Word: jerseyed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sure enough, actual politics is proving the left-right spectrum to be inadequate. Three big off-year elections involved major candidates who were independent (New York City mayor and New Jersey governor) or third-party (the congressional election in New York, where the Conservative Party candidate forced out the Republican, who endorsed the Democrat). That's not to say "liberal" and "conservative" are useless, but they're not nearly enough. (See pictures of 60 years of election night drama...
...evening produced a sweep for the Republicans in the two most closely watched races. In New Jersey, a state that Barack Obama had carried by 15 percentage points last year, unpopular incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine fell to Republican Chris Christie, a former U.S. Attorney. It marked the first time in 12 years that New Jersey has elected a Republican statewide. In Virginia, Bob McDonnell, a former state attorney general, handily defeated Democratic State Senator Creigh Deeds for governor; meanwhile, GOP victories down the Virginia ballot brought to a halt the gains that Democrats had made over the past...
...Predictably, victorious Republicans tried to spin their wins in Virginia and New Jersey as a referendum on the man who, almost exactly a year before, had won both states handily in the 2008 presidential election. "This is the first time since 1997 that the Republican Party has swept all three top state offices in Virginia," GOP chairman Michael Steele crowed as the first results came in. "The Republican Party's overwhelming victory in Virginia is a blow to President Obama and the Democrat Party. It sends a clear signal that voters have had enough of the President's liberal agenda...
...fact, Obama still enjoys favorable approval ratings in both Virginia and New Jersey. And according to the exit polls, he wasn't much of a motivator for the relatively small number of voters who actually bothered to cast a ballot. In New Jersey, 60% said the President was not a factor in their decisions; among those who said he was, nearly as many were there to show their support (19%) as their opposition (20%) to Obama. In Virginia, the results were similar. Weighing far more heavily were concerns about the economy. (Read "What's Still Wrong with Wall Street...
...remains a valid foreign policy tool that denies resources to the Castros. "If we want to give the regime a lot of money to relieve the pressure, then we could have all the travelers in the world sitting in hotels smoking cigars or drinking Cuba libres," says Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, who calls that rum-and-Coke drink "an oxymoron." He insists that lifting the travel ban will do nothing to "create democracy or respect for human rights...