As the US Midwest has grown more conservative, Democrats have sometimes had to rest their hopes on well-positioned Republican contenders imploding with politically off-key statements.
It worked like a charm in 2012, when Republican candidates in Indiana and Missouri blew winnable US Senate races after provocative comments on rape and abortion. The Republicans failed to take back control of the Senate that year.
However, with less than four months until this year’s congressional elections, Democrats are still waiting for new bombshells and growing more anxious about the lack of incendiary material as they try to hold enough Senate seats to keep control of the chamber.
If the Republicans win the Senate majority in November, they would essentially have the power to kill US President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda during the final two years of his term, since the Democrats have little chance of retaking control of the US House of Representatives. The Republicans need to gain six seats to win Senate control.
Democratic Party researchers are diligently scrubbing every transcript and public comment for a hint of fringe language that might spook moderate or independent voters.
The bombshell problem has increased as Republicans have gotten stronger in the midwestern and southwestern states, which were once more evenly divided between the two parties.
The more conservative Republican candidates winning primaries now are more inclined to play to the party’s rightmost fringe, saying things that can trouble voters in a general election. Controversial remarks often relate to women’s issues, religion, race or government plots.
In 2012, Missouri Republican candidate Todd Akin’s Senate campaign crumbled after he declared the female anatomy capable of preventing pregnancy in the case of “a legitimate rape.”
Likewise, Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s bid sank after he said pregnancies that result from “that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.”
“When you get a gift like that, you dream about another gift,” North Carolina Republican strategist Carter Wrenn said.
However, during this year’s primary season, Republican Party leaders pushed hard to put more mainstream candidates on their tickets, as the right-wing Tea Party movement lost much of its luster.
The more cautious rhetoric this year has come as a relief to national Republican leaders, who want to close the Democrats’ edge with women, younger and minority voters.
Last year, the party had a series of candidate training sessions on speaking carefully. T
he best Democrats have come up with so far is Iowa Senate Republican candidate Joni Ernst’s avowed belief in a possible threat to US property rights posed by an obscure global development concept known as Agenda 21.
Some conservatives see the concept as the harbinger of a UN takeover.
“Agenda 21 is a horrible idea,” Ernst told a rural county Republican audience.
The non-binding resolution, signed by Republican former US president George H.W. Bush in 1992, urges nations to conserve open land and steer development toward more populous areas.
“The implications we could have here is moving people off their agricultural land and consolidating them into city centers, and then telling them: ‘You don’t have property rights anymore.’ These are all things that the UN is behind, and it’s bad for the United States and bad for families here in the state of Iowa,” Ernst said last year.
Conservative Iowa Republican strategist Susan Geddes said Ernst’s characterization “is a problem for our party.”
Conspiracy theories are not good campaign issues, she said.
“I don’t know why she’d say that,” Geddes said.
The Iowa Democratic Party has been citing the remark, and Ernst’s calls for impeaching Obama, in press releases in hopes of building a case that Ernst’s views are outside the mainstream. It is not clear whether they are having an impact in her race against Democrat Bruce Braley, which appears to be close.
Ernst campaign spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel called the reference to the remarks “a desperate attempt to change the subject away from Braley’s liberal record.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese