The 0.006% Solution
By Robert A. Hahn Posted in 2008 | 2008 | Congress | Rove — Comments (53) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
As are all Americans, Karl Rove is celebrating the one-year anniversary of Democrats winning Congress:
The goodwill they enjoyed after their victory is gone. Their bright campaign promises are unfulfilled. Democratic leadership is in disarray. And Congress's approval rating has fallen to its lowest point in history.
What’s not to like?
Read more...
As Rove points out, "Failing to pass a budget, proposing a huge spike in federal spending and offering the biggest tax increase in history are not the only hallmarks of this Democratic Congress."
No, there's more! They've ignored or denigrated the success our military is having in Iraq under General Petraeus. With a hat tip to the moonbat wing of the Party, they've tried several times to cut off funding for the troops. At the moment, Democrats are stalling a bill with, as Rove points out, "funding for body armor, bullets and mine-resistant vehicles." That's what Democrats call supporting the troops.
And they're not done yet!
The list of Congress's failures grows each month. No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform.
Here is something I did not know. According to Rove, "They won the House by 85,961 votes out of over 80 million cast and the Senate by a mere 3,562 out of over 62 million cast." I did the math: That's six one-thousandths of one per cent.
These guys can be had.
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I really hope that stuff stops. Once it becomes routine for elections to be decided by judges instead of votes, people will no longer trust the process. Might as well give the Constitution leukemia.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
But how does one stop a run-away judiciary that has routinely inserted itself into the election process by what can only be construed as the "making" of election law?
The disenfranchisement of every legally-registered voter is a direct result of voter fraud, and both can be laid squarely at the feet of a judiciary that routinely refuses to allow the enforcement of duly enacted legislation requiring a positive voter-ID before casting a ballot.
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
That's what motor- voter legislation does; ties voter registration directly to driver licensure in the same process. There's your positive ID.
Motor-Voter does nothing of the sorts, but it does enable voter-fraud because it doesn't enforce proof of US citizenship requirements (Courtesy of Bill Clinton and a Democratically controlled congress).
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
from his other comments tonight, he is a drive-by moby!
========
Considering where the good doctor's head was, when practicing medicine, is it any wonder that the man has issues?
A one-paragraph response was all that was indicated.
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
Washington state was lost due to Dem perpetrated fraud.
There is the ongoing fraud in large metropolitan areas.
Remember Philly from 06 ?
The Dem's have taken us down this path. Their use of the judiciary is just the latest booster.
We need to fight back. Photographic ID must be a requirement to vote. The cost is no more to print a photographic voter registration card than it is to print a plain one. The same printer can do both and all it takes is a $30.00 dollar webcam when you register.
Its criminal not to have a valid election process in this country. Lets leave that sort of thing for the Venezuelas of the world.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
being dragged into the election process, because they certainly do a good job inserting themselves, "actual harm" must be established and directly attributed to voter-fraud.
"Actual harm" can then be used to neutralize or counter the theoretical voter-suppression argument, forcing the judiciary to cease its usurpation of the legislature's constitutional authority and formally acknowledge the legislature's constitutional right to control the election process.
On that note, I'm entirely sympathetic to your argument.
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
George Allen lost to Webb by around 7000 votes.
In Northern VA.
There are hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens undocumented-Americans in that area.
With drivers licenses.
Just sayin'.
ran scared when the MSM attack machine went into full gear. If an untainted Allen were in this race, we would be much more united. BTW, he never was tainted, only the dupes who bought that bogus meme were tainted.
Molon Labe!
I live in DC. I watched the Allen campaign play out. Allen's loss is Allen's fault. The MSM was on full attack for 6 years, since he was elected. They got a bone in the "macaca" moment. But after that gaffe, Allen did absolutely nothing to repair the damage. His campaign allowed the whole race to degenerate into a personality contest. "Macaca" was the point when GEorge Allen totally ceased to talk about anything substantive. After macaca there was not a single word from the Allen campaign about issues, about Webb's positions, about anything other than the cult of personality. Instead of talking about how Jim Webb opposed the marriage amendment (which passed with about 56% of the vote at the same time Allen was going down with 48%), he was talking about the sexually explicit language in Jim Webb's published fictional novels.
