Republican Primary

There are primaries today in Kansas, Missouri, and MIchigan. Election Journal will be on the scene in Michigan and Missouri to find election irregularities.

The key primaries, to my mind, are:

• KS-02: Former Congressman and conservative Jim Ryun faces State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins, a moderate. Ryun lost in 2006 and, while most conservative groups are supporting him very aggressively against Jenkins, there are concerns that he can't win a general election.
• MO-09. Kenny Hulshof is running for Governor and so Bob Onder and Blaine Luetkemeyer. The primary has focused on immigration. MO RTL has endorsed Luetkemeyer even though Onder was a leader in the cloning debate, and Onder has been endorsed by the Club for Growth.
• MO-GOV. Kenny Hulshof is in a primary against Michelle Steeleman. Ruffini has taken a position on this.
• MI-07. The question here is how well the DCCC's candidate Mark Schauer does against 2004 and 2006 nominee Sharon Reiner, an organic farmer. Republicans in the district and around Michigan tell me that Schauer can beat Rep. Tim Walhberg (R).
• MI-13. Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D) is in a 3-way primary. Her son is the mayor of Detroit who is facing perjury charges for lying in testimony about an affair that he was having and that he had used city tax-dollars to pay a settlement with a whistle-blower over. In addition, Kilpatrick and her son endorsed Hillary Clinton, which is undoubtedly a good issue on the ground.

I assume that there are good primaries at the state level. Please share in the comments.

It was eight years ago -- Februray 28, 2008, precisely -- when then Presidential candidate John McCain delivered a seering speech before a crowd of Virginia voters critical of some in the Republican establishment, and he named names. Then-candidate McCain faced a governor from Texas and son of a previous President, George W. Bush. The Republican nomination had not been decided and many in the religious right had decided their candidate was Bush.

One of the things that we hope to address at The Next Right is how to integrate all the excitement from the grassroots organizations from the Presidential primary. Last week, the energy behind Mike Huckabee's campaign in South Carolina resulted in Glenn McCall's election as South Carolina Republican National Commtiteeman.

Tomorrow, the editors of The Next Right will be casting our three votes for Amit Singh in the Republican Primary in VA-08. The grassroots energy behind Singh is a combination of Ron Paul supporters and NoVA Indian-Americans.

Our endorsement of Singh focuses on several issues:

• He has a real grassroots core.
• He is dedicated to small government. This is beyond question in a Ron Paul supporter.
• His position on the Iraq war is reasonably solid. More on this below.
• While we don't think that he would be likely to win a general against Jim Moran, clearly an embarassment to Congress and Northern Virginia, we believe that he can attract activists and support for the whole GOP ticket.
• Mark Ellmore's campaign has demonstrated a desperate dishonesty in the last couple of days that we find quite disturbing.

Read on after the jump.