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Bouncing Stevens is only half the problem

by Ironman | July 29, 2008 at 8:18 PM
in

He makes a good point. We need to find a top-tier replacement for Ted Stevens. -Patrick

Ousting the sticky fingered Ted Stevens is rather obviously a GOOD IDEA.

But, its far from enough. Our track record in 2006 shows abysmal execution in getting good replacement candidates up on the ballot.

Needless to say, the ones we stuck by through think and thin got shown the door, too. But we failed to take advantage of our fresh start in many races through piss poor execution and planning.

 

TX 22. DeLay steps down after a questionable indictment from the Austin DA. And we get flummoxxed in court on whether DeLay moved out of the district thus creating a vacancy in nominee. We nominate a write in candidate with a long, hard to spell name. and ...., we lose a "hard R' seat.   

Texas 22
Updated: 11:21 a.m. ET
Democratic Lampson
76,782 52% 100% of precincts reporting votes by county not available
 
Republican Sekula Gibbs
61,949 42%

 

OH 18 : Bob Ney bails out before being sent off to jail as part of the Abramoff scandal. The OH GOP nominates a state senator who has a raft load of personal financial reverses. The voters in this hardscrabble district evidently wanted a congressperson more solvent than average, so.... we lose....badly!

Ohio 18
Updated: 11:17 a.m. ET
Democratic Space
125,810 62% 100% of precincts reporting votes by county not available
 
Republican Padgett
77,267 38%

  FL 16; Mark Foley finds texting dirty is rather incompatible with a family values campaign, so he stands down after nominations close. . Once again we are flummoxxed in court and can;t replace the candidate. ( the name on the machine stayed as Foley, even though he had been replaced as the nominee) The NRCC dithers instead of going all-in for the write-in candidate, (Joe Negron) who is actually a rather strong replacement.-- TLTL, he barely goes down 

  

Florida 16
Updated: 11:17 a.m. ET
Democratic Mahoney
115,506 49% 100% of precincts reporting votes by county not available
 
Republican Foley
111,102 48%
Full FL  
Independent Ross
6,512 3%

 

and the hits just keep on coming this year , as we consider the bizarre world of NY 13, where we replaced Cheato Vito Fossella with a retired financier who dropped dead just weeks after being nominated http://wap.wnbc.com/detail.jsp?key=485457&rc=ln_ne http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=district-NY-13

Now we know the NJ Democrats can readily remove scandal tarred incumbents from their ballots and replace them promptly with long time proven vote getters. Doesn't work for us, though. Us republicans are going to have to work a little smarter and harder to avoid simply getting the same result as looking the other way and letting Stevens lose on his own. 

Determining whether there is a primary candidate in the race who could potentially win is sorta Job 1. (then raise him a ton of dough, thankfully AK is a cheap media state) Doing the mechanics of getting someone else in the race if he or she can't win is Job 2.

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Comments

David Cuddy is a solid candidate....

Submitted by St. Louis Conservative on Tue, 07/29/2008 - 21:22.

.....with positions that would satisfy any conservative reformer.  I have no idea what the polling is like in the Republican primary (or even if there has been any), but a quick google search on the candidates leads me to believe that Cuddy is probably the strongest one.  The only downside is that he has never held elected office, and thus has very little name recognition.

The top priority here is getting Stevens off the ballot.  Next we need to get a solid conservative reformer on the ticket.  The heavy Republican tilt of Alaska should be able to deliver a win for the GOP senate candidate if we field a decent guy.

FL16, TX22

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 00:13.

lets face it, Delay bailed too late, he should have bowed out pre-primary. Likewise with Foley and FL16. The timing was bad.

TX22 could and should be a pickup with Pete Olson running a viable and strong campaign in this GOP-leaning district. I dont know about FL-16 - Is Negron running again?

It looks like he could take it back this year if he was.

The Dems managed to have candidates get into ethical problems, bail, and get replacements - the Torricelli/Lautenberg situation; they pulled out a victory from a mess.

Depending on how Stevens reacts the timing could be bad as well. If he suspends his campaign and/or resigns and the AK GOP rallies around the strongest alternative, we could yet pull it out. Here in August 1, the timing is not too bad for such a recovery plan.