Allen never gave his supporters a reason to rally around him in the face of MSM attacks, because he let his campaign devolve into the same tabloid attack tactics that the MSM was using against him.
Allen lost because his campaign was inept. While I admire his record as a Senator, his performance in 2006 has made me feel that he is best left in permanent political retirement.
definitely, all of us rightly expected him to be smarter than the conduct of that campaign seemed to indicate. While I think he can potentially make a comeback, it will be entirely up to him to earn trust in his judgement all over again.
but this (yes I know it's Wikipedia, but it cites the clerk of the House), says the Dems won the House by more than six million votes. And this (again Wiki, but again citing other sources), says the Dems won the Senate by seven million votes.
I can see that in the case of the Senate he's referring to the Webb win over Sen. Allen in Virginia, where had it gone the other way the Senate would have remained in our hands, but the house swung by 30 members, which I suppose could come down to 85,000 votes total, but that seems more doubtful.
Nevertheless, the gross numbers are not encouraging, and Karl's comments encourage complacency that may not be warranted (i.e., a tweak here and there and we'll be back in charge).
We lost the House by 16 seats (I think we're a 31 seat minority, no?).
So 16 into 85k=7k per seat. That seems very feasible. Of course that's a good bit, but still.
“I think we are the team to beat in the NL East -- finally.” - Jimmy "MVP" Rollins, 1/23/07
In 2006 we mostly lost Red districts by small margins. Consider that we're talking more like 15 or so seats (anything after going below 50% was just an issue of how hard the rubble bounced); can I find 15 districts where the average difference was around 6,000 votes? Probably, although that would require a lot of work for a Friday evening.
Bottom line: let the Democrats obsess over the gross numbers. We concentrate on the individual races, and we trust that all of our people will either handle their own responsibilities, or else yell for help if they need it. And we find something to rally to, and not against. That's important.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Yeah, Democrats got 7 million more votes than Republicans, but we don't elect the House or the Senate based on aggregate totals. Rove was probably restricting his analysis to those seats where control shifted. So that he was totaling the amount by which Democrats defeated Republican incumbents.
A simplified example: We have a 3-member legislature. In year 1, the Republican wins in district 1 with a 2,000 vote margin. the Democrat wins in district 2 with a 10,000 vote margin, and a Republican wins in district 3 with a 100 vote margin. Vote totals across districts would probably show more votes for Democrats than Republicans. Now, in year 2, the district 1 Republican wins by the same 2,000 vote margin. Same with the Democrat in distrcit 2 (10k margin), but the district 3 race goes to the Democrat by 200 votes. Again the total goes to the Democrats. But if you're talking about the margin by which the Democrats won control of the legislature, is the total vote across districts really the most relevant number? In this example, the 3rd district numbers are really the key.
Likewise, it would not be unfair to restrict the House and Senate analysis to only those states/districts that are reasonably called competitive. Adding in the vote totals for a district like Charlie Rangel's only distorts things - the reality is there are many more districts where Democrats run up big numbers than districts where Republicans do likewise (limited example - NYC has at least a dozen House members - only 1 is held by a Republican - Vito Fosella's seat - the rest usually go for the Democrat with like 80% of the vote. Extrapolate to other urban seats, and you see that Democrats get lots of votes even when the votes don't trans;ate to more seats).
Concrete example - in 1998 Republicans got 48% of the national vote in House elections to Democrats 47%. But the Democrats still managed to gain 5 seats. In 1992, Democrats outpolled us nationally in House elections by 5 points (about 50% to about 45%), but we gained 9 seats. So aggregate vote totals are virtually useless in really analyzing what types of swings caused a particular outcome.
We lost the House by 16 seats (I think we're a 31 seat minority, no?).
As I said, a 30 member swing (give or take a member). 7K per seat is not unthinkable, contrary to my initial thought, tho my recollection of the 2006 election was that there were not that many seats that close (i.e., that dragged on past election day).
But I guess my more fundamental point is that ~6 million gross vote deficits are not encouraging, and mean that we're relying upon redistricting and the division of senate seats to keep it close, at least for now.
