A recent Gallup Poll found only 34% of Americans
have a favorable view of the Republican Party. Just as bad, if not worse,
61% now hold an unfavorable view of the party. That is the highest unfavorable number recorded for the Republican Party since Gallup started polling on that question in 1992.
To find clues about the Republican Part can do to reverse this unfavorable trend, Gallup asked repondents:
"Over the next few years, would you like to see the Republican Party
and its candidates move in a more conservative direction, a less
conservative direction, or stay about the same?"
Most Republicans (59%) want to see the party become more conservative, another 28% want it to remain about the same and 12%
would prefer to see the party become less conservative.
In order to make gains in Congress or win the Presidency in 2012, Republicans must attract substantial support from political independents. According to Gallup, independents are split about the direction they would like the Republican Party to move. About a third say the party should become more conservative, an equal percentage say it should become less conservative, and just under one-quarter say it should stay the same.
Gallup Poll Editor in Chief, Frank Newport, covers the details in the following video report:
On Tuesday, Alaska election officials said Begich had a larger lead than the number of votes still left to be counted:
Begich leads Stevens by more than 3,700 votes, according to the Alaska
secretary of state. Gail Fenumiai, the head of the state's election division,
said about 2,500 absentee votes from overseas and Alaska's most remote regions
remain to be counted.
Begich's win gives Democrats control of 56 seats in the Senate. Even with the two
independents who caucus with them, the Democrats remain two shy of the 60 seats needed to end filibusters.
There are still two senate races that remain undecided.
In Georgia, Republican Senator Saxby
Chambliss faces former state representative Democrat Jim
Martin in a runoff on December 2. In Minnesota,
the recount began yesterday in the race between Republican Senator Norm
Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.
Watch the following video report from MSNBC's David Shuster and Lawrence O'Donnell:
The Guardian reports Hillary will accept President-elect Obama’s offer to be Secretary of State:
Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.
Does Hillary have the experience necessary to be Secretary of State?
Craig belittled Hillary's exaggerations about her foreign policy experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Rawand, the 1995 speech Hillary gave in China, and Hillary's silly assertion that her vote for the “The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of U.S. Military Force
Against Iraq,” -- that she wasn't actually
voting for war, she was voting for diplomacy.
Craig's devastating crtique aside, Hillay did a fair job of destroying her experience claims and credibility in her "exaggerations" about Bosnia:
Cuomo helps the Ayers disinformation campaign by going easy on the still unrepentant terrorist.
First, Cuomo doesn't call Ayers a terrorist, using the more politically correct "radical." Cuomo says Ayers joined the Weather Underground, but does not mention the fact that Ayers was one of the founders of that terrorist organization--which bombed numerous government buildings and the home of a Federal Judge. Cuomo also gets it wrong when he claims Ayers, after 9/11, said he didn't regret any of the bombings and the group didn't do enough. An article, in which Ayers was quoted saying those unrepentant statements, was actually published in the New York Times on 9/11.
Watch the video:
Let's start with Ayers' ridiculous claim that the Weather Underground's bombing campaign wasn't terrorism, because they gave warnings and didn't "target people, to kill or injure." That's no different than the IRA, a group whose decades-long bombing campaign is widely regarded as terrorism.
More evidence that Ayers is not being forthcoming comes from John Murtagh. Obama likes to say he was only 8 years old when Ayers' Weather Underground engaged in its terrorist activities. Murtagh was only 9 years old when the Weather Underground tried to kill him and his family by bombing their home as they slept. Watch Murtagh talk about the bombing in the following video:
Ayers justifies the Weather Underground's terrorist actions by claiming our government was "murdering thousands of people a month" and that the Vietnam War was "illegal." Right. And they let this washed up terrorist teach education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
I am so tired of Obama's guilt by association defense to questions about his associations with unsavory characters, such as the unrepentant terrorist Ayers, the felon Tony Rezko, the anti-American Jeremiah Wright, and Palestine Liberation Organization mouthpiece Rashid Khalidi.
Some association is far from innocent. Criminal law recognizes criminal associations such as aiding and abetting and conspiracies, which hold that you don't actually have to be the perpetrator to be criminally guilty.
We all learn through our experiences that the company we keep helps
to define who we are. I was taught that this is a Biblical lesson:
"Bad company corrupts good morals" --(I Corinthians 15:33).
The Jewish faith has similar teachings:
"Who consorts with the unclean becomes himself unclean" -- (The Mishna Kelim 12,12).
I would have more respect for Ayers -- and Obama's refusal to dissociate himself from Ayers -- if the terrorist-turned-professor would repent. Until then, Obama's nefarious associations cause me to worry about the president-elect's judgment.
A South Carolina priest told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil:
"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."
Watch the following video report from South Carolina's WHNS-TV:
Obama opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion -- a practice the late Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once called "too close to infanticide."
Obama strongly criticized the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban.
In the Illinois state Senate, Obama opposed a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of infants who survive a botched abortion.
Obama has even said he would not want his daughters to be "punished with a baby."
Nebraska becomes the first state in modern times to split Electoral College votes among candidates from different parties.
Only two states, Nebraska and Main, don't award Electoral College votes on a winner take all basis. In Nebraska and Main the winner of the popular vote automatically gets 2 electoral votes,
with the rest of the electoral votes awarded to the winner of the popular vote within each congressional
district.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, in the 1892 presidential
election, Michigan split its electoral votes between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland.
Perhaps Obama's win in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District will renew national interest in the split
system.
Now that the election is over the Deborah Howell, the Washington Post
Ombudsman, admits that the Post's election coverage was biased toward
Obama.
Howell reports readers complained consistently criticized the Post's
"lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward
Democrat Barack Obama." She conducted a survey of the Post's election
coverage since November 11, 2007 on issues, voters, fundraising,
the candidates' backgrounds, horse-race stories on tactics, strategy
and consultants, and photos and Page 1 stories since
Obama captured the nomination June 4.
The survey, which conveniently ended on Election Day, found that the readers' criticisms are "right on both counts:"
The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than
on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces (58) about
McCain than there were about Obama (32), and Obama got the editorial
board's endorsement.
[. . .]
Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those
devoted to McCain. Post reporters, photographers and editors -- like
most of the national news media -- found the candidacy of Obama, the
first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and
historic.
Howell also admits, now that it is too late to make a difference, that Obama and Biden should have been scrutinized more:
But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his
undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with
Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling
in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a
teenager.
[. . .]
One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate.
When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were
booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went
over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right;
it was a serious omission.
It doesn't make me feel any better that the Post admits its election coverage was biased toward Obama. Like Bill Ayers, the Post remains unrepentant about the fact the coverage was biased. I'm sure we can look forward to a continued biased coverage of President-elect Obama.
President-elect Barack Obama, as he claimed his historic victory, told supporters that "change has come to America":
"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there," Obama said in Chicago, Illinois, before an estimated crowd of up to 240,000 people.
[. . .]
Flanked by American flags, Obama told the roaring crowd, "This is your victory."
"To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn -- I may not have won your
vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president
too," he said.
Obama did what he does -- he gave another great speech. You can read his speech here or watch it in the following video:
Yes,
Obama is my president too. I wish him nothing but success in dealing with the problems our nation faces.
Senator John McCain conceded to President-elect Obama, congratulating him on a historic victory:
"The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly," McCain said.
[. . .]
"Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and his country," said McCain, calling Obama a "good man."
"This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight."
McCain urged his supporters to join, not in just congratulating Obama, but in "offering our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited."
McCain's closing was struck precisely the right tone:
"I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and
will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this
campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in
the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.
Americans never quit. We never surrender.
We never hide from history. We make history.
Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless
America. Thank you all very much."
You can read transcript of McCain's speech here or watch it in the following video:
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