Based on Scott Rasmussen’s generic ballot polling, it’s looking fairly likely that Republicans will retake the majority in the House. I’d still put retaking the Senate as a longshot but still achievable. Here’s what Rasmussen’s generic ballot polling shows:

Republican candidates now have an eight-point lead over Democrats, their biggest lead of the year, in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Support for GOP candidates held steady over the past week, but support for Democrats slipped by a point.

That 8-point gap represents a 17 point swing this year. Democrats started the year with a 9-point gap on the generic ballot question. The 8-point gap represents the Republicans’ biggest gap in years.

The Democrats’ passing health care legislation won’t be forgotten, especially if it triggers a new round of layoffs and when it triggers higher taxes.

Groups representing smaller businesses say the threat of increased taxes and premiums could outweigh provisions intended to limit the impact on small employers. The Senate bill “will not only fail to reduce and control the constantly climbing health-care costs small-business owners face, but it will result in new and greater costs on their business,” said Dan Danner, head of the National Federation of Independent Business.

This legislation is about controlling people. Improving health care has nothing to do with it. Last week, when I interviewed Rep. Thad McCotter, I asked him how much the health care debate was hurting the economy. I prefaced the question by saying that labor cost uncertainty was causing businesses to not hire. His response was interesting, saying that it wasn’t just uncertainty driving business’s hiring hesitancy but also the worry that labor costs would be too high as a result of the Democrats’ health care legislation.

One of the campaign themes the GOP should employ is that the Democrats’ moderates all voted for bigger government rather than represent their constituents. That plays into this Rasmussen polling:

Sixty-six percent (66%) of U.S. voters prefer a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes over a more active government with more services and higher taxes. That’s the second highest finding of the year: In August at the height of the congressional town hall controversies over the health care plan, 70% felt that way.

Finally, Republicans should jump all over this opportunity:

Greg Sargent of The Plum Line has an interesting bit of strategy from Senate Democrats on how they’ll play healthcare reform in 2010. They want to force Republicans to say whether they support a full repeal of the bill, assuming it has passed.

“Republicans on the ballot next November who opposed the bill will be in the precarious position of telling voters they plan to rollback landmark health care reform which will have afforded coverage to hundreds of thousands in their state,” DSCC spokesman Eric Schultz emails.

“We absolutely intend to make Republicans look voters in the eye next November and make it clear they want to take affordable health care reform away from them,” Schultz continues, adding that they intend to press the case that “if it was worth filibustering” to Republicans, then surely it’s “worth repealing.”

I’d love hearing Democrats defend their votes to raise taxes, increase health insurance premiums and exploding the deficit while turning America’s health care system into a third world system.

Let’s ask them on the campaign trail why their so-called moderates voted just like self-described Socialist Bernie Sanders and such noted out-of-touch liberals as John Kerry, Babs Boxer and Chuck Schumer. Let’s emphasize the fact that there is no such thing as a true Democratic moderate, that there’s only people that sound like moderates until they morph into spineless wimps.

When we regain the majority in the House, then it’s time we started pressuring the remaining socialists in the Senate and that we started putting pressure on President Obama. If they think that their health care plan is so good, fine, let’s force them to defend it.

Finally, it’s time the Senate leadership actually got a few ruthless leaders. I’ve had enough of seeing Mitch McConnell getting rolled by a wimp like Harry Reid. What we need is a leader that won’t hesitate to put the pressure on Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin. In fact, we need someone who’d relish the day-to-day battle with these idiots.

Welcome to the revolution.

Technorati: Polling, Generic Ballot, Republicans, Campaigning, House, Senate, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Socialists, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Moderates, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative