The Republican Party needs six Senate seats in this U.S. midterm election to wrest control of the Senate from Obama's Democratic Party. And it looks like the GOP may accomplish the goal sooner and better than party projections following takeover wins in West Virginia, Arkansas, and South Dakota, previously held by Democrats, reports USA Today.
Shelly Moore Capito became the first female senator in the history of West Virginia when she defeated Natalie Tennant of the Democratic party, reports the International Business Times.
Although a heavy favorite long before election night, Capito and the GOP's victory in West Virginia marks the first time since 1956 that a Republican will represent the state in the U.S. Senate.
In Arkansas, Republican challenger Rep. Tom Cotton has unseated incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, giving the GOP the second Senate seat it needs for its goal, states International Business Times in another report.
The reports said that Cotton was consistently ahead of Pryor in state poll surveys since July. The Republican congressman was even leading the incumbent Democratic senator by eight points going into Election Day.
Meanwhile, over in South Dakota, former state governor Mike Rounds won a four-way race to replace retiring Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, to earn the third GOP seat in the Senate, reports the Huffington Post.
Rounds batted with Democrat Rick Weiland and Independent candidates Larry Pressler and Gordon Howie at the polls, and won convincingly, cites the report..
In its latest breaking news, Fox News is predicting that Republican Rep. Cory Gardner will defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, which would be the fourth seat for the GOP on the party's goal to control the Senate.
it has projected that Republican Steve Daines will also win the Senate race in Montana. That would give the GOP its fifth pickup of the needed six Senate seats.
What if GOP Gets Six Senate Seats?
So what will happen if indeed, and it looks quite imminent, the GOP gets the needed six Senate seats?
The Republicans will have control of the U.S. Senate for the first time in eight years.
That means rough sailing for the remaining two years of President Barrack Obama, who's a Democrat, in the White House, as far as enactment of needed laws are concerned. The President already had a good dose of that with a Republican-controlled Congress.
Slate was very candid in its assessment of the impact of the U.S. midterm elections when it said: "This previous Congress will go down in history as the least effective ever, since all it really did is block White House initiatives. A GOP majority in the Senate will probably mean more of the same, since they'll lack the supermajority needed to prevent Democratic filibustering of big items."
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