It would take real leadership on the part of AK GOP, which is where we get to see if Palin is VP material.

Stevens = SMALL fraction of a BIG problem

Submitted by DC Rogue on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 13:34.

It's time for us all to dig ourselves out of thehole that many of our party leaders and Members of Congress (that many of us may have worked for or with and respected) have burried us in.

The last few years have been wrought with scandals...GOP scandals...one after another.  And each time we scratch our heads, find a way to blame it on the Democrats' obsession with taking the GOP down, praise whoever is the latest casualty for his "great service to his country" and then waive goodbye as he retreats to his district to make the big bucks lobbying, on radio, or through speaking engagements...or worse, heads off to jail.

I admire loyalty and have always been proud of the Republican party in that it's not a party that is going to throw someone under the bus as a result of an accusation or a not-so-serious mishap...HOWEVER...this is way bigger than loyalty, we are so past that now.  We need to focus on the future and what is important - we need to find a way to not be spending so much time defending.  We need a rebirth in a big way, and we don't have time to waste on arguing the small points, we need to agree that party leadership sucks, we need to agree that finding and securing GOOD candidates is priority number one, and we need to fight just as dirty as the Democrats.

This can't be the tea party that Senator McCain wants and it can't be the nose-up-in-the-air affair that Senator McConnell wants.

Quick laundry list, off the top of my head, of RECENT (within the last few years) unexcusable GOP mishaps, and I know I'm forgetting a few:

Rep. Duke Cunningham (CA)

Rep. Mark Foley (FL)

Sen. Larry Craig (ID)

Sen. David Vitter (LA)

Rep. Tom DeLAY (TX)

Rep. Vito Fossela (NY)

Sen. Pete Domenici (NM)

Rep. Bob Ney (OH)

Sen. Ted Stevens (AK)

I'm tired of defending dishonorable elected officials, aren't you?

 

It's the power, not the party

Submitted by Jeff Roberts on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 14:32.

The reason there have been so many scandals with Republicans is mainly due to the fact that the Republicans were running the show, and people who want to buy influence go to the people holding the power.  The Democrats had all kinds of scandals when they ran Congress, and that had a lot to do with why the Republicans took over in 1994.  I can guarantee you if the Democrats run Congresss for the next decade, you'll see a similar amount of scandals on their side.

The media does have a double-standard when it comes to Republicans and scandals, but it's silly to fight it.  As a party, we have to police ourselves.  If a Republican has credible ethical issues, the leadership needs to cut them off at the knees instantly. Some "scandals" are just hit jobs, but I think the leadership in the House and Senate are intelligent enough to discern between a real scandal and a Democrat smear. 

We should have give Stevens the boot a long time ago, but the leadership was too scared to take on such a senior Republican member.  Those days are over, the Republicans need to be in lockstep at removing bad apples.

British party turnover and the need for term limits

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 14:41.

This seems to happen in Britain too. The party in power gets 'tired' after about 12 years or so, and gets dragged down by a combination of exhaustion of agenda, leadership squabbling and various scandals/mis-steps.

This is another reason to support term limits. The worst offenders are the ones who want to stay longest (drunk on perqs and power) and the way to get them out is with term limits. If they are good politicians, they can find other jobs anyway and/or will come home after they have done what they could in the time alloted to them.

IMHO we should have term limits of 12 yrs in House and 18 yrs in Senate.

I'm with you 100% and I like to add one more to the list

Submitted by BOVI on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 14:34.

I truly believe that loyalty is one of the greatest virtues one can aspire to have, but loyalty is based on trust.  Trust that you will do the right thing and not turn on someone for personal gain or because that person is down at the time. Politicians deserve no such trust and no such favors if they are acting like dirt bags.  I would like to believe that were old enough to know when someone is getting railroaded and act responsibly, but when its their fault I would hope they would be loyal to us and do the honorable thing and resign (better yet be ethical and honest in the first place).

One more for the list.

Rep. Ken Calvert (CA)

Yes I am tired of it, but I never defended him and I never will. 

Please feel free to add to the dirtbag list.

 

 

Including Domenici with the

Submitted by Woolly Mammoth on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 21:27.

Including Domenici with the rest is ridiculous.  You would have a good point otherwise.