Home » Primary day

Comments

Primary day — 32 Comments

  1. Some heavy hitters like Krauthammer and Michael Medved are saying O’Donnell is the wrong person, and that Castle is a shoo-in and we need the seat.

    Apparently O’Donnell has major negative baggage.

    But something in me wants her to win anyway. Liberals don’t like her either. That tells me she is the best person to have.

  2. Up here, I am pleased with most of the Republican nominees and feel I can support them in the general. I very much like Kelly Ayotte and Richard Ashooh. I’d like to be in Jennifer Horn’s district.

    Of note to national readers. Chris Sununu, son of John I, brother of John II, has entered his first political race for Executive Council. He is another science-trained Sununu (MIT Environmental Engineer) – science is sorely lacking in most politicians.

  3. AVI – I wouldn’t trust an environmental engineer from MIT (or anywhere) as far as I could throw him – and not even that far.

    Whatever is such a thing? What conceit does one of those high-brows suffer under, and what tortures are they planning for us hoi polloi?

    As far a science lacking in politics, 2) we had Bill Frist and he was maybe the worst majority leader EVER!; 2) I think science is as sorely lacking in science these days, even more than it is in other fields (but that’s just my hunch).

    Anyway, where are you located? Will it go Repub or Dem in November?

  4. I heard an interview that a radio guy named Gaffney did with O’Donnell and the woman lied, she just plain lied. It gave me a bad feeling about her.

  5. Just wondering, Mike Mc., how much trouble did you take to find out what environmental engineers actually do before “tossing them under the bus”, as it were?

    I just hope that if Chris Sununu ever advises a president on judicial appointments, he’ll be more cautious than his father, who the first President Bush that Souter would be a “home run” for conservatism.

  6. Mike Mc. Says:
    September 14th, 2010 at 2:58 pm

    You ought to have heard Mark Levin tonight at the beginning of his show. He ripped the Republican establishment and pundits a new one.

    He has been an outspoken supporter of O’Donnell for months now, and that’s good enough for me. Yesterday I heard Medved talking about that race, and his voice positively dripped with condescension for anyone who might consider voting for O’Donnell. I wanted to reach through the radio and smack him.

    Also, today I heard a radio ad for Castle which said, “According to media reports…” before launching into a litany of terrible things O’Donnell supposedly did.

    “According to media reports…” Well, isn’t that special! I wonder whose side they’re on?

    I’m not in Delaware, but I hope she wins. The Republican establishment is scared to death of her.

  7. I may be forced to vote for a RINO in the general election, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to vote for one in the primary.

  8. Do we really need the same old tired professional politicians?

    I don’t know if O’Donnell can win, but I’m not from Delaware; let them decide if she is the candidate they feel can best represent them.

    Who knows, maybe we’ll get a few independently-minded legislators who are beholding to the people and to no one else. Perhaps the Delaware Republicans feel they have that in O’Donnell.

    We don’t need a GOP landslide, all we need is a few good Republicans and a House capable of issuing subpoenas.

    I’m pretty sure we’ll get that.

  9. James Drake,

    If the name is that obscure that a person of normal intelligence does not know what one does then it is a rock-solid certain bet that they are even worse than I suggested.

    Evil hides. Evil is cloudy. Evil is obscure. Evil puffs itself up by titles and things. I “know” with a high degree of certainty that an “Environmental Engineer” is rotten = the person and the field – just because of the name.

    The best face guess is that it has something to do with engineering clean building environments. I somehow doubt it. I rather imagine these are the Nazi who over-regulate things like laundromats with respect to water consumption.

    The principle holds, however, and is almost never wrong. I may be wrong, but the principle is not: If normal average people don’t know what a person does by the mere title, then the person does evil (properly understood).

    Period.

  10. A brilliant PJTV Video by Bill Whittle on “the congressperson” – a pathetic animal that is ruining us decent people.

    His thesis is that the whole idea of “public service” is a conceit. These people of privilege and luxury are the least talented and most insecure Americans there are. They do not serve, they abuse, they take, they corrupt, they ruin.

    They add almost nothing, except unlimited pain and misery.

    Throw them all out, as a principle, is his prescription.

    I agree. We need to recalibrate this machine and let them know what’s what, and who is good, and who is valuabvle, and who is not – them.

  11. FWIW:

    As of now, 9:15 Eastern, Politico projects O’Donnell as the winner. 53+% to 46+%, with 85% precincts in.

    This could be major, either for good or for bad.

    It shows again the power of Palin, Tea Partiers, and the general Throw the Bums out mood of yet another State.

  12. Levin has been in a bit of a war this week. He has apparently mis-characterized Castle and refuses to back down. When long-time bloggers such as those as “Powerline” and “Patterico’s Pontifications” have attempted to correct him, Levin’s response basically has been “I’ve written a book, you haven’t, why should I care what you think?”

    I’m staunchly conservative, and I’m certainly in no position to comment on the Delaware primary candidates. But it seems that Mr. Levin’s success has gone to his head, and that’s a shame – especially when it leads him to belittle bloggers who have been dependable and accountable for their entries, and who have owned up to their mistakes in the past.

