Archives for March 2014

The perfect storm of an unpopular president and a Senate map showing Democrats playing defense in the most competitive states suggests Republicans may be on the verge of reclaiming the majority in the upper chamber for the first time in eight years.

According to the latest Crystal Ball summary from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, Democrats hold the ten Senate seats most likely to switch parties in 2014.

Democrats currently hold 55 seats to the GOP’s 45.  Republicans need a net gain of six seats to wrest control from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Crystal Ball suggests four seats are significantly tilting towards the Republicans.

The one lock is in South Dakota, where Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring.  Former GOP governor Mike Rounds is expected to win the seat easily.  Three other Democratic seats are said to be leaning Republican.  Democrat Jay Rockefeller is retiring in West Virginia and Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito is considered a solid favorite.

Two incumbent Democrats are also said to be in big trouble.  New Montana Sen. John Walsh is facing a stiff challenge from freshman Rep. Steve Daines and Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor is bracing for an uphill fight against Rep. Tom Cotton.

If Republicans were to win all four of those seats without losing any they currently hold, they would have 49 of the 51 seats they need to regain the majority.  The good news for the GOP is the next six seats considered most likely to flip are also held by Democrats.  The bad news is that three are considered toss-ups and the other three still lean Democratic.

Three incumbents, Kay Hagan (D-North Carolina), Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) are fighting for their political lives in the toss-up races.  Open seats in Michigan and Iowa still tilt Democratic, as does Sen. Mark Udall’s race in Colorado.

Since the most recent projection was issued, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown launched an exploratory committee towards a likely Senate bid against New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.  If he runs, the 11 most vulnerable seats would be held by Democrats.

So are Republicans poised for a midterm rout or do these projections show the party still has a lot of work to do to get to 51 members in the Senate?

“They’ve got a considerable amount of work to do.  One of the important things that Republicans are going to have to focus on is primaries in a number of states.  Republicans have nominated some poor Senate candidates over the past couple of cycles, candidates that probably prevented them from winning seats that they otherwise should have won,” said Crystal Ball Managing Editor Kyle Kondik.

Kondik says key GOP primaries to watch include North Carolina and Iowa as well as the crowded primary for an open GOP-held seat in Georgia.

Republicans are clearly hoping to make many of these races a referendum on Obamacare.  Kondik says the party may need a little more “oomph” than just that one issue.

“It seems like the Affordable Care Act may already be baked into the cake in terms of the president’s approval and the standing of these various candidates.  In order to get across the finish line Republicans may have to roll out some sort of new legislative initiative or come up with some other issues to hammer upon,” said Kondik.

Still, he says the political realities suggest the GOP has a real shot at the majority.

“It’s really good to be the party that doesn’t hold the White House in a midterm year.  That factor in and of itself plus the fact that President Obama’s not particularly popular, those two things together tell us the Republicans should do well.  You almost don’t need to know anything more than that,” said Kondik, who says the Senate map is another asset but not a guarantee of success.

“Actually turning those into pickups for Republicans (is no guarantee).  There’s only one, South Dakota, that I think is really rock solid at this point.  The potential is there but there’s also the potential that Republicans could just fritter it away,” said Kondik.

A really big year for the GOP could see several tight races turn into a national wave.  Kondik says there are certain indicators to look for late in the campaign if a nationwide surge is in the works.

“I would look to see if the president’s approval rating is getting worse.  I would also look at the generic House poll.  It’s a poll asked in national surveys as to whether people want a Democrat or a Republican in their local House race,” said Kondik, noting that Democrats have a small lead in those polls but that they don’t tell the full story.

“Generally speaking, the poll has a built-in Democratic bias.  When you look at it, you can subtract a few points from the Democratic total and add it to the Republican.  If Republicans have even a small lead in that metric, I think it would be an indication there’s a big sentiment behind Republicans to control Congress,”he said.

