:00hour , hopefully we kick some demorat ass
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Republicans are looking to wound President Barack Obama's Democrats on Tuesday in three closely fought elections seen as barometers of a vital battle for Congress in 2010.
In the governor's race in Virginia -- where Obama caused a sensation last year in becoming the first Democratic presidential contender to win since 1964 -- Republican Bob McDonnell looks set to defeat Democrat Creigh Deeds.
New Jersey's Democratic governor Bob Corzine, meanwhile, faces a nail-biting finale in an ugly race against former Republican prosecutor Chris Christie, who is vying to overturn the state's traditional Democratic form.
A smaller but intriguing contest takes place in New York State's 23rd congressional district, where an outsider from the tiny Conservative Party could win an upset after campaigning to the right of the official Republican candidate.
The results will be closely watched -- and spun -- by both sides as a test of Obama's standing one year after his election and of the Republican Party's progress in returning from the political cold.
While little depends directly on Tuesday's outcome, the races are an opening salvo in 2010 midterm elections, when the entire House of Representatives, a third of the Senate and two thirds of gubernatorial posts are up for grabs.
A solid Democratic performance -- winning in New Jersey and New York -- would steady Obama's party at a time of bitter, partisan debate over health care, the recession and the war in Afghanistan.
However, Republican victory in New Jersey and the swing state of Virginia, as well as possibly New York, would hand the beleaguered GOP an important morale boost, University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato said.
"If the GOP should win both New Jersey and Virginia, then there will be a longer and more pro-Republican spin put on the off-off-year elections, and the commentary will last longer -- possibly enabling Republican candidate recruiters for 2010 to score some big catches," Sabato wrote on the Politico news website.
Obama and the Democrats are in a popularity slump 12 months after seizing control of Washington in the 2008 general election.
But Republicans have yet to show they have found a formula for their own future -- not just in 2010, but when it comes to the grand prize of the White House in 2012.
An internal struggle over whether to focus on the party's conservative base or to move to the center has been laid bare in the New York congressional race.
Big Republican guns, including rightwing darling Sarah Palin and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, broke ranks with their own hierarchy to support the Conservative, Doug Hoffman.
They argued that the official Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was too centrist and that Hoffman was closer to the party's core values.
The civil war ended dramatically on Saturday when Scozzafava withdrew from the race, as polls showed her in a distant third place, while Hoffman was neck and neck with Democrat Bill Owens.
Scozzafava's traumatic departure gave Hoffman a real chance of defeating his Democratic rival. But not all Republicans are happy.
GOP grandee Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, lambasted the way colleagues punished Scozzafava for not conforming to the party's right wing.
"This idea that we're going suddenly to establish litmus tests, and all across the country we're going to purge the party of anybody who doesn't agree with us 100 percent -- that guarantees Obama's reelection," Gingrich told the Fox News Channel.
Some Republicans, however, see their party successfully harnessing disenchantment over Obama, with first blood ready to be drawn Tuesday.
"Tuesday's election will provide the most tangible evidence so far of how strong a backlash is building and just how frightened centrist Democrats should be of 2010," former president George W. Bush's strategist Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
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Republicans are looking to wound President Barack Obama's Democrats on Tuesday in three closely fought elections seen as barometers of a vital battle for Congress in 2010.
In the governor's race in Virginia -- where Obama caused a sensation last year in becoming the first Democratic presidential contender to win since 1964 -- Republican Bob McDonnell looks set to defeat Democrat Creigh Deeds.
New Jersey's Democratic governor Bob Corzine, meanwhile, faces a nail-biting finale in an ugly race against former Republican prosecutor Chris Christie, who is vying to overturn the state's traditional Democratic form.
A smaller but intriguing contest takes place in New York State's 23rd congressional district, where an outsider from the tiny Conservative Party could win an upset after campaigning to the right of the official Republican candidate.
The results will be closely watched -- and spun -- by both sides as a test of Obama's standing one year after his election and of the Republican Party's progress in returning from the political cold.
While little depends directly on Tuesday's outcome, the races are an opening salvo in 2010 midterm elections, when the entire House of Representatives, a third of the Senate and two thirds of gubernatorial posts are up for grabs.
A solid Democratic performance -- winning in New Jersey and New York -- would steady Obama's party at a time of bitter, partisan debate over health care, the recession and the war in Afghanistan.
However, Republican victory in New Jersey and the swing state of Virginia, as well as possibly New York, would hand the beleaguered GOP an important morale boost, University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato said.
"If the GOP should win both New Jersey and Virginia, then there will be a longer and more pro-Republican spin put on the off-off-year elections, and the commentary will last longer -- possibly enabling Republican candidate recruiters for 2010 to score some big catches," Sabato wrote on the Politico news website.
Obama and the Democrats are in a popularity slump 12 months after seizing control of Washington in the 2008 general election.
But Republicans have yet to show they have found a formula for their own future -- not just in 2010, but when it comes to the grand prize of the White House in 2012.
An internal struggle over whether to focus on the party's conservative base or to move to the center has been laid bare in the New York congressional race.
Big Republican guns, including rightwing darling Sarah Palin and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, broke ranks with their own hierarchy to support the Conservative, Doug Hoffman.
They argued that the official Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was too centrist and that Hoffman was closer to the party's core values.
The civil war ended dramatically on Saturday when Scozzafava withdrew from the race, as polls showed her in a distant third place, while Hoffman was neck and neck with Democrat Bill Owens.
Scozzafava's traumatic departure gave Hoffman a real chance of defeating his Democratic rival. But not all Republicans are happy.
GOP grandee Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, lambasted the way colleagues punished Scozzafava for not conforming to the party's right wing.
"This idea that we're going suddenly to establish litmus tests, and all across the country we're going to purge the party of anybody who doesn't agree with us 100 percent -- that guarantees Obama's reelection," Gingrich told the Fox News Channel.
Some Republicans, however, see their party successfully harnessing disenchantment over Obama, with first blood ready to be drawn Tuesday.
"Tuesday's election will provide the most tangible evidence so far of how strong a backlash is building and just how frightened centrist Democrats should be of 2010," former president George W. Bush's strategist Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
