I'm right here in the belly of the fricking beast, so tell me something I don't already know. We had a good conservative Senator here, but he wouldn't kiss the backsides of the rotten party leadership. We had solid conservatives running in the primary but we went with the pretty boy with skeletons in his closet. Any hope we had of even being competitive was lost at that point, even if it wasn't lost before that when the media (and the public at large) lost their minds about Barack Obama. And as inadequate as Keyes' candidacy may have been, it was the only thing standing in between Obama and the Senate. It was the only choice we had. Slam Keyes all you want -- on the issues that should matter to conservatives, he would have been on the right side.
Even though your Feingold has some national prominence, I seriously doubt that, even with his years in the national eye, he is a star of the same magnitude as Obama. A year ago, he was an obscure Illinois state senator. He had a stroke of luck with the implosion of Blair Hull's scandal ridden campaign. Before a vote had been cast, Obama was touted as a future vice president or president. Even National Review today called him a star. So here I am, stuck with a suave and handsome hard-left media creation to be my Senator probably for the rest of my life, unless he goes on to bigger or better things. If he does, consider him my gift to America.
If there is an upside to Keyes "getting his ass kicked" it is that we may have an opportunity to rebuild the Republican party from the ground up. We have some very attractive (conservative) possibilities for statewide office in '06. Now if we can only sweep out the phonies and has-beens that pass themselves off as party leadership.
That's good news!
Amen, brother!