In total, 14 of the 16 most vulnerable seats are held by Democrats.  The two GOP seats to watch are in Georgia and Kentucky.  Kondik believes Republicans are likely to hold both but he says the Georgia seat could largely hinge upon who emerges from a tough Republican primary.  In Kentucky, he says Republican leader Mitch McConnell appears to be cruising to the GOP nomination but faces a tough general election campaign against Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Kondik says Democrats have a track record of doing well in state legislative races and even in gubernatorial elections.  Nonetheless, he expects McConnell to survive for one main reason.

“In federal races in a state where President Obama’s approval is probably somewhere in the low thirties, it’s just really hard to see how a Democrat could win a Senate race in that kind of environment.  So even if Mitch McConnell is unpopular, at the end of the day I think it seems likely that a lot of people who may not even like him decide to vote for him because they want to vote for a Republican in their Senate race,” said Kondik.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Alec Torres of National Review cheer a new University of Virginia Crystal Ball report showing the ten Senate seats most likely to change parties in 2014 are all held by Democrats.  They also groan as President Obama offers limited sanctions in response to Russia annexing Crimea.  And they dread the future of the internet now that the U.S. is unilaterally giving up control of it.

The Obama administration endangered the elite Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden by publicly revealing their role in the mission and the SEAL culture is under assault from a politically correct Pentagon, according to a new book on the SEALs and their role in the war against Islamic extremism.

In “Eyes on Target,” authors Richard Miniter and Scott McEwen draw on their close relationships with many retired SEALs to understand the culture of this unit and document their heroism in Afghanistan and sacrifices made by two former SEALs in Benghazi.

Perhaps the best known unit is SEAL Team Six, the group that successfully targeted and killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.  But the fact we know they carried out the mission may also be the reason many of them are now dead.  Instead of leaving the identity of the men a mystery to the world, Vice President Joe Biden publicly identified them just two days after the raid.

“Let me briefly acknowledge tonight’s distinguished honorees.  Adm. Jim Stavridis is a – is the real deal; he can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday,” the book quotes Biden as saying.

In early August 2011, a rocket-propelled grenade shot down a Chinook CH-47 code-named Extortion 17.  The book reports that thirty-eight men were killed, including 15 members of SEAL Team Six.  Miniter contends says Biden’s comments let our enemies know who took out their leader and many of those mourning the deaths on that attack personally blame the vice president for the disaster.

“This helicopter shoot down, Extortion 17, is the largest loss of life among the Navy SEALs since World War II.  The family members, wives, the widows and mothers and fathers of those SEALs think that it’s political.  In the course of our interviews we discovered a number of SEALs think so too.  They think that the shoot down of this helicopter was a revenge plot by Al Qaeda, inspired by Vice President Biden’s comment,” said Miniter.

“The SEALs feel increasingly politicized under the Obama administration.  One of the things that we demonstrate is SEALs who have been prosecuted for crimes they didn’t commit, found innocent, but sort of forced into retirement.  We’ve seen a record number of retirements from the Navy SEALs.  This is something the media is ignoring, but it’s an important story because the SEALs, like our other special forces, are the tip of the spear.  They’re the people who are actually out there killing and capturing terrorists,” said Miniter.

“Without them we lose the war on terror.  Without them, Al Qaeda carries out attacks at America’s public schools, its offices and its shopping malls.  Politicizing the SEALs is a dangerous game and, unfortunately, it’s one of the games President Obama is playing,” he said.

According to Miniter, the political games extend to the entire military.  He says the social experimentation mandated by this administration is dictated by a political agenda that hurts all of the Armed Forces, but especially our elite units.

“The Obama administration’s political appointees at the Department of Defense really want to make the SEALs and other special forces more like a college campus, with political correctness and speech codes.  This is something that drives the SEALs nuts,” said Miniter.

