Primary election day . . .

Find me one quote, article, etc. to support your contention that the party would have supported Laffey. They all but called Laffey a child-molesting murderer in their ads in support of Chaffee and publicly disavowed Laffey. How they would have been able to turn around and support him is beyond me.

The reason the CFG supports Republicans is that it would be impossible to hold views the CFG likes and be a Democrat. In theory, could it happen? Sure. In reality, it won't. Kos had no ideological tests, only partisan ones.

But forcing Ford/McCaskill to spend time raising those funds takes away from time that could be spent campaigning, etc. And in a close race, a couple hundred thousand dollars can be the difference between winning and losing.

 

Pope - your takes on politics are usually pretty good, but I have to disagree with you on one point. I don't think that pouring money into Connecticut would hurt Democratic chances by definition because it would take money away from Democratic Senate candidates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Montana, etc. For what you are saying to be right (at least in my opinion), the amount the Democrats would spend would have to reduce the amount the Republicans will spend. In the contested races, while neither party would have an unlimited amount to spend, each party should have enough resources to wage a decent campaign. So long as you have enough money, it's a question of how well you spend it. There are examples of California multimillionaires (Al Chechi who ran for governor in the Democratic primary and Michael Huffington who ran for Senate as a Republican) who easily outspent their opponents and didn't win.

 

Had Lafferty won the primary, I think the RNC and the White House would have supported him in name. Candidates and their supporters say nasty things about each other during a primary and then frequently come together in the general election - come to the aid of the party sort of thing.

The reason they might not have supported Lafferty financially is because the Republican leaders might look at that like they were throwing money away. Use the Pennsylvania primary as an example. The White House would support Spector because he would be with them, say, 60 percent of the time. A Democratic senator from Pennsylvania might be with them 20 percent of the time.

But if Toomey defeated Spector in the primary, you can bet the Republican leaders would have done a heckuva lot to get Toomey elected. It's whatever you can do to put themselves in the best position.

 

I'm not quite sure what your argument is. I generally agree that money isn't the end-all-be-all, it can make the difference in an incredibly close race. For example, the RSCC is spending no money in the CT Senate race, which frees up money to be spent in other races, especially for negative ad campaigns. The DSCC is spending money trying to defeat Lieberman, which is money that isn't being spent in those races. Will that difference defeat a Ted Kennedy? Hell no. But in a 50/50 race like Talent/McCaskill, it just might be enough.

Had Laffey won, the RNC would have declared the race unwinnable and pulled all of their money out of RI.

 

Any Marylanders want to chime in on that Senate race? I'm watching, interested, from a great distance.

 

Dirk: Had Lieberman won the Democratic primary, the Republicans wouldn't have spent any money in the Nutmeg State. Indeed, a lot of the money Lieberman raises will probably come from contributors who give to the GOP.

My point was that however the Dems spend their money probably doesn't affect how the GOP will spend their money. Both parties, I would think, would give first priority to spending their money primarily to protect endangered incumbents because it's easier to raise $$ for incumbents.

Also, there are always unique local factors. Burns in Montana, despite the questions raised by his connections with Abramoff, probably won't have problems raising money but in a low population state like Montana, you probably can't spend that much money and at some point it would backfire and have a negative effect. New Jersey is unique because Menendez isn't a real incumbent in the sense that he has served a full term - it's also unique because it's difficult to spend money on TV because you are paying for advertising to a lot of people in New York and the Philadelphia area who aren't eligible to vote.