The Great American Awakening: Two Years That Changed America, Washington, and Me by Jim DeMint

Author:Jim DeMint [DeMint, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, Political Science, Civics & Citizenship
ISBN: 9781433673603
Google: GCq5AwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 11979790
Publisher: Not Avail
Published: 2011-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

November Election Surprises

The upcoming gubernatorial elections dominated the political atmosphere over the next few weeks. Everyone was watching to see if the tea party movement would put Republicans over the edge in Virginia and New Jersey.

Polls in Virginia showed Republican Bob McDonnell pulling ahead in the governor's race by attacking his Democrat opponent to Obama. Democrats claimed their poor showing in the polls in Virginia was only because they had a weak candidate, not because of Obama. They pointed as evidence to their candidate in New Jersey, Governor Jon Corzine, who was running on his support of the Obama agenda and doing fine against Republican Chris Christie. Or so they thought. The Democrats underestimated Christie's tenaciousness.

World Magazine published an article by Edward Lee Pitts on October 24, 2009, saying what most political observers knew was true: the off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey were the first test for Obama's agenda and would provide the first indicators of a potential GOP revival in 2010. Pitts concluded: "The early success of both McDonnell and Christie suggests that their strategy of embracing their conservative bona fides has tapped into the grassroots energy that has been unleashed in the growing Tea Party movement, which favors the limited-government views of Republicans."

For their part, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress played down the upcoming elections and kept their focus on passing their health-care bill. But the pressure from voters was obviously getting to them. When a CNS News reporter asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance, Pelosi dismissed the question by saying, "Are you serious?" She treated it as a joke. Her spokesperson later said the constitutionality of the health-care bill was "not a serious question." Pelosi's laughing at the relevancy of the Constitution only added fuel to the fire of discontent among voters.

Criticism from conservative media was also getting to Obama. On October 11, the Obama administration declared that FOX News—and its owner, reporters, and commentators—were shills for the president's Republican opponents. "Let's not pretend they're a news network," White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said on CNN's Sunday program Reliable Sources. "FOX News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. What I think is fair to say about FOX, and certainly the way we view it, is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party."

And the way I viewed it, the Democrats were starting to sound desperate.

As the November elections neared, another race began to dominate media coverage. A special election for New York's 23rd Congressional District seat was a three-way race between Democrat Bill Owen, Republican Dede Scozzafava, and Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman. The 23rd district had for years been one of the few Republican strongholds in New York. But Republican Party bosses in New York nominated the pro-choice, pro-union, liberal state Assemblywoman Scozzafava to carry the Republican banner.

Early polls showed Scozzafava with a large lead. But tea party

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.