“One of the reasons why the SEALs are so effective is that enlisted men can challenge their officers.  In fact, SEALs have debates before missions, during missions and certainly after missions about what to do next.  Those debates are open and honest because nothing is off the table.  Any language can be used.  Anybody can voice an opinion.  It’s not simply a top-down operation.  Because every man involved in a SEAL operation is thinking and contributing to the thinking of the operation, it’s much more likely to succeed and much more likely to adapt,” said Miniter, noting this sort of communication can be seen in the book and movie “Lone Survivor.”

“The political correctness is really poisoning the SEALs and the military.  The military should not be a social laboratory for politicians or activists to play out experiments.  It’s a serious matter.  You don’t want to distract the lifeguard or people will die,” said Miniter.

With just two weeks remaining before the stated deadline to to enroll in Obamacare, the Capitol Steps remind everyone of the logistical nightmare Americans have encountered over the past six months.  Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see The Washington Post expose Democratic attacks on Republicans and the Koch brothers as lies.  They also react to President Obama finally admitting many people were always going to lose their doctors due to Obamacare.  And they discuss the wild theories surrounding the Malaysian airliner that vanished.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see President Obama issue a de facto two-year delay on the individual mandate.  They also groan as the House and Senate can’t even agree on aiding Ukraine.  And they have fun with Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee claiming our Constitution is 400 years old.

American diplomats in Benghazi made even more urgent pleas for beefed up security than previously thought and officials also refused to consider at least five military scenarios that could have saved the lives of two Americans in the 2012 terrorist attacks, according to a new book chronicling the heroism of Navy SEALs.

In “Eyes on Target: Inside Stories from the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs,” authors Richard Miniter and Scott McEwen point to newly discovered government reports showing Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues desperately requesting additional security and better personnel than the suspect Libyans already on the job.  Those intelligence reports came in addition to multiple requests for additional security.

“We discovered three intelligence reports that circulated in the months before the attack. Each of those reports show intelligence agencies warning the State Department (and) warning the Defense Department there’s an Al Qaeda build-up in Benghazi.  One of those reports included photographs of more than 300 Al Qaeda operatives in Martyr’s Square.  That’s downtown Benghazi.  That’s less than a mile from the diplomatic outpost where the ambassador died,” said Miniter.

“In those photographs in the intelligence report, they show them waving guns.  There’s a quote mentioned in this intelligence report in which the leader of Al Qaeda in Benghazi said if the U.S. doesn’t leave they were going to kill the U.S. Ambassador.  You can’t get any clearer than that,” said Miniter.

“Somewhere in the bowels of the State Department there’s a bureaucrat who has got the three intelligence reports and on the other part of his desk he’s got the three or four security requests from the ambassador begging for more security guards.  After reading those intelligence reports and seeing those pictures, he stamped each one of those denied, denied, denied,” he said.

The attack in Benghazi came just weeks before the 2012 presidential election and while President Obama’s campaign portrayed Al Qaeda as effectively dismantled and the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi as a major victory, wouldn’t a quiet increase in security be a less risky decision than leaving a diplomatic post vulnerable to attack?

Miniter says it was a political calculation.

“They were concerned that if somehow the American public were to learn that there was additional security for the ambassador or the diplomatic staff in Benghazi, it would take away the two winning arguments that they thought they had on foreign policy,” said Miniter.  “So if they admitted that there was a massive Al Qaeda build-up in Libya, that crosses off their two foreign policy successes and undermines the president’s case for re-election.  So as crassly political as it was, that appears to be the motivation, according to the Benghazi eyewitnesses.  These are participants in the tragedy that we interviewed.”

While Ambassador Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were killed within the first 40 minutes of the initial attack, Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty fought on for another seven hours.  While the Obama administration contends any military response would have taken 20 hours to mobilize and reach the fighting, “Eyes on Target” offers five different different response scenarios that Miniter and McEwen say would have ended the fighting much sooner and most likely saved the lives of Woods and Doherty.

The options ranged from Air Force fighters from Aviano Air Base to Navy fighters in Gaeta, both located in Italy to a drone strike and even a cruise missile strike from the Mediterranean Sea.  Miniter says the mere presence of fighter jets would have ended the crisis.

