Mediaboss Marketing

JONESBORO, Ark. After a long day crisscrossing Arkansas in a motorhome, Tom Cotton receives a rock stars welcome when he walks into the Craighead County Republican Headquarters in northeast Arkansas. He is there to thank volunteers who have been doggedly working the phones to get voters out to the polls.

"I've largely played the part I can play," he tells the crowd."Now, it's up to you."

The work Cotton has done since he declared he would challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor has him going into Election Day with a head of steam. The latest Real Clear Politics average has him up 7 points, a lead outside the margin of error.

Arkansans are ready for a change in Washington, Rep. Cotton told Fox News. They know that Senator Pryor has been supporting the Obama agenda 93 percent of the time and that doesnt reflect [Arkansas'] conservative values.

Cotton has relentlessly pushed the point that a vote for Pryor is a vote to continue the agenda of President Obama. The president is very unpopular in Arkansas. Mitt Romney won this state in 2012 by 24 points.

Throughout the race, Pryor has kept his distance from the president, never asking him to come and campaign for him. At the same time, Pryor was happy to welcome native son Bill Clinton to the Arkansas campaign trail.

In recent days, Pryor has gone farther than he ever has to put daylight between himself and the president, telling Fox News that the biggest liability in his re-election bid is Obama.

Well, you know, he has been a drag.I mean, I am just going to be honest about that, Pryor said.People here know that I have had my fair share of disagreements with him. You can look at gun control issues, Keystone pipeline. I have never supported one of his budgets.

To Cotton, Pryors conversion is too little, too late.He wonders why the senator wasnt distancing himself from the presidents agenda for the past six years.

Senator Pryor can talk about being an independent, but hes voted with Barack Obama 93 percent of the time, Cotton told Fox News.

Read more:
Republican holds momentum in Arkansas Senate race, Dem acknowledges Obama a 'drag'

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) One potentially delicious irony if as widely expected Republicans take control of the Senate is that President Barack Obama, whose low approval ratings may cost the Democrats their Senate majority, will connive with the new congressional majority to pass legislation opposed by most in his party.

These could include approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, fast-track authority on free trade agreements in Asia and Europe, cuts to benefits in Social Security and Medicare, and tax reform that lowers rates for corporations and high earners with only nominal compensation in closing of loopholes.

See the latest on the midterms from MarketWatch.

While Obama will certainly use his veto to prevent any substantial damage to his health-care reform, there is a growing uneasiness among Democrats that he will be amenable to Republican legislation that Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada has so far successfully blocked in deference to his view of what the partys base wants.

There has never been much love lost between Obama and congressional Democrats. Early in his first term, Obama said more than once he would be willing to anger his own party in the interests of getting bipartisan legislation passed.

The subsequent obstructionism by Republicans in Congress especially the toxic and often irrational debate over Obamacare obscured the fact that it was often Democrats who thwarted the presidents agenda.

For all the right-wing rhetoric about Obamas socialism and Marxism, progressive Democrats have consistently bemoaned his centrist read conservative instincts, especially on economic issues.

If Obama has resigned himself under a divided Congress to playing golf and putting his agenda on hold, he may see a chance with Republican majorities in both houses to check off some boxes for a more ample legacy.

Nor will he necessarily worry that making the Republicans look good will hurt the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, because, at the end of the day, there is little love lost between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In short, a president focused on his legacy and his post-presidential speaking fees may feel little loyalty to Democratic principles he has never shown much conviction about.

Read more here:
Darrell Delamaide's Political Capital: Why Obama might welcome a Republican majority

With an unpopular president and Republicans gaining momentum in the run-up to the US congressional elections, a conservative takeover of the Senate appears entirely possible. Analysts are divided over what a Republican victory would mean for President Barack Obama's ability to govern.

While some argue that Republicans - given their newly gained power - will be forced to finally cooperate with Obama, others think the party's conservative base will prevent that, especially in light of the 2016 presidential elections.

Republican control of Congress could have implications for domestic policy, such as trying to roll back Obama's health-care reform. But it could also make it much harder for Obama in the foreign policy arena as Congress has the so-called power of the purse and the Senate has to ratify international treaties.

DW asked two scholars to weigh in on how a Republican victory could affect five key international issues.

Fight against IS

"There will be a tougher line," said Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. Republican rhetoric would become harsher and criticism of the Obama administration's handling of the fight against "Islamic State" militants would increase - especially if things get worse in Syria and Iraq.

Both Bob Barker, the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee should the Republicans gain the majority and John McCain, the key figure on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate, have long supported sending more sophisticated weapons to the Free Syrian Army and to the moderate Syrians, said Norman Ornstein, residential scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

"But that does not mean that you are going to see a significant drumbeat from Republicans in Congress for troops in the region as they say in the clichd boots on the ground," noted Ornstein. "That would be extraordinarily unpopular with Americans."

A Republican Congress could make a deal with Iran more tricky

Nuclear deal with Iran

Read this article:
Republican win would worsen Obama's foreign policy pains

Will the Republican Party enjoy a wave election in 2014? Here are some metrics that can help you determine the answer as you follow the returns Tuesday night.

The GOP has the upper hand in this midterm election cycle because it's the sixth year of a presidency and a pretty unpopular one at that. Historically, parties that don't control the White House tend to chalk up a lot of gains in midterm elections such as this one.

Still, when measuring the extent of a wave election, it's important to keep a few things in mind. First, a party's electoral success in one realm say, congressional races might be undercut by failures elsewhere, such as in the governorships. And second, the true strength of a wave is measured less by victories in places where the surging party is already strong, but more by victories in states that are either competitive or that actually lean toward the opposing party.

The following 10 factors are designed to measure how broad a potential Republican wave turns out to be on a national scale not just in U.S. Senate and House races, but in governorships, state legislative chambers, state attorney general races, ballot measures and state Supreme Court races.

We've included a rating system to gauge how well each party did once the results are tallied. The questions are designed to gauge aspects of the election deeper than just the surface results. Are Republicans winning in Democratic-leaning areas rather than in solidly Republican areas only? Does a party win both national and state-level races in the same state, or do voters split their ballots?

After settling on 10 key questions, we set a baseline for what's "expected" based on current analysis by electoral handicappers and established a sliding scale that awards more credit to a party for exceeding the conventional wisdom once the ballots are finally counted. After the election, we'll add these all together and see how strong the wave ended up being. Fire up those calculators; here we go:

1. How many reasonably competitive Senate seats does the GOP win in states won by President Barack Obama in 2012?

Races are: Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, New Hampshire, Virginia.

0: Weak night for Republicans; 1: medium night for Republicans; 2: strong night for Republicans; 3: very strong night for Republicans; 4 or more: extremely strong night for Republicans.

2. By how many cumulative percentage points do GOP Senate candidates in competitive races exceed Mitt Romney's 2012 percentage in that state?

See the rest here:
Perspective: A scorecard for election night

Did Chris Christie react to the charge that he was using his power as chair of the Republican
Did Chris Christie react to the charge that he was using his power as chair of the Republican Governors Association to undercut Scott Walker #39;s reelection bid?

By: Ny78121dsfd

Read the rest here:
Did Chris Christie react to the charge that he was using his power as chair of the Republican - Video