Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
CFIF on Twitter CFIF on YouTube
More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

Liberty Update

CFIFs latest news, commentary and alerts delivered to your inbox.
Pax Republicana: GOP Now Dominates the American Political Landscape Print
By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, November 06 2014
The simple truth is that this year's midterms amounted to a harsh rejection not only of Obama, but his entire party and the policies they represent.

In 2010, Barack Obama labeled his election setback a "shellacking." 

This week, he petulantly avoided offering a description of what happened when asked by reporters. 

Perhaps we can help.  How about a bright red tattoo of the word "Rejected" on his forehead? 

His apologists naturally struggled to dismiss the electorate's verdict as "anti-incumbent" or even "progressive" because voters in some states approved minimum wage propositions.  But those rationalizations are transparently false.  Almost every single incumbent Republican won reelection, seats held by retiring Republicans were retained by other Republicans and minimum wage laws are a comparatively mundane issue dating back to the 1930s. 

The simple truth is that this year's midterms amounted to a harsh rejection not only of Obama, but his entire party and the policies they represent. 

And today, the Republican Party dominates the American political landscape in a manner not witnessed since the 1920s. 

The U.S. Senate provided the most obvious and scrutinized barometer of American sentiment.  Republicans had not unseated more than two sitting Democratic Senators since Ronald Reagan's election wave in 1980.  This year, however, Republicans have already unseated three - in North Carolina, Arkansas and Colorado - with two more in Alaska and Louisiana once the Alaska votes are certified and Louisiana conducts its runoff later this year.  Moreover, Ed Gillespie trails incumbent Democrat Mark Warner by just 10,000 votes out of over 2 million cast in Virginia, and it's possible that it also swings.  That would make a total of six. 

In addition to those six, Republicans flipped four other Democratic Senate seats - West Virginia, Iowa, South Dakota and Montana - so they could, possibly, finish with a net gain of ten seats and a 55-45 majority. 

That is a resounding mandate, and a humiliating rejection for Obama, Harry Reid and Democrats. 

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, the nature of modern districting and the Republicans' enormous 2010 gains (which they have maintained since) rendered substantial new gains unlikely.  But that's exactly what they achieved.  The GOP added a surprising 16 seats to their existing majority, leaving them with 249 and the largest majority they've held since the 1920s.  Considering the media's constant effort to emphasize the Republican House's unpopularity, a gain like that speaks volumes in terms of the electorate's political mood. 

A span across the 50 individual states, however, places today's GOP dominance in particularly vivid relief. 

After all, some might otherwise dismiss the House and Senate results as a vote of confidence on Obama personally in the sixth year of his floundering administration. 

Entering Tuesday, Republicans already held nearly 60% of governorships across the country.  That alone served to rebut the post-2012 narrative that the party was on the ropes in the Age of Obama.  The party had to defend 22 states, including 19 incumbents, in a supposedly "anti-incumbent" election.  Yet the GOP actually increased its total from 29 to 31, so they now hold 62% of all gubernatorial seats.  That includes reelection in states like Wisconsin and Florida, where liberals threw all of their resources toward unseating Scott Walker and Rick Scott, respectively.  In fact, in Wisconsin they resorted to legally sleazy tactics to persecute Walker supporters through the force of government and censorship, all for naught. 

Amazingly, the Republicans also won governors' races in deep-blue Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois. 

It's particularly noteworthy that, for all of the "war on women" and "war on people of color" rhetoric hurled at Republicans, they actually outdistance Democrats in terms of gubernatorial ethnic diversity.  South Carolina's Nikki Haley is an Indian-American woman, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal is an Indian-American man, Susana Martinez in New Mexico is a Latina and Brian Sandoval in Nevada is Latino.  In contrast, Democrats can't claim a single Latino or black governor. 

But perhaps the most vivid illustration of Republican dominance nationwide is provided by their party's control of state legislatures nationwide. 

Before Tuesday of this week, the GOP already controlled 59 of 98 legislative houses with partisan designations.  After Tuesday, that number increased to 67 after they gained control even in such "blue" states as New York, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada and Maine.  Additionally, Republicans control both legislative chambers and the governor's seat in nearly half of all American states - 24 in total.  That includes supermajorities in 16 legislatures nationwide.  In contrast, there are only 5 states out of 50 in which Democrats control both legislative houses and the governor's seat. 

Together, those numbers demonstrate a Republican dominance that has largely escaped media note in recent years.  That refutes the popular and media myth of liberal ascendancy over the past decade. 

It also provides conservatives and libertarians reason for optimism that the state of American political affairs is far better than they probably realized. 

Notable Quote   
 
Happy Easter!…[more]
 
 
— From All of Us at CFIF
 
Liberty Poll   

Do you believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately reject the new Biden administration automobile emissions rule as beyond the scope of administrative agency authority?