Upset: Republican wins surprise blowout in Arkansas Senate special election

Hot Air ^ | January 17, 2014 | Guy Benson

[skinkinthegrass]

thanks, for the ping/post.

[skinkinthegrass]

Final results:
•Republican John Cooper: 4,314 (57.21%)
•Democrat Steve Rockwell: 3,227 votes (42.79%)
That’s a pretty serious thumping.Yes, It was..Hopefully the GOP/e understands...
what awaits them in Nov. '14

[okie01]

It's a good strategy...That's why we have primaries and caucuses in 50 states rather than just the red states. We need more than red states to win the White House. In the blue/purple states, a lot of GOP voters are way more liberal, and the final nominee needs to be able to win their votes in order to have a shot at winning those states.

This strategy has worked so very, very well for the party in the past -- as amply demonstrated by the McCain and Romney administrations. As opposed to the failed Reagan candidacy, of course.

I'm sorry but, if a candidate can't get his own base out, he'll never win an election.

[skinkinthegrass]

Mark Levin is the one who is making this point consistently, the Republicans have not even written a bill repealing Obamacare.
The Republican elites are preparing not to repeal it but to shape it. The same elites are going to pass amnesty to appease
the Chamber of Commerce and collect their campaign contributions. They have just passed a $1 trillion budget gimmick
and they justify every pusillanimous surrender openly as the only way they can avoid a government shutdown.sadly, kat is correct..we have no RWR / Abe L. in the wings...
and our present Congressional Ldr. is bought / paid for in Wash..
..of course; they'll fight tooth n' nail against any like minded TEA / LUA Party's
candidates that threaten them, like CRUZ, PAUL or LEE, they're the best.

[Moonman62]

I'm sorry but, if a candidate can't get his own base out, he'll never win an election.

How about the GOPe strategy of blaming the base? Won't that work? They have some of their flying monkeys posting right here on FR.

[Zhang Fei]

I'm sorry but, if a candidate can't get his own base out, he'll never win an election.

They got the base out - they won the red states handily. They couldn't win the Rust Belt states (or the original snowbird state, FL), and that was all she wrote. No surprise there - no hard line conservative has won a Rust Belt governorship either. Rick Scott barely won FL in 2010, and that was an excellent year for the GOP. The electorate is moving left, and the irony is that the end of the Cold War has accelerated that move.

NC's governor, Pat McCrory, pushed through several laws social conservatives had been asking for. His approval rating is 37%. This tells me that Beverly Perdue's election victory was not a fluke, that the state's electorate is changing, either demographically or ideologically.

[hinckley buzzard]

Reagan wasn't seen as a conservative

??? Why do you suppose the GOP establishment ran John Anderson as a third party candidate? Maybe you weren't around yet, or weren't paying attention. Reagan was attacked for being a trigger happy Cold War cowboy who risked nuclear war with the USSR.

He had Jerry Falwell's newly ascendant Moral Majority behind him, as well as Paul Weyrich's fundraising machine. And to be clear, the democrats did everything they could to make sure everyone knew how conservative Reagan was.

[Zhang Fei]

??? Why do you suppose the GOP establishment ran John Anderson as a third party candidate? Maybe you weren't around yet, or weren't paying attention. Reagan was attacked for being a trigger happy Cold War cowboy who risked nuclear war with the USSR.

That's how he was attacked, but it never stuck. That's why he was called the Teflon President.