No, seriously. What effect does this deficit have on any specific district, particularly the ones up for grabs? Nothing that's concrete. They can't take excess votes from one district and use them to prop up a candidate's total in another. The only effect's psychological... and if it was an unstoppable and/or implacable effect, this country would have defaulted to one-party rule years ago.
There is no prize for being the most popular Party. There are quite a few for being the Party with a working majority in Congress and/or Electoral Votes. And you don't need the one to get the other. Sweet, huh? :)
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
And to put it in a better perspective; many Democratic seats are in areas SOOOO Democratic that you could have a child molester, wife beating, flag burning, KKK recruiter, or murderer and they'd still get elected if they had a D next to their name rather than vote for a Republican. It's called idiocy on the part of that electorate but whatever.
To say we whould worry about MORE of these type of people voting, it's not important. We don't need to worry about more nutjobs voting for Charlie Rangel. We need to worry about people in Ohio, Iowa, etc. changing their votes.
It's the margins in Congressional elections that matters.
There could be 35 million votes cast for Charlie Rangel and his like, but as long as those 45,000 votes (that's what I added it up to be a few days after election day when looking at the seats that changed the majority) are in districts where people ACTUALLY THINK before they vote, then that's all that matters... and it could be by 16 votes across the spectrum that matters if it's one vote per seat that makes the difference.
"There is no prize for being the most popular Party. There are quite a few for being the Party with a working majority in Congress and/or Electoral Votes."
We DON'T have a working majority in congress. They do. That's the point. It's one thing to say that the popular vote doesn't matter if you win the districts; we didn't win the districts. Gerrymandering is a great short to medium term tactic, but in the long run winning over voters is what allows you to keep the majority and elect more conservative politicians as opposed to RINOs.
rp
Funny, they don't seem to be doing much with it. They raised the minimum wage, they got some water pork in, but I don't see any major portions of their agenda going, do you?
The point is that we lost a bunch of seats by very few votes; target those with the right candidates and effort, and we can grab the majority right back.
And to put it in a better perspective; many Democratic seats are in areas SOOOO Democratic that you could have a child molester, wife beating, flag burning, KKK recruiter, or murderer and they'd still get elected if they had a D next to their name rather than vote for a Republican.
I don't get it. It seem we had better clean up our act first and weed out the members known to have behavioral problems. We claim to be the party of accountability. I realize it is close and every vote counts, but did our leadership have to encourage people in the closet to run again rather than seek a qualified replacement. Excuse me for my stupidity but who is the Dem. child molester, wife beater, flag burner, KKK recruiter or murderer you speak of?
I realize it is close and every vote counts, but did our leadership have to encourage people in the closet to run again rather than seek a qualified replacement.
Not quite sure what you are saying here. Could you be more specific?
and they just notched their "clearest victory yet over President Bush", according to the WaPo
allow me to quibble and replace the word "clearest" with the word "only". allow me further to ask "who cares?" and to note that if this great big nothingburger is your signature victory, Democrats, YOU ARE PATHETIC LOSERS.
Note that this is by no means a "Democrat victory." The margins in both houses on this particular bill show that the pork was important. The Senate overrode with 79 votes. This is not a Democrat victory. They didn't force through anything. The Republican caucuses in Congress were fully behind the water projects bill.
So, to date, Democrats have NO victories where there is any notable Republican opposition.
The margins in both houses on this particular bill show that the pork was important. The Senate overrode with 79 votes. This is not a Democrat victory.
Seeing the (R)'s join with (D)'s on a veto override to protect their pork projects certainly qualifies as a conservative loss.
I respectfully have to disagree with the assessment that we barely lost in 2006. I think some Republicans have their head in the sand about what happened.
The total votes for the Democrats in 2006, meaning all the votes cast for various Democrat politicians around the country was about 54% compared to the Republicans 46%. That's a huge gap, and would be a landslide if a Presidential election had that lopsided of a result. Voters had really soured on the Republican Party in '06.
