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October Surprises Breaking Republicans’ Way?
It is axiomatic that, each October, the media will unveil embarrassing, negative, damaging things about Republican candidates. The timing is intended to hurt Republicans and help Democrats at the ballot box. If the media doesn’t do it, a Republican self-sabotages. 2018 is different.
Media Revelations
In Texas, “Beto” O’Rourke, was hit with a bad DUI story, including him trying to flee the scene.
In Tennessee, staffers were caught on video saying Bredesen lied about his willingness to confirm Kavanaugh, to trick moderate voters.
In Arizona, multiple videos appeared, in which Kyrsten Sinema calls Arizonans “crazy,” Arizona the “meth lab of democracy,” and goes beyond the pink tutu anti-war image to apparently condoning Americans going to fight for the Taliban. When Martha McSally challenged her, during their debate, on the Taliban comment, Sinema refused to answer. CNN not only did not deny this, they ran the clip and had a commentator explain Sinema used to be more progressive, even Green Party, but now was running as a centrist. To which, Scott Johnson of PowerLine says:
Andrew McCarthy now lays out the facts regarding Sinema’s promotion of terrorist lawyer Lynne Stewart.
Lynne Stewart didn’t just represent terrorists. She took on their cause as her own. She herself supported terrorism and went to prison for it.
Sinema promoted Stewart’s campus appearances in 2003 while she was under indictment. […] [Stewart] was utterly unapologetic about her behavior. Indeed, she was proud of it. […]
Sinema and Ellison deploy the same generic lies to misrepresent their own past support of the terrorist lawyer (in Sinema’s case) and cop killers (in Ellison’s case). They are two peas in a pod, perfect faces of the Democratic Party.
Self-sabotage
In Florida, Bill Nelson’s campaign mass email provided links for Hurricane Michael relief donations. Except Nelson’s email reportedly pointed to ActBlue sites, Democrat political fundraising pages. Then his colleague said “hold my beer.”
Heidi Heitkamp thought she had a great hammer to smash her way back to office, with an ad about believing and respecting sexual assault victims. Except she did not have permission to use several of these victims’ names or faces! Her Twitter feed became a stream of abject apologies.
With the Kavanaugh circus, the entire Senate Democratic caucus inflicted a massive hit on their members, and would be members, running for the Senate this year. It is not over. Senator Susan Collins’ husband opened a threatening letter, at their home, that claimed to be contaminated with ricin.
Collins has received a rash ofcriticism in the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process. She said her “yes” vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the United States Supreme Court“ranks right up there” with the hardest votes she has ever cast in the senate. Her spokesperson said that the letter is just the latest in a “series of threats” against the Senator and her loved ones.
Meanwhile, alumni and faculty at St. Lawrence University, Collins’ alma mater, are calling on university officials to rescind an honorary degree awarded to her as punishment for voting to confirm Kavanaugh.
But what is next?
Surely there is more. What of Mueller? It turns out that President Trump is now holding a ten-pound sledgehammer over the heads of Mueller, Rosenstein, and our special friends across the pond, complicit in the Russia Hoax. If he orders immediate and full compliance with long-standing Congressional demands for complete, unredacted document production, there will be a scandal with more damage to the image of the FBI than was caused by the Church Committee revelations. It isn’t over until the last ballot is cast, and counted, but 2018 is not going according to the usual script. @ejhill likely has it right: “The Great Unknown is Us.”
In Arizona, the Ninth Circuit Court’s leftist rulings, on illegal immigrants’ rights, is generating news that hurts the Democratic candidate, Kyrsten Sinema, as ICE is forced to release illegal immigrants into our country.
Yeah. Lets.
And the hits keep coming, as @percival points out the Washington Examiner reporting Kyrsten Sinema welcomed witches as anti-war protest allies. Some of us are old enough to remember a Republican woman who was running for the Senate. From CBS News in 2010:
If this effectively ended a Republican woman’s campaign in Deleware, 2010, what should we expect in Arizona, 2018?
It’s okay, because she’s a Democrat.
A new video has surfaced of Kyrsten Sinema calling Arizona Republicans extremists…
https://twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/1052322401915207681/video/1
Wow she sure knocks her own state a lot. Makes you wonder why she’d want to live there.
at least she qualified it this time – its the bad guys who are the problems … not just random Arizonians. (Arizonians?)
Arizonans.
A quick questions about Beto, and Ossoff. What happens to left-overs?
If they dont spend all the money they raise on campaigning, what happens to the change? I am thinking that these 2 guys are doing yeoman’s work proving that money doesnt buy elections, do they get to keep the nest egg they build campaigning? or roll it into superPAC that’ll give them a job for years after the election is over?
Beto has already said, he’s not sharing the wealth.
Unless the rules have changed, either the debt or the surplus remains with the candidate. If he loses, has money left over, and doesn’t run again, he walks away with whatever he doesn’t spend.
He has spent it already.
And, no, they cannot keep it for themselves. They can keep it for a future campaign or give it to other campaigns or the national parties.
Here is the FEC answer:
The rules changed several years back. It can only be used for campaigns or given to PACs or parties. I don’t remember the specifics and am too lazy to look it up, but it no longer goes into their pockets as it once did.
Well, if you can’t walk away with $38 million, what’s the point in running?
I don’t know. You don’t see my doing it, do you?
Sounds like a great con movie, right?
Con men set up a congressional campaign, in order to steal the fundraising. So they run the cheapest, worst campaign possible, but accidentally get elected…oh! maybe this should go in the help Rob Long thread!
You could probably get Adam Sandler to do it.
I like it. Sort of like a political version of The Producers.
or an Americanized version of “Yes, Minister”.
Running for office, or walking away with the loot?
Either. I’ll stick to writing books.
From PowerLine:
POSTED ON OCTOBER 17, 2018 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN DEMOCRATS
THE DEMOCRATS MUST BE DEFEATED
The Democratic Party has turned into a crazed, howling mob. It is degrading our public life to a degree that has not been seen since they seceded in 1861. That is an observation we could make every day; for now, let’s go with this story: “Blackburn backlash shocks Mt. Juliet restaurant owner.”
[…]
The Democrats are trying to bully their way back into power through mob actions of various kinds. What you think of the Republicans is pretty much irrelevant. The Democrats’ bullying tactics must not be allowed to succeed. The republic depends on it.
Its not that new. I think the 2016 election was the first time that 1 party, arranged for counter demonstrators to protest rallies and campaign events of another party. Even to force the cancellation of an event in Chicago. I have never seen this done in American politics before and hope that this does not get normalized. Mob violence has been on the back burner for the democrats for some time, they have certainly turned up the heat recently.
It is a reversion to a very old pattern, seen in the run up to the War Between the States.
Link seems broken. The pattern does remind me of what was described in Madness Rules the Hour, a book I reviewed a year back.
She wants to live in Washington where she would be at home wallowing in the swamp.
She doesn’t. She wants to move to DC. That’s why she’s running for office . . .
Sadly, today, you need not disambiguate “Washington.” Either would be true, as the Evergreen State reaches advanced stage Californication.
Fixed it. Relevant quote:
Watch her face when she says she ran for office in Arizona….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot-IpMYrFi8