I know a fair amount of conservative men (both Republican and Yellow/Blue Dog Dems) in KY. For some strange reason they're enthralled with the possibility that this may be their next US Senator:
Posted on 02/14/2014 1:14:48 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Similar to last week’s lackluster result from Survey USA. Unless Bevin catches fire, looks like the best-case scenario for the GOP is an exhausting dogfight to the bitter end between McConnell and Grimes that sucks in untold millions of establishment dollars aimed at protecting the Senate minority leader. Again — that’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario, that that dogfight ends in decisive defeat, comes from Sean Davis:
To put Wenzel's data in perspective, it had Thompson in WI (lost by 5), Mandel in OH, (lost by 5), Romney in OH (lost by 2).
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 14, 2014
In 2012, a week before the election, Wenzel had Romney at 60% favorability. Highest of any pollster all cycle. Avg. of other polls: 50%.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 14, 2014
@AndrewCQuinn I'm dangerously close to thinking we could flip 5 seats for the cost of defending Kentucky.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 14, 2014
Three of the four Kentucky polls taken so far this year have come from left- or right-leaning pollsters but the topline numbers have been roughly consistent. Two have McConnell up by one, one has the race a dead heat, and the fourth has Grimes up by four. Today’s data, as Davis notes, may be overstating McConnell’s support, if anything. Survey USA had his favorable rating at 27/50, which makes sense given that the entirety of the left and now a sizable chunk of the right consider him an enemy. Wenzel Strategies, the pollster behind this morning’s data, has his favorables at 50/47, which makes … less sense. This race may become for the GOP establishment what Wendy Davis’s race is for abortion warriors — an exceedingly challenging cause celebre that sucks money away from more winnable races.
Solution: Nominate Matt Bevin instead? He does roughly as well against Grimes as McConnell does (trailing by two instead of leading by one) and some polls have shown him outperforming him in the general against her. The risk would be that, as an unknown, he’d be easier for Democrats to define and marginalize than a bigger name like Mitch the Knife, but then that was also true of Rand Paul circa 2010 and he did okay. And yet, despite conservative groups attacking McConnell relentlessly, he still leads Bevin 59/17 in the new Wenzel data and 55/29 in Survey USA’s data last week. Why is that? I get that he’s still all but unknown to voters, but that shouldn’t matter this much; he’s running as Not Mitch McConnell, after all. You don’t need to know his name to signal your preference for ousting McConnell in a poll.
This isn’t helping either:
Matt Bevin, campaigning for Kentucky’s Senate seat in the Republican primary, said his signature on a document expressing support for the 2008 Wall Street bailouts was just a formality. But legal experts — including Bevin’s own lawyer — are dismissing the excuse.
“As a general matter if you put your signature on anything you would be at least acknowledging you don’t have a major issue with the content,” Wade R. Bridge, the attorney listed on Bevin’s 2008 filing, told Breitbart News…
“It may be true that he signed as a CEO but it would be an odd thing for a CEO to disagree with a letter that he signed and sent to the company’s shareholders or a filing that was made with the SEC,” [Cornell law prof Charles] Whitehead told Breitbart News…
Several sources told Breitbart News that the SEC would consider that the signators of the cover letter are attesting to its contents.
Securities law experts said the same thing to National Review and the Weekly Standard. (“If you express an opinion you do not hold, you violate the securities laws.”) Either Bevin’s lying when he says he opposed TARP from the beginning or he’s telling the truth but ended up on the wrong side of proper securities practice. Probably won’t matter to Not Mitch McConnell voters, but as time wears on, I think tea-party voters increasingly look at primary challengers from the following baseline: “Is this guy more Mike Lee or more Christine O’Donnell?” I.e. is this someone worth risking a seat Republicans already hold on or is this someone likely to implode in the general? Bevin’s TARP position won’t matter a bit after the primaries, but I bet he’s on a shorter leash in some GOP voters’ minds in terms of permissible mistakes than he would have been if he was running in 2010 or 2012.
Exit question: Let’s say McConnell leads Bevin by three points with a week to go before the primary and he tells Rand Paul he badly needs him to come home and do some campaigning. What does Rand do?
Allahputz at it again.
allahboy confirms his GOPe status.....
Which means it’s McConnell and he loses in Nov. Believe me, I am thrilled to death McConnell will be gone, even if a Dim beats him (we can work on getting that seat back later after the McConnell cancer is gone) but wth is it with Bevin? I mean he’s not even in the same solar system. That sucks.
And as an aide, I simply do not care if a pollster is “left” or “right” leaning. All I care about is track record. Calling them left or right is a 3rd party trying to define them politically.
From the looks of things I would say that the people of Kentucky are stupid beyond my ability to describe stupid.
RE; even if a Dim beats him (we can work on getting that seat back later after the McConnell cancer is gone)
That’s SIX YEARS of someone in the Senate who will vote for gay marriage, abortion, Obamacare, more debt, more spending, the gutting of defense, amnesty, etc.
