Schiff?
Oh him, I've seen him on TV.
Yeah he looks like the better of the 2 economic pundits. We don't need a guy with personal issues like past drug use.
Posted on 03/10/2009 9:39:47 AM PDT by GOPGuide
At the end of my tenure on this committee, I want it to be said that the safety and soundness of our financial institutions was not weakened on my watch
-Chris Dodd, February 15, 2007
(H/T Ironman, who notes that the Dow has fallen nearly in half since that date).
Senator Dodd has a lot to answer for and it looks like Connecticut voters are turning on him, as a new Quinnipiac poll out this morning shows he would narrowly trail moderate Republican former Congressman Rob Simmons 43-42 if the election were held today. (H/T) Simmons has been publicly mulling a run, as has longtime business pundit Larry Kudlow. The underlying numbers don’t look promising for an incumbent this far from the start of campaigning:
Sen. Dodd leads State Sen. Sam Caligiuri 47 - 34 percent and tops CNBC-TV host Larry Kudlow 46 - 34 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
In the Dodd-Simmons matchup, Democrats back Dodd 74 - 15 percent while Simmons leads 80 - 10 percent among Republicans and 49 - 32 percent among independent voters.
Connecticut voters approve 49 - 44 percent of the job Dodd is doing, compared to a negative 41 - 48 percent approval rating February 10. Dodd gets a split 46 - 45 percent favorability.
For Simmons, 53 percent do not know enough to form an opinion. Caligiuri and Kudlow are even more unknown, at 88 and 87 percent.
It’s a long way to Election Day, and of course defeating a Democratic incumbent in a blue state is never easy. But the voters are clearly uncomfortable with Dodd’s ethical lapses and obstruction of needed reforms of the housing credit market, and receptive to hearing arguments from Republicans. This will be a race worth contesting.
That's fine, we'll just let the liberal Democrat win the seat instead. Brilliant strategy which I'm sure is going to carry us far.
BTW, nobody said anything about "placating moderates". I'm all for cutting the RINOs out of power at the national level completely. No RINO should occupy any position of authority in the RNC - not in the Chairmanship, not in anything else all the way down to Second Vice-Assistant to the Floor Mopper in the NRSC. Nevertheless, I also fail to see what is noble about handing a Senate seat over to a liberal Democrat scot-free, instead of trying to get the seat into the hands of an at least moderate Republican.
It’s too early to tell. But I’ll go ahead and predict a GOP house, why not. There have been huge swings in house seats in the past.
The freaking Senate is another matter.
I fully support RINO Simmons here.
Though Larry Kudlow, more conservative I think would be interesting, he’s had drug issues in the past though.
Yes indeed, it gave us Reagan. Whereas your strategy gave us Bush, which led directly to creating total Democrat power.
Brilliant strategy.
Okay, let's examine your little proposition. How did this give us Reagan? It's easy to slide brattish little statements like this through without anyone thinking to actually question them. It's much harder to actually have to justify them. So let's see you do it. How exactly did refusing to support any moderate Republicans for Senate races in the liberal Northeast, and instead handing those races to liberal Democrats, give us Ronald Reagan, especially when Reagan himself on more than one occasion extended the 11th commandment to just such moderate Republicans?
Nothing sticks to Dodd.Not waitress sandwiches,not consecutively numbered 5,000 dollar checks from Buddhist monks as the co-chair of the DNC in ‘96,on and on.No-one in Washington has more baggage without a scratch than Chris Dodd!
Add to your list: $75,000 discount on mortgage (normal people call it a bribe) from Countrywide.
Even the mighty eventually fall. Simmons took down the execrable Gejdenson, so this will be another prime target for him.
Your premise is that a strategy of electing moderates in liberal states is a winner and that supporting a conservative is stupid. I gave you an example from elsewhere of why the strategy you propose is both dysfunctional and destructive to conservatism, as it has been proven to be over and over. If you can't handle that, too bad.
I could give you legions of parallels from a "liberal state" of California, but I'm not going to bother, because rather than discuss the strategy in principle and what I regard as the faulty underlying premises you would prefer to confine it to a specific case for which I do not wish to bother. If you want another Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Jim Jeffords (ALL GOP moderates in Northeastern liberal states), that is your business.
It doesn't work. The strategy leaves Republicans owning the results of liberal policies.
“Any chance dodd will retire....?”
I imagine he would have no problem with the monies he’s sacked away from ill gotten gains. Liars and thieves tend to get away with most anything if they have a D behind their names.
The problem is that your "example" didn't address anything I had actually *said*. You threw back the example of Reagan (presumably over Ford or Anderson or some other GOP moderate). Problem is, your example (which I would agree with, btw) applies to the nation as a whole, but has no bearing whatsoever on a Senate race in a liberal Northeastern state. Yes, Reagan could win over the whole country, but this DOESN'T translate into the ability for a truly conservative Republican to win any specific Senate race in a liberal state. Can you name me any conservative Republican who has been elected to a statewide position in a liberal state in the past two decades? Of course you can't. Running a conservative in Connecticut means you get 30% of the vote, meaning you lose. You're "example" was entirely non sequitur.
I could give you legions of parallels from a "liberal state" of California, but I'm not going to bother, because rather than discuss the strategy in principle and what I regard as the faulty underlying premises you would prefer to confine it to a specific case for which I do not wish to bother.
In other words, you can't answer the question I asked, so you'd rather try to move the goalposts in a huff. Fine. I can live with that.
If you want another Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Jim Jeffords (ALL GOP moderates in Northeastern liberal states), that is your business.
No, I'd rather have Duncan Hunters all throughout. But I'm also sane enough to realise that we're probably never going to see that in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, etc. etc. The best we're going to get is RINOs, so RINOs it must be. I'd rather have in a moderate Republican than a liberal Democrat, since at least with the RINO you get *some* of what you want, rather than *none* of what you want, and at least with a RINO, the total GOP numbers are increased, so that the GOP is more likely to have a majority, which can then allow it to put critical chairmanships of committees, etc. into the hands of conservative Republicans, rather than leaving them in the hands of liberal Democrats.
Honestly, I don't see why so many people have trouble figuring out this simple concept.
It doesn't work. The strategy leaves Republicans owning the results of liberal policies.
I disagree. I think most people are smart enough to realise that, for instance, Porkulus passed with only three "Republican" votes. I don't think most people are going to blame (or credit, depending on their position on it) the entire GOP for the actions of three Senators who are widely known to be way outside the GOP mainstream anywise. And if there are people who ARE inclined to do so, then that is their own fault for being uninformed buffoons.
I am not impressed with Larry Kudlow. Some other freeper said they mainly know him from when he was on TV with Jim Cramer on the “Kudlow & Cramer” show, where they had a hard time figuring out which one was the “liberal” and which one was the “conservative”, and I agree. Usuaslly the conservative is the forceful, tough guy and the liberal is the whiny, blovicating bore, but in these guys case it was the opposite. Kudlow has that annoying nasally voice that does remind people he was a former coke addict. He's pro-open borders too, and he spent most of 2008 denying the U.S. was in recession, so the RATs will hit him over the head with that the way McCain got killed for saying the economy is “fundamentally sound” Unlike Simmons, polls show Kudlow would lose to Dodd.
My personal preference at this point would be Peter Schiff, who is about as perfect a candidate for economic issues as you can get. Unlike Kudlow’s mistake, Schiff was the opposite — he predicted the economic collapse and housing market bubble would pop before ANYONE else did. He was warning about this stuff back in 2006, and his track record is excellent. The campaign commercials we could run against Dodd with Schiff on the ballot would be great. Social issues wouldn't be a factor because the whole race would revolve around ability to handle the economic crisis. The only downside to Schiff is he was an economic advisor to Ron Paul, but as far as I know he's never embraced any of Paul's nutty foreign policy statements, and was drawn to Paul mainly because Paul was the only candidate supporting a platform to oppose the federal reserve and return America to the gold standard.
Peter Schiff would be the best choice, IMO, with Lt. Governor Michael Fedele being my a distant second. State Senator Sam Caliguiri might run too, I don't know where he is on the political spectrum. The remaining GOP field is “hold your nose and vote for them to stop Dodd” candidates.
Schiff?
Oh him, I've seen him on TV.
Yeah he looks like the better of the 2 economic pundits. We don't need a guy with personal issues like past drug use.
I have little understand of high economics but I’m not sure returning to gold standard would work at this stage.
I would have likely opposed ever going off it though.
This is excellent news, given that Simmons doesn’t have great name I.D. statewide. If he runs, he’ll need a whole lot of money, given the cost of campaigning there and Dodd’s access to tons of money.
Is Simmons pro-life?
Unseating Dodd must become a GOP Manhattan Project.
Thanks. What a nightmarish record.
Excellent news. Yes, I’m aware that Simmons is no Tom Coburn or Jim DeMint, but he’s solid on enough issues to support him in Connecticut, and any Republican (save Lincoln Chafee) who can knock off a corrupt, leftist Democrat like Chris Dodd is worthy of our support.
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