In the next week we'll begin to see the two parties narrowing their focus onto fewer races. It'll ultimately lead to some seats being traded for the opportunity to win more important ones. The basic choice as it comes down to national strategy: do you spend on the slate of seats to give yourself the best chance at the Senate or do you opt for critical Governor races instead?

If you were the one who had to choose your party's national strategy, would you pick a narrow majority in the Senate (51 seats depending on the Georgia runoff) or would you pick a sweep of the nation's most-competitive Governors races? If you pick the latter that means winning the governor's mansion in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Kansas, Georgia, Maine, Connecticut and Arizona. If you pick the Senate then you get the 51 Senate seats easiest to win. For the GOP that means their current seats plus WV/MT/SD/AR/LA/AK, for the Democrats it means only losing five of those six.

Some things to keep in mind: this class of Senate seats won't be up again until the presidential year of 2020, making some of them much easier or harder to win for a particular party. The Governor seats will be up again in 2018; the last time they'll be up for grabs before the country goes through redistricting again.

Governorships, of course.

Republicans potentially winning the Senate is irrelevant in the face of the White House occupant and the next likely occupant.

governor just so the dems take florida, i hate rick scott

How is it irrelevant, it will effect supreme court nominations. Republicans can be much more aggressive if they have the majority since they wont be perceived as little bitches for filibustering every nomination.

With the justices already signing clerks for the 2015 term it's unlikely that there will be another SCOTUS nomination during Obama's term unless one of them unfortunately passes away. If in the event of a Summer 2016 retirement the Republicans would predictably insist on the basis of the "Thurmond Rule" that the vacancy be filled by the next president. Though the Republicans couldn't afford to be seen as obstructing an Obama SCOTUS nomination anyway, whether they're in the minority or even the majority, because acting that objectionable in such a high-profile fight would doom them worse than the 2016 map will already.

As far as what a majority can get you outside of SCOTUS nominations, the answer is not much. Even under their best case scenarios the Republicans would max out at around 52 seats and even if they could get everyone in their caucus to magically agree on things (they won't, too many are vulnerable in 2016) they'd still have the procedural rules that they've been abusing for the last 7 years standing in their way. They'd either need 60 votes on legislation or once again look like total hypocrites by using a simple majority to change the chamber's rules. That, or they'd have to use budget reconciliation which would also make them look hypocritical after 2009 and 2010. There's also just some rules that they simply can't change, and the Democrats could choose to behave in the same manner that the Republicans have. That would slow the Senate to an even slower crawl than it has been operating at because the Republican caucus is much more fractured than the Democratic one.

I'll take a narrow Senate majority because Republican governors are generally not too bad, while the GOP in the senate are more ideological motivated and don't care about the impracticability of their ideas.



Do you think the Republican party has any qualms about being glaring hypocritical in conduct?

You have to be new at this

And if they win I say we give them the Obama treatment -- oppose for the sake of opposition even if it is something we agreed to before or wanted in the beginning.

This post was edited by Skinned on Sep 17 2014 01:46pm

Looking at their current standing it would appear there's a pretty overwhelming sense that Republican governors are a bad deal for a state. Many of them are running neck-and-neck, or even slightly behind, even with the large advantage of incumbency. The states mentioned in the OP are particularly down on their current Republican governors in some pretty red states. So many of the Republicans who were swept into power often with large majorities in state legislatures have no one else to blame for their current standing. Many will be defeated while only a few will squeak by.



Of course not, the depth of the GOP's serial hypocrisy is unmistakable. It's still a major consequence for them moving forward though if they conveniently pull an about-face now; on using reconciliation, on removing the filibuster, or on anything else. Some of their previous flip-flops were overshadowed or simply ignored because other feelings took precedent in the minds of the voters but this isn't 2010 anymore. People are even more disillusioned with government than they were then

Republicans could pay a huge price in 2016 if they gain a narrow majority and then try to exploit it after opposing things that are more popular when the Democrats had larger majorities. The GOP is already locked in for some Senate losses that cycle and they could sabotage their way back into the minority for several cycles after that.

It's not really hypocritical to follow precedent in a common law system. Yes, they can be upset that the Donkeys changed the rules. Yes, they can also go into "turnabout is fair play mode" and not be even remotely hypocritical.

Unfortunately for the Republicans that's not even remotely close to what they've done and how they would be viewed if they indeed conveniently changed their minds down the road on matters that they've spent years protesting uniformly and relentlessly. The Republicans weren't "following any precedent" when they laughably claimed last year that it was suddenly immoral (or even funnier, unconstitutional) to change a Congressional chamber's rules with a simple majority of that chamber; the very same thing that they attempted to do a few years earlier. They obviously aren't following any precedent in their ever-changing opinion on the use of budget reconciliation.

The only precedent that they believe in is IOIYAR/IOKIYAR, and they would be massacred by voters two years later if they attempted to use 51 or 52 votes in the Senate in a way that clued in voters to their many convenient about-faces. They would just be asking for a historic implosion rather than a course-correcting 2016 that sweeps out of office their accidental 2010 winners but that leaves them generally competitive in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

Yeah, you got that part right.

Bill Frist didn't change the Senate's rules. Harry Reid did. Harry Reid established the precedent.

And what you completely FAIL to grasp from my post is that it involves a hypothetical future scenario where Republicans would use "turnabout is fair play," not the stupid shit from the past you revived that fails to address the hypothetical at all.