“The scenario that seems the best is simply dispatching F-16 Fighters from Italy and having them fly over Benghazi.  The loud jet roar overhead would be enough to scatter the attackers.  They certainly know that when facing the U.S. Air Force or U.S. Navy in the sky, death comes from above.  With more than a hundred attackers, mortars, rocket attacks they would know that they were targets.  Without firing a shot they could have been driven off.  That’s the kind of thing that President Obama, who doesn’t like combat, would tend to favor,” said.

In addition to denying permission for Doherty to go to Benghazi and any other sort of military intervention, “Eyes on Target” details the Obama administration’s paralysis in making any decisions on response to the attack.  After an early evening briefing from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Obama was out of contact the rest of the night.  So should he bear any blame for failing to launch military action or does the responsibility lie with Panetta?

“While Americans were fighting and dying in Benghazi, the president was unreachable.  According to congressional testimony, Panetta’s last conversation with the president was before 6:30 p.m. Washington time.  Remember, Glen Doherty and Ty Woods, the two SEALs who fought to save the Americans wouldn’t die for almost another seven hours.  In that period, the president disappeared.  He refused to take calls,” said Miniter.

Eighteen months later, the Benghazi investigation essentially falls along party lines, with Democrats saying there is no scandal and Republicans are on a fishing expedition and the GOP accusing the administration of leaving Americans on the field of battle and concocting a story around a spontaneous demonstration spurred by an internet video to deflect from the many security warnings.

Will the final story on Benghazi simply be a matter of political opinion?  Miniter doesn’t think so.

“Ultimately, I think this is going to be a turning point in the country’s assessment of the president.  The media are supposed to be referees, but instead they’re on the field being players.  Too many of the media are simply playing to the White House’s agenda.  Really, they should be watchdogs, not lapdogs,” said Miniter.

Tens of thousands of Connecticut residents are refusing to register their firearms in defiance of new gun control laws and law enforcement officers in that state and others are simply refusing to enforce the recently imposed restrictions.

In December 2012, the nation was horrified by the merciless killings of a classroom of young children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  In response, the Democratic state legislature approved sweeping new gun control laws and Gov. Dan Malloy signed them into law.  Several other states followed suit, including New York, Maryland and Colorado.

In addition to banning new sales of many types of firearms and larger capacity magazines that were previously legal, the state is also requiring residents who legally purchased those weapons and magazines to register them with the state.

For many Connecticut residents, that is a bridge too far and they are refusing to comply with the law.  Gun rights groups are standing with them.

“The revolt is underway.  Tens of thousands of people in Connecticut have intentionally missed the deadline.  They are not registering.  Some of them actually said they would not when they were at the hearing when the law was being considered in the legislature,” said Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt.

Pratt says the backlash does not stop there.  He says Connecticut state lawmakers from both parties who supported the new gun laws are facing fierce tests at the ballot box.

“Almost all of the RINOs in the State Senate that voted for the measure are being opposed in the primary,” said Pratt.  “Democrats, you might have to face some angry voters in November, but Republicans are looking over their shoulder right now.”

He also says that Connecticut and other states with new gun control laws will have a tough time enforcing them because of a growing resentment towards the law among police officers.

“Two hundred fifty police (in Connecticut) have signed a letter that they are not going to enforce the law.  They have no intention of collecting anyone’s firearms,” said Pratt, who notes that the resistance from law enforcement in Colorado is even stronger.

“All but two of the state’s county sheriffs have said, ‘We’re not enforcing the law.’  To the surprise, I think, of a lot of legislators, it turns out lawmen are not particularly enamored with gun control.  After all, they own guns personally.  A lot of them enjoy recreational use of guns, and for them to be put in the position of collecting guns for some liberal ideologue in the legislature, they didn’t really sign up for that,” said Pratt.

