RINO Lindsey Graham says Republicans "need to give on revenue" and raise taxes
Graham was asked about what his priorities would be if the GOP takes the Senate. Graham #39;s answer - the GOP needs to give on taxes and close what he calls are loopholes - thus raising taxes....
By: LSUDVM
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RINO Lindsey Graham says Republicans "need to give on revenue" and raise taxes - Video
Republicans are very dishonest
VOTE Blue! All states Go Blue!
By: Jacqueline Sproles
By Dina Smeltz and Craig Kafura October 6 at 11:53 AM
The growing influence of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his notably noninterventionist foreign policy perspective has provoked concern among conservative leaders who worry about a growing strand of isolationism among Republicans. Is this noninterventionism really a new trend reshaping the Republican Party? New evidence from the 2014 Chicago Council Survey suggests that it is but only to a point.
The survey results show that a desire for non-interventionism may indeed have gained some traction among Republicans. Since 2006, the percentage of self-described Republicans who say that it would be best for the United States to stay out of world affairs (rather than play an active part) has doubled from 20 to 40 percent. That puts Republican desire to stay out today at roughly the same level as self-described Democrats (35 percent), the first time this has happened since 1998. Additionally, the percentage of Independents who want the United States to stay out of world affairs has increased sharply in recent years, rising from 30 percent in 2006 to 48 percent. This means that for the first time, Independents are divided over whether to play an active part in world affairs (51 percent) or stay out (48 percent). When leaners are instead grouped with the relevant partisan group, the gap between Republicans (41 percent) and Democrats (34 percent) is actually wider and significant.
What explains this shift? Of course, for some Republicans the choice of staying out may be a rejection of the current administrations policies, but the Chicago Council Survey does not include any performance measures to test this. These data do show, however, that other factors are at play, specifically, changing partisan evaluations of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the relative priority of terrorism, and views toward globalization.
Before the United States began airstrikes against the Islamic State, for which recent polls have registered majority support, many commentators had focused on the publics war weariness. Indeed, the survey finds that seven in 10 Americans now think that neither the Iraq nor Afghan war was worth the costs of U.S. involvement.
Republicans preferences on international engagement are partly tied to their deteriorating perception of how these wars have gone. Republicans endorsement for the wars has fallen more steeply and more recently than endorsement among Democrats or Independents (which was always lower). The figures below show that, in comparable questions asked in recent Chicago Council and ABC News/Washington Post polls, both Republicans and Independents went from majority approval to a majority critical of the war in Afghanistan. Republican support plunged 51 percentage points from 2007 (85 percent) to 2014 (34 percent), while Independents dropped 32 points (55 to 23 percent). Democrats have been more consistently critical, though more so now, with support dropping from 36 to 25 percent. On the Iraq war, Republican support has dipped 31 points from a majority in 2006 to just 40 percent. Both Independents and Democrats have been critical of the war in Iraq since 2006. Democrats are now somewhat more likely to think the war was worth fighting (from 14 percent in 2006 to 22 percent).
Another factor playing into Republican preferences for engagement are their views on the importance of combating international terrorism. Republicans have traditionally considered fighting international terrorism a higher priority than Democrats. But the figure below shows that over the last decade, Republicans focus on terrorism has steadily declined. Now similar majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say that combating international terrorism is a very important goal.
For their part, Democrats views on engagement are more closely linked to views on globalization. Their views have changed as well, but in the opposite direction: Currently, three in four Democrats, a record high, say that globalization is a good thing (vs. six in 10 Republicans and Independents). As recently as 2008, Democrats were far less positive on globalization; since then, favorability has increased by more than 20 percentage points.
Despite these shifts, Republicans and Democrats are generally on the same side when it comes to foreign policy, though to varying degrees. Majorities in both parties share similar concerns about top threats, and they differ little in their preferred approaches toward China, Iran, Ukraine and Syria. The sharpest differences lie in attitudes toward immigration, climate change and Middle East policy.
Moreover, Republicans (and Democrats) continue to exhibit many typical patterns from past surveys. More Republicans than Democrats favor the use of force, while fewer Republicans than Democrats favor multilateralism and peacekeeping missions. This helps explain, in part, the promise and limits of Pauls foreign policy campaigning: While the rhetoric may attract war-weary Republican supporters, their underlying attitudes on key issues have not shifted to a noninterventionist position.
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Monkey Cage: Are Republicans really the new doves?
