.
• Mark Souder (R, IN-03).  Resigned due to sex scandal. Seat kept vacant until general election.  Result: seat retained.
• Christopher Lee (R, NY-26). Resigned due to sex scandal. Special election held.  Result: seat flipped.
• Anthony Weiner (D, NY-09). Resigned due to sex scandal. Special election held.  Result: seat flipped.
• David Wu (D, OR-01). Resigned due to sex scandal. Special election to be held. Seat considered in jeopardy.

Do you see the theme, here?  Of the last six Representatives who resigned because of a sex scandal, four saw their seats change party at the next opportunity and one will very possibly see that happen next year. Now let’s look at a list of Representatives from the last decade that didn’t resign*: (more…)

The race card? Sure.

But, more importantly, Obama played the GOTV Card here. The political junkies on both sides are now nodding: everybody else, watch this video and it’ll be discussed in just a bit.

Said discussion after the fold:
(more…)