I understand that a lot of races were close, but that's mainly a result of gerrymandering. To say that 2006 only turned out the way it did is because .006% of the electorate switched sides is not a very accurate assessment. We were badly beaten in 2006, and we need to figure out how to put together a winning coalition, unless we want to see it happen again in 2008. We can't just expect the rest of the country to hate Hillary as much as we do, and expect that to be enough. We need ideas and policies to attract independents and moderates to the Republican Party.
I'm not saying I know exactly what we should do, but one area I disagree with a lot of conservatives here at RedState is I believe Republicans need to have a better survival instinct.
Instead of trying to find the most "pure" candidates to nominate, maybe we should try to nominate candidates that can actually win elections. Conservatives need to understand that some issues are unwinnable in certain parts of the country, like for instance abortion. Unless you want to have zero Republicans in the Northeast and West Coast, you cannot demand that all Republicans be pro-life. We are handing these parts of the country over to the Democrats on a silver platter if we have litmus tests like these, we have to be more flexible.
Democrats are much better at fielding candidates that can run competitive races in parts of the country where Democrats usually don't do very well. In the South, they don't run gun-control candidates, and once that issue is taken off the table, these Democrats can actually do pretty well. And these "moderate" Democrats usually get quite a bit of other liberal legislation passed despite this concession.
See how that works? It's like Chess, you let you opponent take your pawn, so you can take their Queen.
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich. "
William F. Buckley, Jr.
I looked up the numbers, and for House races, it looks like Democrats received 52% of the "popular" vote, and Republicans received 44% of the popular vote in 2006.
For Senate races, the Democrats received 54% of the popular vote, and Republicans received 42% of the vote.
Very disheartening.
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich. "
William F. Buckley, Jr.
I think Rove's point must have been that if you took the closest 16 races and added up the margins of victory, that's what you'd get.
Gerrymandering can only protect politicians for so long. If you have a huge majority against you, like what we saw in 2006, eventually these districts are going to be gerrymandered against the ruling party, making the numbers even more lopsided against the Republicans.
My point is, I think a lot of conservatives believe, "Had we just done a little better job turning out the base, we would have kept Congress", and that diagnosis is a recipe for disaster.
When you lose the country by nearly 10 percentage points, you need to retool your coalition if you want to become a governing political party.
If the Republican Party doesn't adapt, I'm afraid it's going to be a political party that can only win in the South and the rural Midwest.
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich. "
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Using your "disheartening logic" statutes and the Constitution don't matter... you also are basically making the Democratic case that George Bush SHOULD NEVER have won in 2000 because he didn't get the "bigger percentage."
A conservative understands election laws. It doesn't matter if Democrats win 90% of the votes in districts and states they normally win in. It's the Congressional seats on an individual basis.
There has NEVER been a national first past the post election in this country, and the only party wanting that to happen are the Democrats; which you seem to agree is how things are now.
Before 1994, Democrats ruled the House for 40 years. And their numbers were in the marginal seats as well.
If you seem to think 2006 was what 1994 was, you are sadly incorrect.
yet your "disheartening" attitude does not. 2006 was NOT a Republican banner year, but look at EVERY 6th year mid-term election of the party in power (white house) over the last century.
First of all, a certain fatigue sets in after6 years with the party in power. NOT just GWB but EVERY party in power. Look to history.
Secondly, we had some widely-publicized (read SMEARS) scandals in the MSM just before the election to add fuel to that fatigue.
You can be all disheartened if you want, don't let me talk you out of your malaise. And PLEASE don't give us that "head-in-the-sand" analogy -- I think we realize there are flaws -- and are working to change them.
Give up if you want to, but don't ask the rest of us to join you!
No where did I say we need to give up, but whatever the Republican Party is doing, it's not working right now. Even once reliably Republican states like Virginia are going blue. I want to see the Republican Party retool in order to win, I'm being cruel to be kind.
Governorships, state legislatures, the House and the Senate have all been trending Democrat, and right now, Hillary Clinton, arguably the most polarizing figure in American politics is leading EVERY Republican rival in Every poll.
I happen to think we'll win the White House in 2008, but only because we caught a lucky break in having Hillary as the nominee. As a party, we'll still have these challenges in the future.
