Saturday, September 30, 2006

Analysis: Who do you think will control the House and/or Senate after the November elections?

FOXNEWS.COM HOME > POLITICS
Former Rep. Mark Foley Leaves D.C. in Hurry After E-Mail Scandal
Saturday, September 30, 2006
WASHINGTON — This time there were no tortured explanations, no heels dug in, no long, slow drip of revelation or fight for redemption.

Republican
Rep. Mark Foley, of Florida, just up and quit after his e-mails expressing undue interest in a 16-year-old male page were exposed to the nation. Less than six weeks from a tough election for Republicans who control an already ethically tainted Congress, the more common stick-it-out approach to scandal was cast aside.

"Resigning leaves your attackers nowhere to go," said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant. "If this had dragged on, it could have sucked Republicans into the vortex of scandal."

8 comments:

BrandonSh said...

As much as I want the Democrats (or Libertarians for that matter) to take control of the House and Senate in the coming election, I think the Republicans may maintin control. It seems that, as of late, the public has been siding with the conservatives on foreign policy, the war on terror, etc. And since the media basically covers nothing but the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and the other various tensions in the middle east, the Republicans will take advantage of it and use it to gain victory in the House and Senate.

Oh the humanity.. : )

Dain said...

We are entering the last month before the election, and this is the time when both sides start playing their trump cards. Though it is a toss up, I am confident that the Republicans will retain the Senate. Though I expect the Dems to make significant gains in the Senate, They simply need too many seats to take control.

The House is a different matter. I would like to see the Democrats take control, and I think there is a very good chance that they can pick up the 15 seats they need. The Dems will certainly gain some seats in the House, and I think there is enough anger at Republican management that they can pick up those seats.

Looking to the future though, it might be better if they only picked up 13 seats. They 'stay the course' approach hasn't produced much good news in the last two years, and if things continue as they are it is very possible that the Democrats could take the Presidency, House, and Senate come 08.

tonileep said...

I believe that the Rebublicans will remain the control over the House of Representatives. Even though with the recent controversy over Foley, I still believe that the Rebublicans have a chance on regaining control over the House of Representatives. The Democrats, however, do have a chance, considering they only need to pick up 15 more seats to gain control. But I think that the Rebublicans will just pass by...barely. I do believe that the Rebublicans will have control in the Senate because Democrats need too many seats in order to take control away from the Rebulicans.

Megan B said...

As we get even nearer to the elections, the races in which parties feel they may be able to acquire or hold on to seat to give their party the majority in either the house or senate seem to get closer by the minute. Most of these were predicted to be toss ups anyway, but with new polls coming out almost weakly most show their own margin of error is greater than any lead a candidate may momentarily enjoy. Over all the races thought to be “where it counts” the polls have proven to be close. It will be interesting to see how the strategies of both Republican and Democratic campaigns play out, too see if republican can hold on the their seats with scandals and controversies over corruption, that the public and media are demanding answers to, such as the Foley scandal. Or if the new highly publicized book “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward will have an impact against the republican, many of whom are trying to down play their support for the Bush administration, especially the war in Iraq and war on Terror. In the end I think the democrats may pick up a few more seats, but will come short of gaining the majority. This would make the houses even closer than they are already between majority and minority, and may cause even more heated debates on major legislation, since swaying the opinion of only a few representative or senator could decide the future of a bill.

Megan B said...

Since there is a lack of questions that I have not answered, I have created one of my own. The questions is: Do you think that the office of the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, properly handled the issue with Congressman Foley sending inappropriate messages to a page?

I believe that the Speaker and his office did not take proper disciplinary measures, when they first were informed of this issue. It has come out that they may have known about Foley's misconduct with pages for more than a year. Why is it just coming out now, if they knew about a year ago? The Speaker has defended himself saying that he took what he thought was proper action, but maybe there actually wasn't the disciplinary actions take that we are told there was if this is new news. Maybe it wasn’t a year ago when the Speaker’s office was informed of this, but it still seems a bit hypocritical coming from candidates that are supposedly for stiffer punishments for criminals, and "Law and Order" to sit back and not do any thing about an issue as potentially damaging to their image as this. I would also like to point out that Foley was not pressured to resign, but decided he did not want to make himself an issue and resigned on his own. Foley also had maintained his place on the committee that is supposed to protect children on the internet. I don’t think this shows that the Speaker and other officials are/were doing their utmost to protect public safety.

BrandonSh said...

Although I previously believed the Republicans would maintain control without contest I think there is a higher possibility of Democratic control ever since the Mark Foley story came into play. I still think it's more probable that the Republicans will stay in power but the races will definately be closer, and the races that were close to begin with may go the Democrats way and give them Congress. As of now it could go either way.

Mr. Bretzmann said...

Several weeks ago, I would have said that the Democrats will barely take control of the House and not come close in the Senate. The mood of the country seems to continue to turn against incumbent Republicans in many areas. Now, I think the Democrats will pick up 5 seats in the Senate (one short of control) and about 19 in the House.

Mr. Bretzmann said...

An explanation: There are four contested senate seats that the Democrats seem to have a strong hold on. I think they will pick up the VA seat, but I don't think they will pick up MO or TN, although both will be very, very close. I think this is an election where we will see a lot of change, but when voters go into the booth, it will be two more weeks from the Foley scandal, Saddam will be in the news and it will show progress (unless they postpone the verdict again), and most importantly, the Republicans are much more prepared to do campaign battle than the Democrats were in 1994 (which could be in the back of voters' minds when standing alone with the voting pen--security vs. "throw the bums out"). In the House, I just picked a number that was higher than the 15 needed, but not over 20 (which would be seen as a huge change in control). Remember that gerrymandering, incumbancy, and constituent service count for a lot in getting reelected.