  13. Why are you saying Levin is wrong? Do you know for certain? Maybe the other guys are wrong.

    What are the facts of the matter? You haven’t said enough yet. We need some details and why this matters in Delaware.

  14. Do you have any links?

    I’ve never read Patterico for the most part, unless someone links him. Just never got into the habit. I’ve read Powerline a little bit but they sound like loyal Republican Party men to me. If I recall correctly, they weren’t happy about Palin’s selection for VP in 2008. Since then, I haven’t paid much attention to them.

  15. Sorry, Mike Mc, I was addressing my comment to OlderandWheezier.

    I already saw the projection at Politico, and in fact was going to mention it here but you beat me to it.

  16. Paul Mirengoff of Powerline on September 7 posted his thoughts that one should sometimes choose a primary candidate based on electability rather than “purity” of ideology, and later in that entry gave his own reasons for preferring Castle over O’Donnell in Delaware.

    One of Levin’s friends apparently brought the blog entry to his attention, and his response contains the following incontrovertible argument: “Must be nice to sit on your ass in some law office in Washington lecturing tea party activists and others with such dripping arrogance and ignorance. We’re confronting the most radical administration certainly in my lifetime, and Mirengoff blows off the grassroots movement that is doing more to bring constitutional government back to this nation than any other.”

    Levin then proceeded to dismiss Powerline’s contributor as having been capricious enough to have supported Specter over Toomey in PA, which is rubbish. He also claimed that Mirengoff must then by definition be blindly supportive of RINO’s such as Lindsay Graham and Olympia Snowe. Yet he apparently never has bothered to do the research necessary to substantiate his hyperbole, which, again, is rubbish.

    So yes, from what I’ve read on the subject, it seems apparent that Levin has chosen to tar and feather two conservative bloggers with whom he disagrees, and he’s counting on those who blindly trust everything he says or writes to take his side.

    Rickl, here are a couple of links to which I alluded above. I hesitate to post them, because doing so last year caused neo’s auto-filter to tag me as a spammer, and my attempts to post were frustrated for over a month.

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/09/027175.php

    http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=428578740945

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/09/027216.php

    I don’t blindly believe anyone, either on television, talk radio, or on the web, and I certainly don’t agree with all their views (well, I come pretty darn close with neo and with wretchard). I’ve enjoyed Levin whenever I catch him on TV over the past year or so, but I feel that on this matter he’s acting, well, like a Democrat.

  17. By “rubbish” do you mean it is absolutely true that he did not support Specter over Toomey? That would have been 6 years ago, and even Bush supported Specter over Toomey. So this is not some wild accusation. It’s very plausible. It was a HUGE mistake for Bush and others to support Specter. Huge. But they did, and that is the only reason Specter won. Thee ONLY reason. And it was the same logic/argument used in support of Castle.

    I find Levin generally believable and spot on. If he is wrong on this, we need more than an assertion of “rubbish”.

  18. OlderandWheezier:
    Thanks for the links. It’s an interesting exchange.

    There’s also a fourth link, which was Levin’s rebuttal to Mirengoff’s rebuttal. (Both men linked each other’s posts throughout, so they both displayed good netiquette.) In fact, I found the fourth link in Mirengoff’s post (your third link):

    http://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-levin/paul-mirengoff-over-at-powerline/430147665945

    I still gotta go with Levin here.

    In 2008, all the leading pundits told us that McCain would be “electable” so the Republicans had to nominate him. That didn’t work out so well.

    In the primaries, you have to vote for the candidate who most reflects your values. If you obsess over what the squishy moderates will find acceptable, then you will wind up with squishy moderate candidates. And they might not even win the general election.

    If I lived in Delaware, I would have voted for O’Donnell. If I lived in Nevada, I would have voted for Angle.

  19. In the fourth link, Levin admits he was wrong about Mirengoff supporting Specter over Toomey.

    In 2004, I registered Republican for the first time in my life for the express purpose of voting for Toomey in the primary. That margin was razor-thin, and as Mike Mc said, the only reason Specter won was that Bush and Santorum campaigned for him.

  20. I’m listening to a local talk radio host now (the Phillies game being over), and he just said that Karl Rove attacked O’Donnell on Sean Hannity’s TV show tonight.

    Great. Just frickin’ great. The Republican Party establishment is going to work to sabotage and undermine her campaign. They’re as much an enemy as the Democrats.

    As Angelo Codevilla put it, it’s the Ruling Class vs. the Country Class.

  21. Mike and rickl, I appreciate your responses and the good points you both make.

    Concerning the 2008 election, McCain was not only “electable,” he was in contention up until the financial meltdown, which would have doomed any Republican candidate, just as it did so many on Capitol Hill. IIRC McCain trailed his fellow primary candidates early in the election, but his willingness to stick to his guns and continue to support the troop surge strategy in Iraq eventually paid dividends. I respected him for not jumping ship on the issue as did his fellow office-seekers.

    Republicans all too often seem to be the enemy of their own constituents. It still tees me off that the good ol’ boys hand-picked such a pathetic candidate as Scozzafava in NY-23 a year ago.

    Of course if both parties are so corrupt and beyond remedy, then supporting candidates who run on either side is an exercise in futility. In the long run perhaps what we need is a viable third party, even though its ascension will be markedly longer than that of its established opponents.

  22. Concerning the 2008 election, McCain was not only “electable,” he was in contention up until the financial meltdown

    Point of order: It was Palin who was in contention, not McCain. She did her best to drag his sorry ass across the finish line. He would have lost by 20 points if not for her.

    She was the reason I stuffed envelopes and put up yard signs, not him. I suspect I was not alone in that.

  23. Agree with rickl. McCain was dead in the water up until Palin. Then true to form for what was, to my mind, a campaign he never even wanted to win, he hung his own pick out to dry.

    Best guess is that someone talked him into Palin, and when he saw she was getting more pub than him, he resented it and sabotaged her.

    Then he thought he be the cowboy in the White hat riding to Washington to save the day during the Tarp fiasco, part 1. All he did was expose himself as the feckless career pol he has been for all of his adult life.

    he is another one who never really worked in his life.

    Palin was better than him then, and she is better than him now.

    McCain did tremendous damage to the GOP and the Conservative cause for years on end because he was an egotistical tool of the Dem party and MSM.

  24. I just watched O’Donnell’s acceptance speech. She does snot look like a strong candidate or campaigner. It may be true that she will be walloped in the general, which would be bad.

    On the other hand, maybe not. She had no chance to beat Castle either, and he lost. She may not be the sharpest tack in the box, but the other side has people like Barbara Boxer.

    We’ll have to see how she runs a campaign and handles the national media in the next few days.

  25. On primary day in NYC, we had new voting machines. One big epic fail.

    http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/09/14/new-yorkers-head-to-the-polls-on-primary-day/

    This does not bode well for the general election.

    As I’m still a hostage registered Democrat, I voted NOT Gillibrand. My last defiant act as a registered Dem voter. (When I first moved to NYC 30 yers ago, I registered as an Independent, but found out I could not vote in primaries as they were closed; switched to Dem as that was where the action was. I asked to change my party affiliation last November, but due to arcane NYS rules, my party affiliation will not be changed until after this November’s election.)

    I am concerned with the new electronic voting machines, though. They seem ripe for fraud.

    I also hope the Repub country-club establishment types (I’m looking at you, Steele) finally get the message that politics is no longer business as usual, nor will we support the next guy in line based upon seniority. The DE upset of a Tea Party candidate over The R Establishment should shock them to their senses. Electability will not cut it anymore. I’m also more than a little pissed that The R Establishment got involved in a primary in the first place. Now DE has a Republican senate candidate in the general election who has been trashed by The DE R Establishment in the primary. Could R’s have shot themselves in the head any better?

    And Karl Rove needs to take some valium and a vacation. Inside the Beltway politics as usual is one of the things most Americans are rightly pissed off at. There is a sea change this year, and many in the R party have not acknowledged that paradigm shift.

  26. We didn’t have anything going on in my home state of Virginia, so I was free too look around to see what was up elsewhere.

    Washington DC – Mayor Adrian Fenty lost to Vincent Gray. This is bad news for DC residents. Fenty’s sin was that he appointed non-blacks to the positions of school chancellor and chief of police. Gray will return the city to the politics of Marion Barry.

    Deleware – O’Donnell is a complete nut, having a whole host of ethical and character problems. The Weekly Standard and National Review have done yeoman’s work in exposing her. The issue isn’t whether she’ll win or lose in November (tho she’ll lose), but how much she’ll embarrass us between now and then. If her defenders think that the criticisms were bad during the primary, wait until Democrat Chris Coons gets a hold of her.

  27. The republican establishment still has politics as usual blinders on. They see only a chess board and its rules in front of them. What they can’t seem to envision is the immense grassroots uprising that is capable of changing the very game and the rules themselves.

    Ordinary Americans are sick of the game and the rules politicians have confined us to..

  28. Good point. Palin definitely energized the ticket and got GOP supporters excited and motivated. I first read of her on Beldarblog and was happy when she got the nod.

  29. I’m terrified of the prospect that the Tea partiers may make a Republican Presidential candidate unelectable. Let me rephrase that, if Palin gets the nomination there is a very good chance Obama could get re-elected.

    Here is a sequence:
    1) a Republican House allows Obama to blame continuing failures on the Republicans, slightly increasing his popularity.
    2) Republicans go off the right wing deep end, alienate the independent middle to the extent they stay home or vote anti-right wing nut, which may be how that see Palin, rightly or wrongly.
    3) Hillary decides not to run against Obama, he gets the nomination more or less my default, even though he is far less popular than in 2008.
    4) Obama wins because too few people are motivated to vote against him and for someone who does not represent their personal views.

    I would like to point out that in spite of everything, Obama is still not as unpopular as us Neo neoconskis feel he should be (he should have been impeached and removed for his actions against Honduras IMHO). A Palin candidacy would energize more support for Obama than for Palin.

    And quite frankly, although I respect her principles and shrewdness she is far below the level of worldliness I would consider mandatory in a presidential candidate.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>