2022 Midterms

[jhu72]

Katie Darling doesn't need a gun to run for office.

[MDlaxfan76]

Katie Darling doesn't need a gun to run for office.

Powerful.

[DMac]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

[jhu72]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

... of course his son speaks the truth. Walker is scum no matter his political affiliation.

[Seacoaster(1)]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

The Daily Beast article says Walker paid for an abortion and gave the woman a check for $700 and a get well card -- and provides receipts for this. His son says he's a serial abuser who walked out on his family. Remember: the GOP says this is murder. So the GOP is supporting their own child murderer. Because McConnell can tell him what to do once he's there. Not sure there is any other narrative here.

The GOP just keeps dumbing down the Congress.

[Typical Lax Dad]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

Neither do I.

[get it to x]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

Neither do I.

If I was in Georgia I'd have to sit this one out. Although any of you old timer Dems who voted for a man who was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broderick should find another thread to comment on.

[Typical Lax Dad]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

Neither do I.

If I was in Georgia I'd have to sit this one out. Although any of you old timer Dems who voted for a man who was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broderick should find another thread to comment on.

What does that have to do with me?

[MDlaxfan76]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

Neither do I.

If I was in Georgia I'd have to sit this one out. Although any of you old timer Dems who voted for a man who was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broderick should find another thread to comment on.

I didn't vote for Clinton, twice.

But I'd vote for Warnock in a heartbeat...and that was when all I knew about Walker was that he'd dumb as a rock, lied about having a college degree, and made all sorts of wild political statements.

Of course, simply being endorsed by Trump is enough right now for me to vote for whoever his opponent might be.

[Farfromgeneva]

It's all about the R and D, character of the person not much of a factor.
I'll never understand this kind of allegiance to a party. When people like
this get elected we get what we deserve. How do you back and vote for
a person like this (I'd bet his son speaks the truth)?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8ce71ee031

Neither do I.

If I was in Georgia I'd have to sit this one out. Although any of you old timer Dems who voted for a man who was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broderick should find another thread to comment on.

What does that have to do with me?

You know

[jhu72]

VoteBLUE.jpeg (46.17 KiB) Viewed 495 times

[get it to x]

A pattern is developing where Democrat incumbents/nominees are refusing to debate their opponents or limiting the number of debates. I'm curious, are there any Republicans refusing to debate their opponents? IMHO, they can't defend where the Democrat Party has landed on a whole host of issues, social, law and order and economic. Maggie Hassan is just the latest.

https://nhjournal.com/hassan-campaign-f ... op-debate/

[NattyBohChamps04]

A pattern is developing where Democrat incumbents/nominees are refusing to debate their opponents or limiting the number of debates. I'm curious, are there any Republicans refusing to debate their opponents? IMHO, they can't defend where the Democrat Party has landed on a whole host of issues, social, law and order and economic. Maggie Hassan is just the latest.

https://nhjournal.com/hassan-campaign-f ... op-debate/

Seems to be more on the Republican side. But then again when a majority of GOP candidates are election deniers, what's there to really debate?

Candidates, mostly Republican, skip debates, bar press during midterm campaigns

Why are Republicans boycotting political debates?

Debate-dodging takes off in midterm campaigns

Republicans say they're quitting the 'biased' Commission on Presidential Debates

[a fan]

A pattern is developing where Democrat incumbents/nominees are refusing to debate their opponents or limiting the number of debates. I'm curious, are there any Republicans refusing to debate their opponents? IMHO, they can't defend where the Democrat Party has landed on a whole host of issues, social, law and order and economic.

What parts can't they defend? Be specific.

And yes, the R's do it. It's a risk reward in the age of viral memes. One wrong sentence, and you're out.

I agree that it sucks. Tell me why I should vote for you. Basic stuff.

[Seacoaster(1)]

A pattern is developing where Democrat incumbents/nominees are refusing to debate their opponents or limiting the number of debates. I'm curious, are there any Republicans refusing to debate their opponents? IMHO, they can't defend where the Democrat Party has landed on a whole host of issues, social, law and order and economic.

What parts can't they defend? Be specific.

And yes, the R's do it. It's a risk reward in the age of viral memes. One wrong sentence, and you're out.

I agree that it sucks. Tell me why I should vote for you. Basic stuff.

“In Iowa, Republicans such as Gov. Kim Reynolds, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley and U.S. Reps. Randy Feenstra, Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks skipped an Iowa State Fair tradition – the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox where candidates talk to the public about where they stand on the issues. The only Republicans who spoke were those challenging Democratic incumbents.

A majority of Republican candidates are also refusing to debate their Democratic opponents. Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine refused to debate Republican challengers in the primary and now has said he will not debate his Democratic challenger, former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley.