No matter how you dislike McConnell, he is a RELIABLE and SOLID vote for sanity on these issues ( except amnesty ).
propaganda so vote fraud can be used to defeat Bevin
“Believe me, I am thrilled to death McConnell will be gone, even if a Dim beats him (we can work on getting that seat back later after the McConnell cancer is gone)...”
If we don’t take the Senate this year there may be nothing left of the country to save!
Any candidate, whether it’s Bevin (more likely at this point) or McConnel (less likely this point) sometimes, at some point in a campaign, needs to decide (a) if the guy they are running against in their primary is really worse than the guy they would meet in the general election - if they were not in the race, which one would THEY vote for, as well as (b) is their compaign against their opponent in the primary doing greatly less benefit to them than damage it might be doing to their opponent in the primary whom they are trailing; who is getting the most benefit out of their campaign against their opponent in the primary, themself, or the guy they’d maybe face in the general election.
forgive me if I sound like I’m FAVORING McConnel; I’m not, specifically, but I am favoring a GOP win for that seat.
This may be a race where the stuff that goes on in Washington D.C. is less important than the adage that “all politics are local”, and for all those “unprincipled” local parochial reasons and interests, Bevin has not found the message - to that voting constituency - that resonates well enough; and he won’t, unless he can translate his contrast with McConnel in terms of the Washington D.C. scene into local meaning for the voters.
As an Indiana resident, I can attest to the amount of damage “Obama Joe” will do before Jan 2019. Those senate terms go on a long time...
The only poll that counts is the one on election day.
I will say this though, what McConnell is doing is poisoning the well. If it can’t be him it will be the democrat. Whoever that might be.
And the never ending commercials... Well the biggest thing they are accomplishing is the radio and TV stations are losing viewers. I was over at a friends place and one of the commercials came on. Before the music was replaced by the voice my friend had stood up and turned off the TV.
He said “That’s it! I don’t give a damn for TV tonight. Let’s play cards instead. And we did.
Oh by the way, you executives! I went to Sirius/XM No more commercials for me anymore!
The ONLY way to control O’bastard is to take control of the Senate.
After Nov 2014 O’bastard will be like a cornered rabid animal lashing out to do as much damage as he possibly can.
If Hairy Reed is controlling the Senate he will have free reign.
RE: The only poll that counts is the one on election day.
I know, but a 42 point lead is pretty insurmountable if you ask me. There might be margins of error, but this is WAY OUTSIDE that.
Sometimes single votes are important, i.e., ObamaCare.
Vote the most conservative and likely candidate.
What you say would be wonderful in a pure world but the thing you are missing is that McConnell is a democrat; you just don’t know it.
McConnell is a big government ruling class democrat surrogate who has infiltrated the republican party because he knows how to play the voters for suckers. If you are not convinced of that with the latest but typical antic of his debt ceiling vote, then nothing will convince you.
Voting for McConnell is worse than anything because he will occupy our party and vote with democrats or enable them to pass what they want. And voters like you won’t know what to do because you have no party to represent you; McConnell has taken your party and twisted it to his own ends. He will never be a republican in spirit anymore than Bloomberg was before he went independent.
You have to understand that Senate seats are for sale to the highest bidder and the ruling class has allowed McConnell and his backers to buy the seat with an ‘R’ because KY voters think they want a republican. If KY voters were more democrat you would see a similar character to McConnell buying the seat with a ‘D’. That’s the reality. You have no representation with McConnell so if you vote for him you might as well hang a sign on yourself that says “useful idiot”.
I know it is first order logic to want your team to win but when someone tells you that your team players have been bought off to lose and they offer solid evidence over and over again, you have to come to a point eventually where you think “this sucks”. But if we keep buying tickets for that team and cheering them on knowing they are going to throw the game, what does that make us? It makes us fools.
It’s like having cancer, you have a choice, you can die from it or you can die later from it. What you have to do is to realize there isn’t a choice given what’s handed you.
Most people in your situation are going to not vote unless they warm to Bevin. And Bevin needs to get that warming into high gear. Kentuckians should thank God they have someone that is republican in philosophy and who is spending his own money to make a difference.
And guess what? Two months ago Bevin trounced McConnell in a straw poll in an important county of KY. So what does that make this reported poll? I smell propaganda. I see how the ruling class tactics of programming our minds to think one way and not another is in full force. This is what money buys, a PR and media campaign to program us to a false reality.
Go to a barbershop in KY and listen to what the barbers are saying and what they say customers are saying. Then be one who speaks for Bevin.
Don’t matter.
By the way you are in New York according to your profile.
I’m right here in Kentucky, the local sentiment is mixed but with businesses collapsing left and right and my county now being over 60% on welfare of one sort or another. People here have time to think and ponder why we are in the mess we are in.
Soon they will start to point the fingers and McConnell has one HUGE negative He’s been a politician throughout all of the time that things have gotten worse. Right or wrong he’s one of the ones who is getting blamed.
Also his damned negative ads are really pissing off a lot of people here.
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