After defeating Tea Party, GOP primed to defeat Democrats
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 3, 2014
This year, it is not that the GOP isn't running candidates who have taken far-right anti-abortion positions, but those candidates have had the sense to moderate their publicly-stated positions for the general election. Corey Gardner, who is leading in Colorado, said early on in his campaign that he changed his mind about a so-called "personhood" bill he supported that gives rights to fetuses after re-evaluating the consequences. Joni Ernst, who is contesting a close race in Iowa and also supported "personhood," tried to downplay the actual consequences of the bill, saying it wouldn't support a ban on abortion. It's a cop-out, and a lame one, but it's not as bad politically as saying you support banning abortion.
In Georgia, another Akin moment was avoided when Christian fundamentalist representative Paul Braun lost the Senate primary. Braun, who has gone on record calling the scientific fact of evolution a lie "straight from the pit of Hell," stating that the earth is 9,000 years old and that he thinks the Bible should be used to inform public policy, recently suggested that President Obama's Ebola policy might have "malicious intent." If Braun had won the primary, this quote may very well have become a national news story to which other Republicans would have had to respond, but now it has been relegated to discussion on a handful of political websites. (Rep. Steve Stockman, who lost the Texas Senate primary, also said something similar.)
All in all, the Republican candidates running for Senate have run relatively-gaffe-free campaigns, and the Obama's unpopularity in many states is helping them. If the Tea Party had won a few of these primaries, the GOP would not have had a chance.
Still, while a GOP triumph is most likely, it is not guaranteed, and it probably won't be in the books by Tuesday's end. A few of the races are very close and will ultimately come down to runoffs. If neither candidate in Louisiana wins over 50 percent of the vote, then the two top candidates will face a runoff on December 6. If neither candidate in Georgia does, then their runoff will be on January 6. And if neither party has a clear majority by the end of November, millions of dollars and thousands of campaign staffers from both parties will descend on those two states.
The Republicans - and people who are sick of elections - can avoid that eventuality if the GOP pulls off some unexpected victories in Virginia and in New Hampshire, where former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown is running within a few points of his Democrat opponent.
Whatever happens, we won't know for sure how many seats each party will control until long after Nov. 4, and the battle that started this spring will only continue.
Mitchell Blatt is the producer of ChinaTravelWriter.com and an editor at a map magazine in Nanjing.
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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