In Nebraska, GOP governor candidate Jim Pillen also refuses to debate his Democratic challenger, State Sen. Carol Blood. If elected, Pillen would become Nebraska’s first governor since at least the 1970s to be elected without facing his opponents on a debate stage. (Nebraska U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, on the other hand, will participate in two debates and recently tweeted “I love debates.”)

And in a closely watched Georgia U.S. Senate race, Republican candidate Herschel Walker has yet to hold a public debate with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who became Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator after a special election in January of last year. Walker has challenged Warnock to several debates, which Warnock agreed to, but Walker has backed out of those debates.

Walker has agreed to an Oct. 14 debate hosted by Nexstar Media Group. Warnock has not agreed to the debate, and refused to answer the question when asked by a reporter from the Ledger-Enquirer.

Warnock’s campaign responded to States Newsroom, but did not answer if he would attend the Oct. 14 debate.

“How can we expect Herschel Walker to stand up for Georgians in the Senate if he refuses to debate on stage?” Warnock wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

Walker has also frequently put restrictions on local press, opting to release statements to conservative outlets like Fox News instead.”

[ggait]

A pattern is developing where Democrat incumbents/nominees are refusing to debate their opponents or limiting the number of debates. I'm curious, are there any Republicans refusing to debate their opponents?

Come on X. Did you forget all those debates that Trump skipped? Did you notice that the Republican National Committee, not the DNC, withdrew from the bi-partisan Presidential Debate Commission?

Dodging debates is primarily a GOP/MAGA thing, but it does happen on both sides. And when done, the claim is that the rules are unfair. So they really want to debate, but can't because it is so totally unfair. The haggling over debate details in order to dodge them is absolutely nothing new. Sometimes the haggling is justified; most times it is just a dodge.

This cycle, you do have some Dems flat out refusing to debate election denier, conspiracy theory, disinformation types (e.g. AZ governor). Maybe not the best position to take, but quite understandable. I think we all would have been better off if Biden had skipped the "shut up man" debate with Trump. That's two hours of our lives that we're never getting back.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Shocker:

https://mobile.twitter.com/IsaacDovere/ ... 6793312256

[a fan]

Shocker:

https://mobile.twitter.com/IsaacDovere/ ... 6793312256

Closeted Big Government Socialists. What's worse is that Republican voters....including all of them on the board.....don't care that they do this.

[Seacoaster(1)]

The demented class of 2022, GOP candidate Chapter 11:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 022-crazy/

"Much of the public focus in the midterm elections has been on the, er, exotic nature of the Republic nominees in Senate and gubernatorial races, and understandably so. There’s Mehmet Oz’s crudite, Doug Mastriano’s white supremacists, and Herschel Walker’s … well, pretty much everything he says and does. But GOP nominees for the House are no less erratic — just less well known.

There’s the woman from North Carolina who was accused of hitting one husband with an alarm clock, trying to hit another with a car (and also menacing him with a frying pan) and punching her daughter. She denies that, though she also invoked a conspiracy belief that alien lizards control the government.

There’s the man from Ohio who lied about his military record, lavishly promoted QAnon themes, acknowledged bypassing police barriers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and with 120 gallons of paint turned his entire lawn into a Trump banner.

There’s the man from Michigan who claimed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman participated in a satanic ritual, who once disparaged women’s suffrage, and who, though Black, raised concern about Democrats “eroding the white population.”

Then there are: the Texas woman accused by her estranged husband of cruelty toward his teenage daughter; the Colorado woman who backed an effort to secede from her state; the Virginia woman who speculated that rape victims wouldn’t get pregnant; and the Wisconsin man who used campaign funds from his failed 2020 race to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, where he apparently breached Capitol barricades.

What they all have in common is that they’re in competitive races, which means they could well be part of a Republican House majority in January. And that’s on top of a larger group of GOP nominees in deep-red congressional districts who are a motley assortment of election deniers, climate-change deniers, QAnon enthusiasts and Jan. 6 participants who propose to abolish the FBI and ban abortion with no exceptions, among other things. Some won nominations despite efforts by party leadership to stop them and continue without financial support from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Maybe this is why Kevin McCarthy, the man who as House speaker would have the task of leading this rogues’ gallery, calls his agenda a “Commitment to America.” Many members of his new majority might be good candidates for commitment.

J.R. Majewski, the Trump-backed lawn painter from Ohio, has a different agenda: He wants to “abolish all unconstitutional three letter agencies,” including the CIA. He has said he’s willing to fight a civil war, and he made a campaign video in which he carried a rifle and said he would “do whatever it takes” to “bring this country back to its former glory.”

In North Carolina, Sandy Smith is folding into her plans for the country the domestic-abuse allegations against her: “I never ran over anyone with a car and I never hit anyone in the head with a frying pan. … I am bringing a frying pan to DC, though,” she tweeted in May. (Disclosure: My wife, a pollster, is a consultant to Smith’s Democratic opponent.) Smith also wants “executions” of those who, she falsely claims, stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.

