Republicans may have gambled away the senate

[Awsi Dooger]

As a Las Vegan since the '80s I can tell you gamblers are an opinionated lot and hardly reluctant to express it. That may have carried over to the voting booths on Tuesday.

Remember the anti-internet gambling measure that Frist attached to the port security bill at the last minute? I'm hardly implying it was a huge national factor, but with margins like 2800 in Montana and 7000 in Virginia, it could easily have contributed to the difference. It certainly infuriated internet gamblers, who number in the millions.

I have sampled gambling sites since the bill was passed and there was daily outrage, and threads imploring people to contact friends and vote against every Republican. Jim Leach of Iowa 2 was the sponsor of the bill in the House. He was defeated.

Bettors were particularly concerned that Republicans, if they had maintained control, were intent on rewriting the 1961 Wire Act, and make it a felony to gamble over the internet.

Here's a sample opinion from the Gaming Industry forum of Covers.com, from a thread titled, "GOP to pay heavily on Tuesday."

http://www.covers.com/postingforum/post01/showmessage.aspx?spt=9&ur=142370433?=587482

"I hope the republicans were listening. I have supported republicans since the mid eighty's primarily for a strong national defense. Their attack on internet gambling is outrageous. I notified every republican org. I could think of and told them that they were losing two votes from me on the 7th. I won't vote for them that's one. I vote for the democrats they just lost two votes. I know there are others out there that feel the same as I do, the article proves that."

This is the article he referred to: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GAMBLING_POLITICS?SITE=WAOLY&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-11-03-11-03-08

NEW YORK (AP) -- A Republican-sponsored effort to clamp down on Internet gambling may turn out to be a bad bet for the GOP.

<snip>

"I've been a loyal Republican for over 30 years, and I'm quitting the party I once loved," said Jim Henry, 55, who lives outside San Francisco. "Not because of the Mark Foley scandal or Middle East policy. But because the Republican Party wants to stop me from what I love to do: play poker over the Internet."

<snip>

"I've talked with Republicans all over the country, and they all understand that this is a theft of our liberty," said lifelong Republican Alan Sheldon, 61, of Loveland, Ohio, whose grandmother taught him how to play poker at the age of 4.

Sheldon, who describes himself as a conservative Christian, said he would not vote Republican next week because of the new gambling law.

"I suspect that people who actually do a lot of Internet gambling ... they're going to be turned off by this," said David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. "That's going to hurt Republicans."

<snip>

The Poker Players Alliance, an advocacy group in Washington with more than 120,000 members, said it has been flooded with angry e-mails from libertarian organizations and Republicans disavowing the law. And the group is letting its members know how their representatives voted.

Alliance President Michael Bolcerek hopes they vote Tuesday and "share their outrage with Congress."

[lapfog_1]

1. I play online (as do many others here)..

and I play in cardrooms in CA... and I can tell you that many, many players that were either apolitical before or absolute republicans... all voted Democratic this time. It was an issue that pissed MANY of them off.

Since the bill was signed, many online cardrooms, like PartyPoker, have banned all US players from their cash games and tournaments... at any given time, partypoker had 100,000+ players online, and a large majority were US players. I'm sure it made an impact.

Congress should repeal that part of the law... or better yet, allow online betting and regulate it (hell, even tax it).

I know, there are many other things to do, but if they did this one, the Dems would get a rock solid base of over a half million voters that they probably wouldn't get otherwise. And as for alienating anyone, allowing online gambling would only alienate the evangelicals, and the Dems aren't likely to get more of their vote anyway.

[fasttense]

2. Rove's game of slicing up the voters and appealing to

slim minorities in each segment of the population to barely obtain 51%, may have ended up slicing away too many voters. The gamblers were angry at the repukes, the liberals were angry, the Democratic voters were angry, the peace movement was angry, the immigrants were angry, the fiscal conservatives were angry, the military was angry, the constitutional lawyers were angry, the seniors were angry, the college bound were angry, the unions were angry, the smaller government advocates were angry and the list goes on. I'm surprised anyone voted for a repuke. Bushes base the haves and have mores is only 1 percent of the voters.

[Chulanowa]

3. Odd mindset on this fella...

"I hope the republicans were listening. I have supported republicans since the mid eighty's primarily for a strong national defense. Their attack on internet gambling is outrageous."

He's supported them on their *coughcoughcough* strong national defense, but dammit, he's upset about hte poker?

Maybe he's leaving out that he finally realized that Republican's stance on national defense amounts to mauling the military and pissing off the world at large. But then, maybe not. In which case I really pity this guy.

[Awsi Dooger]

5. I agree, but I wasn't looking for brilliant reasoning

As lapfog mentions in the first reply, and the poster on Covers.com says, this is a case of vote switching, more often than not. It's not merely Republican loyalists staying home. The angry gamblers turn around and vote Democratic. So I've been loving every thread and post.

It's like a mini Diebold.

[Hieronymus]

4. Some republicans have expressed that had Bush not said

he'd keep Rumsfeld before the election, the republicans might have kept the senate. Infighting amongst the wingnuts. :applause: