Posted on 08/02/2005 6:53:19 AM PDT by watsonfellow
Oh, I forgot to mention, the VA-09 has long been socially conservative, but it only recently started voting overwhelmingly Republican in presidential elections (60% for Bush in 2004). It used to be about evenly split in presidential elections because more socially conservative Democrats voted for the Democrat presidential candidate due to economic issues. Something similar happened in West Virginia, where the Democrats were deemed unbeatable until the very moment that they started losing.
If we can get a good candidate to run, and if we spend money on the race, we can beat Boucher in 2006.
I like that final count.
"Comparing 2002 to 2005, the Republicans stayed home, the Democrats, if reports are true, invested millions to get 6,783 more votes. Relative to 2004, they lost 35,197 or 40% of the voters they had only 9 months ago. The backslapping that is occurring is far from reality."
I think both the primary and general election in this special race need to be looked at in the future.
Why did this happen in a district like this? A couple of days ago, I said this race would be closer than people thought and I listed three reasons why.
1. I thought the groups like COAST who told people not to vote would have an impact. They may have supressed turnout in Hamilton and Clermont Counties.
2. The problems with the Ohio GOP are in the news. People are hearing about them. Hackett did the right political thing by tying Schmidt to Bob Taft. While she may not have been close to Bob Taft in reality, she was close to Larry Householder and others, who have problems of their own.
3. Face it, people got lazy. People took Hackett lightly. Everyone thought that the primary was the general election. Well, Hackett and the Dems worked and they almost won.
What's next?
1. Hopefully Jean Schmidt does well.
2. As far as a potential primary in 2006 against Schmidt, I don't think McEwen will do it. I think Brinkman's association with COAST will be a negative should he run because of their actions during this special election. Schmidt's primary opponents and their supporters did not turn around and exactly support her. Some Republicans will remember that.
3. It is a lesson for everyone that you can't underestimate anything.
Nonetheless, a win is a win for the GOP.
As far as the primary, I think we saw how powerful these blogs and internet websites have become. I believe these places single-handily took down DeWine by bringing stuff out about him. It shows how the methods of communication are changing in campaigns.
We don't know who turned out, and who didn't. We don't know if the voters in this election were very disproportionately Dem. I don't see anything in the county numbers to suggest that (say high turnout in Scioto, and low turnout in Clermont), but one would have to look at the relative turnout of heavily GOP versus heavily Dem precincts to get a better flavor for that. Alas, Ohio doesn't have party registration, and there are no exit polls, so the figuring it out requires some detective work, and cannot be conclusive.
The above refers to the senate, not the house. In the house, I was surprised Hill and Crane lost. That was it. I got the rest of the close contests right. Granted, there was not much action in 2004. There will be more in 2006.
This was an excllent loss for the Dems.
Big media support. Big money. Low Republican turnout and THEY STILL LOST!
Add on: Massive Deceptive Campaign: Hackett tried to make it appear that he was a conservative Republican, and hide the fact that he is a Liberal DemonKat.
Check Rush's site -- he has the video of Hackett's TV ad -- watch it -- you would think he was a conservative Republican. Rush totally exposed this clown yesterday.
Today, Polipundit and Hugh Hewitt's blogs have some good info on this race and why the low turnout hurt the Pubs. This could be a good point for all Pubs. Stop acting afraid to lead and acting like Dems. Act and vote like Conservatives since we can win without appeasement to the Left, the DNC, the MSM and the Beltway mentality.
[I just noticed that Dave Wissing also used Herseth and Chandler as examples of special-election victories that were harbingers of nothing. I guess great minds think alike. : ) ]
What Did Last Night’s Election Really Mean?
Obviously the big political news is the victory by Republican Jean Schmidt over Democrat Paul Hackett last night in Ohio. Democrats are ecstatic because they only mamaged to lose by 4% in an overwhelmingly Republican district and are claiming this is a signal for the future. Republicans are just happy they survivied and managed to keep the seat in GOP hands, although some are pointing out the 0-16 record of candidates backed by Daily Kos. There is no question the Republicans did not do as well as they would have hoped for, but before everyone starts proclaiming this to be a bellweather, let us look back in history, shall we?.
This was the post Daily Kos had up after Democrat Ben Chandler won a special election in 2004 to take over the seat left by the vacating Republican Ernie Fletcher. In it, Kos links to this story from CBS/AP.
Some Democrats claimed the race in Bluegrass country, home to horse and tobacco farms, had national implications.
Robert T. Matsui, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Chandler’s victory was “a clear message to the arrogant Republican government in Washington that Americans are ready for a change” and that Republican policies “have totally failed to create jobs in Kentucky as in so many other states.”
