You don’t know what the hell you are talking about.
You people would be castigating a Ronald Reagan clone for being a ‘lousy candidate’ too if he didn’t win.
McConnell would have ‘CRUSHED’ whomever ran against him. That is what Machine politicians and cronyism do to challengers.
McConnell spent millions in an unlimited war chest of nasty attack ads bashing Bevin for well over a YEAR and it has been NON-STOP. McConnell had the help of local KY media who essentially reported McConnell press releases as news reports.
I find it interesting that the race was called for McConnell before the polls closed yesterday with the same percentage in the final that they declared in the late afternoon.
I’ve only experienced something similar like that before in Cook County, IL.
“I find it interesting that the race was called for McConnell before the polls closed yesterday with the same percentage in the final that they declared in the late afternoon.
I’ve only experienced something similar like that before in Cook County, IL”
McConnell was well ahead of Bevin in every poll (and there were quite a few) prior to the primary, and, if anything, the primary results were better from Bevin than what the polls predicted. And you think that there was chicanery going on to turn Bevin votes into McConnell votes? You have to face the fact that Bevin just was not very popular among KY Republicans, even among those disappointed with McConnell. Here’s an independent poll from less than two weeks ago that had McConnell leading Bevin by 53%-33% *among Tea Party Republicans*. http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/misc/KYPolls/KY140430/Complete%20May%202014%20Kentucky%20NBC%20News__Marist%20Poll%20Release%20and%20Tables.pdf
How could Bevin win when he didn’t even have a majority of Tea Party Republicans in his column? You can blame Rand Paul’s endorsement, or McConnell’s money (although it should be noted that Bevin raised like $4 million, which ain’t hay), or the Illuminati, but the fact remains that it would have been superfluous for McConnell to have tried any shenanigans in the primary count, because everybody knew that he was going to win big.
Call up Bevin, and ask him whether he believes that more Kentucky Republicans voted for him than for McConnell but that McConnell rigged the vote; I bet you that two of the first ten words that come out of his mouth are “you” and “delusional.”
And as for your claim that “McConnell would have ‘CRUSHED’ whomever ran against him,” well, I beg to differ. McConnell crushed Bevin because Bevin was crushable. Had a first-tier conservative run against McConnell, he would have *tried* to crush him, but would have been unable to do so; perhaps McConnell would have won against a good candidate, but he wouldn’t have crushed him by 25%, since there was real disappointment with McConnell among KY Republicans, as was proven by the fact that a third-tier shyster like Bevin could get 35% of the vote.
Everyone who wasn’t deluding themselves knew Bevin would lose badly BECAUSE he was indeed lousy.
A top tier challenger wouldn’t have had an easy time but he’d have had a real chance and wouldn’t have gotten blown out.
Competing against a Senate leader takes much more than some clueless libertarian who lied about his educational background.
As for the the election being called early and the margin remaining consist throughout the night, that happens all the time. No one needs to steal an election against the caliber of candidate of a Matt Bevin.