Republican House candidate John Gibbs speaks with reporters in Byron Township, Mich., on Aug. 2. (Sarah Rice for The Washington Post)
Maybe this is what John Gibbs, the Michigan Republican who questioned women’s suffrage, had in mind when he wrote as a Stanford student that women don’t “posess [sic] the characteristics necessary to govern” because they rely on “emotional reasoning.”

McCarthy will surely have to put down many an uprising from what might be termed the Insurrection Caucus. Wisconsin nominee Derrick Van Orden, like Majewski and a few other GOP nominees, was outside the U.S. Capitol that day — and was photographed inside a restricted area, though he says he left when things turned violent. And Kelly Cooper, a nominee in Arizona, wants “the prisoners of January 6th … to be released on day one.”

George Santos, a nominee in New York, claimed he was the victim of election fraud in his failed 2020 bid. Sam Peters, a nominee in Nevada who has used the “#QArmy” hashtag and embraced being called the “male” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, characterized those facing charges for the insurrection as “civically engaged American citizens exercising their constitutional freedoms.” And Iowa nominee Zach Nunn, who found it suspicious that Capitol Police couldn’t “stop a bunch of middle-aged individuals from walking onto the floor,” argued that “not a single one” of the defendants was charged with and convicted of insurrection. (That’s because the charge is “seditious conspiracy.”) Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a nominee from Ohio, was precocious in her false claims of election fraud: She claimed in 2018 that a voting machine had switched her vote in the Ohio Senate race from Republican to Democrat.

Overlapping with the Insurrection Caucus are those with qualifications that might, at best, be called unconventional. Monica De La Cruz, a Texas nominee and top GOP recruit, was accused in a court filing a year ago of “cruel and aggressive conduct” toward her then-husband’s 14-year-old daughter, including pinching the teen to stop her from crying; she denies the claim. In Colorado, nominee Barbara Kirkmeyer once led an attempt by 11 counties there to secede and become their own state. In North Carolina, nominee Bo Hines (who wants a 10-year moratorium on immigration) spoke of a “banana republic” as though the common term for flailing democracies was actually referring to the clothing store of the same name.

Of course, the People’s House has always attracted the eccentric, and even the shady, from both parties. But the would-be Republican Class of ’22 is extraordinary in the number of oddballs and extremists in its ranks. This is no accident: The trend in Republican primaries, accelerated by Trump, has favored those with the most eye-popping tapestry of conspiracy theories and unyielding positions. GOP primaries are dominated by a sliver of the electorate on the far right.

That’s why they produce figures such as Erik Aadland, a Colorado nominee who claims that the 2020 election was “absolutely rigged” and that the country is “on the brink of being taken over by a communist government” and who has followed various extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, on social media. In New Jersey, Frank Pallotta is again a Republican nominee, after declaring during his 2020 run for the same seat that he stands by the Oath Keepers, a group whose leaders are now on trial over Jan. 6.

Starting in January, a likely narrow Republican majority might have to find consensus among a freshman class that can’t agree on basic facts. Karoline Leavitt, a nominee in New Hampshire, claims that “the alleged ‘existential threat of climate change’ is a manufactured crisis by the Democrat Party.” In Virginia, nominee Yesli Vega argued that it was less likely for a rape victim to become pregnant because “it’s not something that’s happening organically.” Also in Virginia, nominee Hung Cao asserted that more “people get bludgeoned to death and stabbed to death than they get shot,” which is wrong by an order of magnitude.

But these nominees have offered unique policy ideas! Robert Burns of New Hampshire said in 2018 that he would allow abortion only to protect the “life of the mother” — but “we would need a panel in this sort of situation” to decide whether the ailing woman can get the lifesaving procedure.

A real-life death panel! Challenged recently on this position, Burns replied last month: “In response to the death panels, I believe women of color and low economic status deserve second and third opinions before being forced into abortions.” Put another way, a woman would need a second and third opinion before she’s allowed to save her own life.

The House Republican Class of ’22 will be many things, but “boring” is not one of them."

[Farfromgeneva]

A pattern is developing where Democrat incumbents/nominees are refusing to debate their opponents or limiting the number of debates. I'm curious, are there any Republicans refusing to debate their opponents? IMHO, they can't defend where the Democrat Party has landed on a whole host of issues, social, law and order and economic. Maggie Hassan is just the latest.

https://nhjournal.com/hassan-campaign-f ... op-debate/

Seems to be more on the Republican side. But then again when a majority of GOP candidates are election deniers, what's there to really debate?

Candidates, mostly Republican, skip debates, bar press during midterm campaigns

Why are Republicans boycotting political debates?

Debate-dodging takes off in midterm campaigns

Republicans say they're quitting the 'biased' Commission on Presidential Debates

Fantasy vs reality?