A half-dozen senators fighting for their political lives and their partys hold on the majority in tough races while trying to avoid being dragged down by an unpopular president and the stark reality that second-term midterm elections almost never work out for the side controlling the White House.
2014? Yes but also 2006, an election cycle that Republicans are increasingly beginning to see as a parallel to this one as the fight for control of the Senate enters its final four weeks.
During that cycle, our guys in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Rhode Island, Missouri, Montana and Ohio could never move their numbers, and in the last couple of weeks the races blew open, said Billy Piper, who was chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at the time. The macro environment was too much to overcome in states that were not reliably red.
At the start of the 2006 election, Republicans controlled 55 seats, buoyed by two consecutive elections 2002 and 2004 that had moved seats their way. But their vulnerabilities were significant. Despite defending only 15seats (to the Democrats 17), the GOP had incumbents in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island two states that President George W. Bush had lost convincingly two years earlier as well as sitting senators in places such as Missouri and Montana who, through a combination of the competitiveness of their states and their own foibles, were in deep trouble. As the cycle wore on, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) turned his race ultra-competitive by referring to a Democratic tracker as a macaca.
By this time in the 2006 election, it had long been clear that Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) wasnt going to make a miraculous comeback against Bob Casey Jr. (D), who had led the incumbent by double digits throughout the campaign.
But the other five incumbent races, in which GOP senators such as Jim Talent (Mo.) and Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) had managed to stay in the hunt started to turn south for Republicans.
The main factor was the deep unpopularity of Bush, who sat at 37percent nationally. That distaste for the head of the Republican Party made Democratic messaging easy: Dont like President Bush? Send him a message by voting against the person who has voted with him [fill-in-the-blank-but-its-a-lot percentage] of the time. Bush stayed largely hidden on the campaign trail, but it didnt matter.
Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) collapsed, losing to Sherrod Brown by 15 points. (Side note: When you lose by that much, its hard to blame Bush or the national environment totally for the loss.) Chafees race also turned permanently against him Bush had won only 39percent of the vote in Rhode Island and Sheldon Whitehouse won by seven points.
Then there were the trio of Republican incumbents who lost by two points or less: Allen (a 0.3 percentage point loss), Talent (2.1 points) and Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana (0.7points). In all three cases, the incumbents remained stuck in the mid to upper 40s, the spot where they had been for much of the election and lost as undecided voters flocked to their opponents.
It all added up to a six-seat loss for Republicans and the minority status in the Senate, defeats that came just two years after a Republican president was reelected for the first time in about two decades. And it meant that Republicans spent the next eight years all the way through today in the minority.
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In 2014 midterms, Republicans increasingly see parallels to 2006 election
Updated at 5:31 p.m.
Leading Republicans are racing to propose strict new limits on air travel to safeguard Americans against Ebola, the deadly virus that has reached the United States and left a Liberian man battling for his life in a Dallas hospital.
The latest to adopt that public position is Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), a potential 2016 presidential candidate who is back in the national spotlight after doctors made the first Ebola diagnosis in the United States in his home state.
Unveiling a new state task force to combat infectious diseases on Monday morning, Perry called for federal officials to implement "enhancedscreening procedures" at "all points of entry" to the United States and create"fully staffed quarantine stations" wherever people are entering the country.
"Washington needs to take immediate steps to minimize the dangers of Ebola and other infectious diseases," said the governor.
A pair of other Republicans called Monday for Obama to appoint a single adviser to coordinate the government's response to Obama.Others have gone even further, calling for flight bans from West African countries and raising concerns about catastrophic scenarios. Republican strategists say it is all part of an effort to flex leadership credentials and tap into concerns Americans have with President Obama's readiness to handle crises after a series of missteps in his second term.
"Republicans are emphasizing the mishandling of the Ebola crisis by the Obama administration and tying it to the theme of government incompetence," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. "After a string of failures by the White House, the latest crisis over Ebola containment further underscores the need for new leadership."
Greg Mueller, a veteran of three GOP presidential campaigns, said he thinks recent lapses in security and safety have spurred Republicans to speak out about Ebola.
"We've got people walking though the front door of the White House, we've got child trafficking on the border, we've got [the Islamic State] beheading people and now you've got Ebola," he said.
After meeting with top advisers about Ebola at the White House Monday afternoon, President Obama said his administration willbe "working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States." The White House said it was not considering a travel ban.
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Leading Republicans press for limits on travel to prevent spread of Ebola