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Primary election day . . .

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by D-Backs Hack, Sep 12, 2006.

  1. D-Backs Hack

    D-Backs Hack Guest

    There was an election of some sort recently where Lamont closed pretty good against Lieberman, wasn't there?
     
  2. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    Rove is so desperate to keep a GOP incumbent he unleashed the smear hounds on Laffey. Matthews showed a couple of them.
     
  3. Webster

    Webster Well-Known Member

    I just voted in NYC, in which there were two blowout races (Hillary for Sen. and Spitzer for Gov.) and one contested race (Attorney General). Besides my 13 month old daughter, there wasn't anyone at the polling place except for the workers. They said that it was the worst turnout that they had ever seen.
     
  4. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    The White House has a policy that they always support incumbents. This is a virtual repeat of Specter v. Toomey in 2004 and the WH came down hard in favor of Specter, even though Toomey would have not broken ranks as much as Snarlin Arlin does.
     
  5. terrier

    terrier Well-Known Member

    Joyful tidings from the Ocean State - Linc Chafee has pulled out a primary win over a guy Chris Matthews donned his kneepads for two weeks ago.
    My state stood up to Club for Growth. The independents turned out for Linc. Problem is, even though Laffey gave a gracious enough concession speech, most of his supporters would rather have their fingernails ripped off than vote for Chafee in November.
    One sad note: my mayor, who takes campaign contributions from mobsters and basically says screw you"to anyone who asks about it, won the Dem primary for secretary of state. And Patrick Kennedy made plenty of robocalls for him. Guess I'm voting for two more Republicans in November.
     
  6. Flying Headbutt

    Flying Headbutt Moderator Staff Member

    But Toomey might not have even won the general election. It's not like the Dems put up a great challenger, but he was a good speaker and said the things a lot of Dems wanted to hear in 2004, in a state that Kerry won. Toomey is either to the right of, or in the general viscinity of Rick Santorum. Politically, that isn't a good place to be in Pa right now. Santorum will find that out two months from now. Toomey would have just found that out first.
     
  7. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    You're basically making the same argument that the GOP made in favor of Chafee.
     

  8. All nonsense, Your Holiness.
    The Club For Growth is as interested in electing Republicans as Kos is in electing Democrats. (When either one endorses across the aisle, give me a call.) CFG is interesting in electing ITS KIND of Republicans, which is a distinction without a difference.
    The Democratic establishment supported Lieberman all through the primary campaign. He lost. Now it supports the candidate who won the Democratic primary. Color me shocked.
    There is no zero-sum game in political fundraising. There's no salary cap. If you want to worry about people sucking up the available money, then you want to look at people like Hillary, who has eight or 10 million in the bank for an election that she is going to win by about 45 percentage points.
     
  9. terrier

    terrier Well-Known Member

    Boy, is the conservative punditocracy pissed at my home state today. And if you listen to Boston "sports" talk radio, Dennis and Callahan sounded like we had just sent bin Laden to the Senate. Callahan said he would rather give the Democrats the House and Senate now than let Chafee ever set foot in there again.
    Poor Gerry needs a hand from Ann Coulter...literally.
    The funny thing is, if the GOP was in a better position nationally and was thinking about adding seats instead of just fighting to keep a majority, the NRSC would've backed Laffey.
    I'm voting for Linc, but my money would be on Sheldon Whitehouse in November - there's just too much bitterness among Laffey backers, and only a united GOP can win a statewide race here.
     
  10. Are you serious? If that dunce is willing to make that trade -- Linc for a Democratic Congress -- I'm all for it. Let's do it now.
    It will be interesting to see if Whitehouse can make some hay out of tying Chaffee to all that help he got from Rove and the current R power brokers.
     
  11. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    To call what the CFG does a distinction without difference is plainly wrong. CFG only wants what it considers pro-business/anti-tax conservatives, a group that certainly does not include Linc Chafee. They are completely unconcerned about the overall strength of the party and have shown a strong streak to take down "more electable" moderate candidates that the party favors. Kos wants Democrats in power, period. End of story. If he was truly concerned with ideological purity, he would be a committed Feingold for President backer, instead of flirting with supporting Mark Warner. How intraparty battles help his cause, I don't know.

    You might be "shocked" by the idea that the Dems would support their nominee, but Rove/Dole/the RNC made no bones about it: it was Linc Chafee or bust. If Laffey had won, they would have completely pulled their support from RI. So unlike the Dems, the party was in no way complicit with the challenge.

    In theory, you are correct...there is no salary cap. But every dollar that goes toward is also a dollar that could be used to put Claire McCaskill, Harold Ford and Bob Menendez over the top. Where that dollar is spent is a zero sum game.
     

  12. Repeating the same arguments does not make them correct.
    The RNC would have lined up with Laffey. They'd have held their nose, but they would have done it. To push the Lieberman analogy fully over the fliff, Chaffee would not have run as an "Independent Republican" if he'd have lost, and there would have been no Republican senators lining up with him in that quest, and no Democratic money coming in to support Linc's principled stand. This is not the case in Connecticut.
    CFG wants to push the Republican party to the right. In that interest, it lines up regularly against Republican moderates, but it wants to elect Republicans no less than Kos does Democrats. It just does so less regularly. For the purposes of your Lieberman argument, this is indeed a distinction without a difference.
    Campaign money is not a zero-sum game. Period. Lamont is not taking a nickel away from Ford or McCaskill that they cannot raise themselves elsewhere.
     
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