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All Politics are Still Local: The Iraq War and the 2006 Midterm Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2008

Scott Sigmund Gartner  and
Gary M. Segura
Scott Sigmund Gartner
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
Gary M. Segura
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

Both scholars and pundits alike have attributed the Democrats' success in gaining control of the House and Senate in 2006 to their “nationalization” of the election and their success in connecting Republican candidates to both the war in Iraq and the highly unpopular George W. Bush presidency. The “election has been nationalized around two standards that could not be more unfavorable to the GOP: an unpopular war and an unpopular president” (Novak 2006). Many have gone so far as to say that the election results provide evidence that former House Speaker Tip O'Neil's famous aphorism, “all politics are local,” has been “swept aside” (Lambro 2006) and does not apply during wartime. “If one trend emerged this year when 435 House seats and 33 Senate seats were at stake, it was this: All politics are not local” (Israel 2006).We would like to thank Francisco I. Pedraza for his research assistance.

Type
FEATURES
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 95 - 100
Copyright
© 2008 The American Political Science Association

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