GOP: It's Time to Rebrand to 'Conservative'

Democrats love his with-us-or-against-us conservatism

(NEWSER) - Jim DeMint might just be the Democrats’ secret weapon. For starters, the senator from South Carolina is making good on his declaration that he’d rather have “30 Republicans in the Senate who believe in principles of freedom than 60 who don’t,” endorsing lots of far-right candidates around the country, many of whom are unelectable. But the damage he’s doing to the party could stretch well beyond 2010, writes Stuart Rothenberg for Roll Call . More»

Sharron Angle's response to Harry Reid has party on edge

(NEWSER) - Sharron Angle is headed to Washington to try to convince Republicans that she can indeed defeat Harry Reid, and won’t be painted as a right-wing extremist. Republicans are worried that Angle hasn’t responded aggressively enough to Reid’s attacks, they tell Politico . Reid took aim the moment Angle won the primary, but she has spoken exclusively with national conservative media outlets, eschewing local reporters, which looks like a sign of weakness to Republican leaders. More»

Democrat Owens is already sworn in, but absentee ballots remain

(NEWSER) - An odd twist in that closely watched congressional race from upstate New York: Even though Democrat Bill Owens is already sworn into office to represent NY-23, the state is still counting the ballots—and the margin between him and Conservative Doug Hoffman is shrinking. At last count, Owens led by about 3,000 votes, meaning the race will be determined by 10,000 or so absentee ballots yet to be counted, reports the Syracuse Post-Standard . More»

Purge of moderates will render party male-dominated

(NEWSER) - Rebelling conservatives pushed Republican Dede Scozzafava out of the House race in New York’s 23rd District because she’s a moderate. But she’s also a woman, and her ouster points to a toxic side effect of the tea party revolution: the closing of the GOP to all but the most reactionary female candidates. Over the past 2 decades, pragmatic moderate women made up a substantial part of the Republican’s House majorities, but today the party has only 17 women in the chamber, and 13 challengers for 2012. More»

Polling guru gives a post-mortem on last night's elections

(NEWSER) - The numbers are in, now it's time to make sense of them. Nate Silver breaks down last night's election results:

• Don’t blame Obama; Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine were probably just weak candidates. In New Jersey, 57% of voters approved of Obama, but 27% of those supporters voted Republican anyway. In Virginia 20% of those who approved of Obama voted GOP.
• Democrats had turnout problems in Virginia; the voters who came out last night supported McCain 51-43 in 2008, a mirror image of that year's margin.