Why GOP Sees Hope for 2010

Candidate recruitment up amid bad news for Dems

(NEWSER) - As bad economic reports keep coming, Republicans are seeing candidate recruitment soar, the Hill reports. The party has had “probably its first good couple weeks in four years,” says an analyst, fueled in large part by rising unemployment and sinking stocks. Meanwhile, Democrats have lost top Senate candidate recruits and been unable to halt Senate primaries in key New York and Pennsylvania races. More»

School renovations, unemployment benefit extension part of strategy

(NEWSER) - President Obama plans tomorrow to unveil a $300 billion jobs strategy that will involve tax relief for workers and spending on public works projects such as road repair and school renovations to put America back to work, according to sources familiar with the plan. Half of the stimulus will come from tax cuts, including a year-long extension of a Social Security payroll tax reduction for workers and a possible cut in payroll taxes paid by employers, according to Bloomberg . The plan also involves the extension of unemployment benefits, offering job training for the unemployed, and a program to prevent teacher layoffs, reports the Los Angeles Times. More»

Movement can't go on ignoring military spending

(NEWSER) - The Tea Party will have a big say on GOP policy in the next Congress, but what it doesn't have is any coherent foreign policy, writes Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast. The movement might want to stay true to its ideal of reducing the deficit, scaling back the federal government's power, and staying true to the Constitution, but it can't ignore spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or interventionist foreign policy in general, Beinart argues. More»

Polling inaccuracies might surprise us today

(NEWSER) - We keep hearing doom and gloom for the Democrats, and there’s a good chance that’s accurate, writes Nate Silver in the New York Times . But thanks to a few potential polling flaws, things could turn out differently; the Dems might even hang onto the House. Here’s why:

1. Polls often skip cell-phone-only voters—Some 25% of adults don’t use landlines at all, and their demographics lean Democratic.

This election (and the next) is about the role of government: Krauthammer

(NEWSER) - Tuesday's vote will be a blast for Republicans, but "the direction of the country” won't truly be determined until the 2012 election, writes Charles Krauthammer. Until then, with Obama’s veto power and Democrats’ shrunken numbers, nothing much will get done. Still, the “beauty” of these next two votes is that they hinge on “a profoundly serious political question,” he writes in the Washington Post . It’s about the role of government and “the balance between liberty and equality.” More»