I broke rules and read a good bit of the article before deciding to post. Probably worth reading the whole thing.
Here are a couple of good dparagraphs:
Meanwhile, “the way the GOP went about this, a really shortsighted approach to dealing with the public, they got Democrats energized, and they made Republicans stay home,” Alexander continued. “It’s hard to do both of those at once.”
But it would be fair to say that the Issue 1 vote highlighted several problem areas for the GOP—and that Trump is at the center of them all: misreading the electorate in lazy ways, having no party leadership in place that can tell certain factions of the coalition to go sit in the corner for a while, and confusion about how abortion will affect the GOP’s women vote.
First, the Ohio GOP gave this issue the status of an August special election, even though they had said earlier in the year that they wouldn’t permit such elections anymore. Then they started claiming that “outside interests” were hurting all Ohio voters, and that passing Issue 1 would save everyone’s political souls. And no, Republicans claimed, Issue 1 wasn’t really about the future abortion amendment vote, even though they had previously said it was.
Guess what? All this idiocy brought out voters in droves. There are about 8 million registered voters in Ohio, and about 3 million voted in this election, a turnout of 37.5 percent. Based on previous special elections in late summer in recent years, the Ohio GOP had expected turnout to be only about 10 percent. They were wrong by about 2.2 million voters.
Having read a good chunk of the article, I agree with the poster who doubts that the abortion amendment will save Brown.
However, the GOPe just might.
The same idiots who championed this amendment are going to be the ones running against Brown. So I wouldn’t be too sure about him being in trouble. He’s been in the seat for 16 years.