GOP Retirements Mount in the House

[babylonsister]

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/01/04/gop_retirements_mount_in_the_house.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalWire+%28Taegan+Goddard%27s+Political+Wire%29

January 04, 2010

GOP Retirements Mount in the House


With news that Rep. Henry Brown (R-SC) will not seek re-election, we noted Republicans now have 14 open House seats to defend this year while Democrats have just 10 open seats so far.

The Fix: "While much of the focus for the last month (or so) has been on Democrats' retirement problems -- set off by a quartet of announcements in swing and Republican-leaning districts over the last month -- a broad look at the open seat playing field suggests more parity in terms of the two parties' opportunities and vulnerabilities than conventional wisdom suggests."

[thereismore]

1. "conventional wisdom" is used here as a synonym for "uninformed". Nice. nt

[DJ13]

2. "Thanks for running obstruction for us...."

"....that million dollar per year job as a lobbyist we talked about is just waiting for you"

- Signed,
AETNA

[gratuitous]

3. Oh yeah, more good news for the GOP

Because everything's good news for the Republicans. They don't have any money to spend, they'll have to recruit a bunch of new and untried candidates, who will be subject to the extreme scrutiny of the tea baggers, and run them with little more than good wishes at their back. But it's good news for Republicans!

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. Reality DOES seem just a *bit* at odds with the corporate media propaganda

as is often the case.......:eyes:

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

7. Let the M$M tell it, the Democrats will lose control of BOTH houses of Congress!

I am really pissed off at Obama and the corporatist Democrats, but *NOTHING* would ever make me vote Repuke!! :puke::puke:

[elocs]

5. There's a reason why conventional wisdom says the party in power will lose seats in Congress:

because they usually do except for once under FDR and once under Clinton in recent history.

The problem Republicans may face is that there are many who want to push the party further to the right to become more purist conservatives. The trouble is in doing that they will probably lose the independents, most of whom do not consider themselves to be uber-conservatives.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

8. Let them continue to marginalize the moderates and Independents and we'll see

what happens. I don't pay attention to any of these polls because most of them were wrong much of the time last year.

Years of teaching political science has shown me that politics is a highly unpredictable art. A day is an eternity in the world of politics. One would think that after all these years of covering politics, they'd know all this...

[AlinPA]

6. I assume these 14 republicans are in red districts and will be easily replaced by more of the same.

[JPZenger]

9. Dems defending purple or red seats, GOP defending red seats

In most cases, because of past Dem gains, many Dems are defending purple districts or districts with Republican majorities, while the GOP is mainly defending deep red districts.

The one exception is PA-15, which is evenly divided. It is in the Lehigh Valley of eastern PA. A moderate Republican incumbent, Charlie Dent, has his first serious challenge from a popular Dem, Major John Callahan of Bethlehem.