Gun Owners of America is urging residents in Connecticut, Colorado and other states to reject new laws requiring the registration of newly illegal weapons.  But at a time when many on the right condemn President Obama for alleged selective enforcement of laws, are those same conservatives guilty of a double standard in this situation?

Pratt says the Constitution provides the road map in both situations.

“Frankly, I don’t have a constitutional problem with what the president is doing.  We can deal with him and his party using the means provided in the forthcoming elections.  If we end up sending a tsunami wave over his party and making his last two years in office totally miserable, that’s the way the system permits it to be done,” said Pratt.

“Same thing in Connecticut.  People are saying, ‘I’m prepared to go to jail.’  Well, if you get so many tens of thousands of people saying that, it becomes difficult to imagine how that (many arrests) can happen, especially if there aren’t any police around to arrest them in the beginning,” he said.

“I think it’s an American’s right to exercise his conscience.  He has to be prepared to take the consequences, just like Martin Luther King.  He exercised his conscience.  (Rosa) Parks went and sat down right in the front of the bus.  Now she was taken off the bus and escorted away and she was put in jail for a bit.  She was prepared to take the consequences, but she had decided, ‘No more.’  The people of Connecticut, I think, are in the same frame of mind,” said Pratt.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised that a flawed Republican won a special congressional election in Florida.  They also groan as Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich runs TV ads demonizing the Koch brothers.  And they rip President Obama for telling people they can afford Obamacare if they just get rid of their phones and cable.

A Senate confirmation showdown is looming for President Obama’s choice to be U.S. Surgeon General, largely as a result of the nominee’s ardent gun control advocacy.

Thirty-seven-year-old Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy is lauded for his leadership abilities and for his ability to promote healthy lifestyles in a dynamic manner.  He is also the co-founder of Doctors for America, an organization that advocates gun control and urges physicians to ask detailed questions of their patients about gun ownership and usage.

Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt says that alone ought to disqualify Dr. Murthy.

“His urging that particular policy shows that he does not understand medical ethics.  That is a question so far outside of anything to do with medicine.  It shows that he is a willing tool of the state, even as German doctors and Soviet doctors would send to the regime information about the people that were in their care.  This is an extremely alarming attitude.  This guy clearly looks at himself as a government functionary before he considers anything about medicine,” said Pratt.

So how exactly could a conversation with your doctor about guns in the home lead to an erosion of our Second Amendment rights?  Pratt believes once the data exists, those rights are endangered.

“Once you’ve put information in a computer then it’s anybody’s game.  I would say a 14-year-old would be able to obtain that data.  The Canadians had a registry for long guns for several years and they found the thing was being hacked, typically by younger people because they’re so good at computers.  They finally took the registry down,” said Pratt.

“So if the Canadians have learned that you can’t put this kind of sensitive information in some central pot, then hopefully we’ll learn from them,” he said.

The office of Surgeon General provides a platform to speak out on various issues, but Pratt admits Murthy would have no power to compel doctors to discuss firearms with their patients.  Still, he says the wrong person in that job can still do damage and the nomination continues what he considers a disturbing trend from this administration.

“The only thing he can really do is push money out the door to anti-Second Amendment organizations that would do ‘medical research’, do studies about how guns are epidemic in our country and things of that sort.  That’s been done before in years past and has largely been disregarded,” said Pratt.

“But it’s clear they are looking for any way they can find to try to put their finger on the scale and change the debate.  It’s the same thing they were doing when they intentionally got people murdered in ‘Fast and Furious’, hoping that would change the gun control debate,” he said.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul vows to stop the Murthy nomination over his Second Amendment views.  However, Democrats hold a 10-seat majority in the Senate and recently relaxed the rules for approving presidential nominations.  However, Pratt says the recent rejection of Debo Adegbile to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Right Division shows Democratic senators might not want to stick their necks out too far for President Obama right now.

“We’ve already seen one nominee fail because there are a number of Democrats running in Republicans states this November and they decided they really like their job a whole lot more than just pleasing a lame duck president,” said Pratt.