Also, the last 6th year mid-term election of the party in power went FOR the Democrats in 1998, despite Bill Clinton being President, so this phenomenon isn't set in stone.
BTW Hinz, have you ever thought of giving your website a make-over? It looks like a website from the mid-nineties :)
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich. "
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Thats so last millennium guy. Harsh
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"That's six one-thousandths of one per cent."
So it is quite possible that the losses were caused by the Nattering Nabobs in the conservative establishment who said the Republicans did not deserve to win.
We taught the incumbents a lesson didn't we.
This might make for good cheerleading but as political analysis it is pathetic. Its the equivalent of Al Gore blaming Pat Buchanan being on the ballot in Dade county for losing rather than focus on his poor campaign.
Mathematically its not even correct - while it may be you only have to turn .0006% of total voters, you need to turn them in specific sets of voter (i.e. its not just any .0006%) and if you look at what that percentage of available voters is the percentage will be much higher. You would have to do some statistical analysis to figure out what percentage of total voters need to be converted to have a likely chance of turning the small number in the specific jurisdictions you need to win - and my guess is that number will come very close to needing to get a plurality of total votes.
All in all, if you need a pick me up to stay engaged this is fine rhetoric - if you want to map a path to victory you need a more somber analysis.
I'm sure that Mr. Rove has more detail — that is his speciality — but he is under no obligation to share it in the pages of a national newspaper.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
But I don't know he is the right tactician for the next battle - I think he may be fighting the last one instead (2008 is not 2000 or even 2004).
My House district fell to a Democrat by 6000 votes. I'm hoping with a presidential election in 08 we can swing enough butts into the booth to get that seat back.
NH 02 was close as well, but I don't have a number on it.
Turnout is key. In 2006 I think NH Republicans went to sleep somewhat indifferent, and woke up feeling Blue.
We can win those seats back.
Reading this thread is funny. What is going to be your platform in 2008? 'In 2008 we are going to stop filibustering everything the Democrats offer up. Instead we'll kill SCHIPs in committee!'.
Or perhaps you'll use this: 'Democrats promised to end the Iraq war but they failed because we filibustered and vetoed their efforts! Vote for us and we might actually try to win the war this time!'
I do hope though you guys listen to ole Karl Rove about only needing to win .0006% of the vote to win this time. 'Cause it isn't as if Karl isn't the one who basically led the 'Conservative' movement to its waterloo. The American people have woken up and realized that Movement Conservatism has nothing to offer unless you are a tax cut junkie who screams 'c'mon man just give me one more fix!'
Eventually you guys are going to have to have something else to offer besides deficits and gay baiting.
You are such a liar. It is you filth, you Democrats, who gay baited your way into the majority, portraying homosexuals as pedophiles.
How many gays got beat in the head because of you people whipping up anti-gay hysteria around Mark Foley?
You make me sick.
Just let him get blammed . Theres nothing anyone can do to him that god hasn't done worse to him already
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
You are such a liar. It is you filth, you Democrats, who gay baited your way into the majority, portraying homosexuals as pedophiles.
How many gays got beat in the head because of you people whipping up anti-gay hysteria around Mark Foley?
This reminds me of a saying I heard in the Navy. "The smeller is the feller." Sorry but you seem to be describing Rep. Dems have an open gay. Seems LC himself was the person to most demonize gays before getting caught toe tapping. And he is still there. This is not what I had in mind from the party for family values. This is our fault, not the Dems.
Whining about filibusters, eh? Now there's a winning strategy for you.
Do try to not stain the carpets too badly during your brief stay.
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Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
We're not here to debate with you. It's not even about you.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
I guess if Karl Rove is correct then it looks like 2008 might be a good year for Republicans.
Of course, Rove thought 2006 was going to be a good year too...
And of course everyone else on Earth, including everyone doing polling, shows that 08 is framing up to be another blood bath for the Republicans, maybe even worse for them than in 2006.
But hey, you know Karl never tells a lie right? :) Good luck with that.
Of course if those numbers are accurate, A little bit of legal challenges for fraudulent voting wouldn't hurt.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777