Kos’ response to this article was the following.
Damn right it’s a signal.
Then, in the wake of Stephanie Herseth victory in a special election later in the year to replace Republican Bill Janklow, Kos had this to say.
The momentum is swinging our way. Bush won South Dakota by 22 percentage points, the Kentucky 6th by 14 points. On paper, these districts are not competitive, and should not be competitive.
I don’t think I need to tell you what happened in November. I don’t post this to say the Republicans should not take the results from last night seriously and I’m not claiming the Democrats can’t parlay this into a bigger victory next year in Ohio and nationwide, but let’s not go crazy about last night being some sort of bellweather that predicts the demise of the Republican Party. Recent history has shown that special elections are not indicative of future election results.
http://www.davidwissing.com/index.php/4474
From the comments on here, it seems like the Brickman crowd reeks of Sore losermen "my way or the highway" types who label ANYONE besides THEIR choosen one to be a "RINO", even if that candidate votes our way 90% of the time. (simular reaction from the Scaffer worshippers in CO who couldn't get over the fact their "more conservative" candidate and his "en espanol" pandering didn't win the primary, so they helped Salazer trash Coors for the remainder of the campaign)
Jesse Helms could have beat Brickman and they'd be banging the RINO drum. As for me, I was overjoyed that the REAL RINO in the primary had his ass handed to him and I'm sorry to see Hackett did so well because the Schmidt haters couldn't put aside their bitterness and worked to defeat Hackett.
I can safely say that if their boy Brickman had won the primary, I wouldn't be helping Hackett bash him during the general election campaign. Pity it doesn't work both ways.
From your comments, it looks that you should be more informed about Tom Brinkman and his supporters. We've had no problem getting behind primary winners before that we didn't initially support, and I imagine the majority got behind Schmidt this time. You should also be better informed about the candidate's record. On record alone, DeWine was more conservative than Schmidt, and it wasn't even close, so to call DeWine the "true RINO" would not be accurate.
Since you obviously couldn't bother to inform yourself before making your idiotic post, let's review Schmidt's record for you:
Schmidt voted to raise Ohio's Sales Tax by 20%.
Schmidt voted to raise our Gas Tax by 6 cents/gallon.
Schmidt voted to raise 151 fees.
Schmidt sponsored legislation allowing Hamilton County and Cincinnati to significantly raise their hotel taxes.
If a Democrat had that kind of a record we'd be calling them a liberal. For a Republican, that's solid RINO territory.
I don't know a single Brinkman supporter who ever referred to Pat DeWine or Bob McEwen as RINO's. You are simply uninformed when you claim that we call everyone a RINO except Brinkman. Schmidt is a RINO because of her record, not because of who she ran against. McEwen, DeWine, Minamyer, and every other Republican in the field was not labeled a RINO.
I just thought of another House election in the Cincinnati metro area where a conservative-sounding Democrat ran much better than national Democrats, especially in rural counties, in a district that was heavily Republican in presidential elections. I'm talking about the pre-2002 4th CD of Kentucky, which, like the current OH-02, had conservative rural counties that leaned GOP in presidential elections and conservative suburban counties that were overwhelmingly Republican in presidential elections.
In 1998, when then-Representative Jim Bunning ran for the Senate instead of for reelection, there was an acrimonious GOP primary in which the winner, Gex (pronounced "Jay") Williams, had many detractors even among GOP voters, and he faced a Democrat from the Cinci suburbs who never used his party label and campaigned as a conservative, Boone County Executive Ken Lucas. Lucas won huge margins in rural counties and lost only narrowly in the Cinci suburban counties of Kenton and Boone (he did lose big in the district's one county in metro Louisville), which allowed him to pull off a 53%-47% upset victory.
So was this a harbinger of Democrat gains in conservative rural and conservative suburban areas? Not by a longshot. The election was not a special election, so it was held in November 1998 along with the rest of the congressional elections nationwide, and the rest of the results that election day saw (i) Republican Jim Bunning get elected to the Senate, running very strong in the 4th congressional district (which he represented in the House) and in other conservative rural and suburban areas, and (ii) Republicans actually pick up a couple of conservative rural and suburban districts while the Democrats did not pick up any other GOP-held conservative rural or suburban districts. Nor was it a clarion call for Democrat gains in such districts in 2000, when the GOP picked up a couple of additional Dem-held conservative rural districts while the Democrats didn't pick up any such districts.
Here's an article on the 1998 Lucas victory. Notice that the local reporter wisely refrained from calling Lucas's victory a sign of a coming realignment towards the Democrats:
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1998/11/05/loc_lucas05.html
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