Posted on 08/14/2012 6:19:46 PM PDT by randita
Discuss the Wisconsin races, especially the race for the GOP U.S. Senate candidate.
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Tommy declared winner !!!!
It’s amusing to see the counties carried by Neumann are the ones far away from his old district (now held by Paul Ryan), the folks who know him the least.
Alas, this is also another example of why runoffs are needed. I’ll be amazed if Thompson survives to the end of a 6-year term, but beating Baldwin is of paramount importance.
There is good and bad. Ron Johnson is an example of the best. Herb Kohl the bad. Mark Dayton, ha ha ha.
I'm all for regular citizens being elected to important political office - politics is corrosive and most who stay in it for years and years are negatively affected. Unfortunately these days that means you either have to self-fund or Know Lots of People Who Matter -- I'd rather have the rich guy than the tool of the power set.
He ran a distant 3rd in his old district. Should be the nail in his political coffin.
Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Tea Party Express spent millions supporting former Rep. Mark Neumann. FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group active in other successful Republican congressional primaries, backed hedge fund manager and self-funder Eric Hovde.
It's amazing to see these groups piss away millions of dollars on a guy like Neumann. Obviously Tea Party Express is clueless, but Club for Growth has been all over the map, and you'd think they would know better. They're so entrenched that they tend to endorse ex-Rep so-and-so who served in Congress with them 10 or 20 years ago. Severely out of touch in many cases.
FreedomWorks actually polled local conservatives and decided to endorse Hovde after seeing he had strong grassroots support.
Yea, up until yesterday I was saying anyone but Tommy.....kinda like when I was saying anyone but Romney. But of course I will be right along with you pinching my nose.
Ryan presumably will be simultaneously running for reelection to the House, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Neumann attempt an 8th run for office to go for his old seat (if Ryan wins VP).
I see Neumann’s lead pimp around here touting that TPX endorsement is noticeably absent this evening.
Fair enough, I think TT's record as Governor was excellent, I just think he's too damn old to be embarking on a career as a first-term Senator. And as long you're gonna tell us how you judge him by Texas standards, I'd say up here in the midwest we consider "true conservative" Rick Perry to be a big-government establishment guy who talks tough but governs like like a "compassionate conservative" Bushie :-p
>> So many fools wasted their votes on Fitz they guy running last in every poll. Not that I’m rooting against (or for) TT but most freepers seem to be way against him so they should’ve voted for Hovde not split the tea party vote. <<
If I was in Wiscosnin, I'd be one of those "fools" who voted for Fitzgerald, knowing he was in fourth place and stood virtually no chance of winning. The primary is the time to vote your conscience, the general election is the time to vote strategically for the "lesser of two evils". I never vote for the lesser conservative in the primary unless it's to stop a hideous RINO scumbag from winning, and that didn't apply in this case, since all four candidates were running on conservative platforms. And even the risky one that stood a good chance of losing to the RAT, namely Neumann, was running a distant third so it was unlikely he'd pull off an upset. Screw "voting for Hovde to stop Thompson". Hovde is unknown and untested. I'll vote for the BEST conservative, Fitzgerald, regardless of how he's polling.
>> If Hovde wins the primary, he deserves support. <<
Indeed. With Fitzgerald losing, I could easily get behind Thompson or Hovde in the general election. But I'm not going to vote for the lesser conservatives in the primary, simple as that.
>> It’s amusing to see the counties carried by Neumann are the ones far away from his old district (now held by Paul Ryan), the folks who know him the least. He ran a distant 3rd in his old district. Should be the nail in his political coffin. <<
It does speak volumes that Neumann did best among those who knew him least, and vice versa. Sort of Al Gore's strength and weakness in the 2000 general election.
>> Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Tea Party Express spent millions supporting former Rep. Mark Neumann. FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group active in other successful Republican congressional primaries, backed hedge fund manager and self-funder Eric Hovde. It's amazing to see these groups piss away millions of dollars on a guy like Neumann. Obviously Tea Party Express is clueless <<
This is why I'm hesitant to call myself a "tea party" guy. They have a great philosophy in getting rid of big government politicians, but too often they go about it the wrong way and shoot themselves in the foot. The "Tea Party Neumann" stuff is a bad retread of 2010 when Tea Party groups would go gaga for Sharon Angle types and always endorse the LEAST viable candidate in a field with accept multiple conservatives. It's like they WANT to lose the general, or at least cut off their nose to spit in the face of "the establishment" by slating a candidate nobody likes.
Fitzgerald is from Dodge County, which is outside Ryan’s district. The WI-01 is only slightly Republican leaning, and we can’t run a carpetbagger and expect to win.
Do not confust the Tea Parties - the grass roots activist groups on the ground - with pretenders and poseurs like "Tea Party Express" - who have taken advantage of a leaderless movement to try and proclaim themselves in charge and therefore relevant. Wisconsin Tea Party groups did not support Neumann. The California carpetbaggers from Tea Party Express supported Neumann. If they had bothered to talk to or work with the dozens of Tea Party groups in this state, or just stayed the hell out, conservative Eric Hovde would be the candidate instead of RINO Tommy Thompson.
Third is his old district? That speaks volumes right there. FAIL. Dodged a bullet with him.
TT does look ancient, Glove (Mitt) should loan him some Grecian 5. Lautenberg has looked like a corpse for a while and he’s still going. I don’t think I’ve ever attempted 50 consecutive pushups.
If he does...not make it...Walker will replace him.
At least we shouldn’t have to worry about the lesbo winning now.
And so predicatble as early as last week.
Not the Third District, the First District (the WI-03 is the one in western WI held by the RAT Ron Kind and that used to be held by the gay RINO Steve Gunderson).
I meant to say “third IN his old district” as in he came in third there which is pathetic.
Oh, now I see what you meant. Yeah, that is pathetic. But, as DJ said, it probably won’t stop Neumann from running in the special election to replace Paul Ryan in the House (assuming Ryan is elected VP, which I think is more likely than not).
Sorry, if the "dozens of Tea Party groups" in Wisconsin really "got it", they would have coalesced behind Jeff Fitzgerald early on in the campaign, and he would be the nominee now. Fitzgerald has been a solid leader in the Walker revolution and had far & away the best track record. Hovde is an unproven gamble and is just as much as a "carpetbagger" as the Tea Party Express. He may have been born in Wisconsin but he's been living in D.C. for 24 years and just recently moved to Wisconsin to run for Senate. Sure, he had a staunch conservative platform, but so did the other three candidates.
>> RINO Tommy Thompson <<
Tommy Thompson waited FAR long too long to seek a Senate seat, but if you think he's a "RINO", I'd hate to see your idea of conservative. He produced a ton of positive results for Wisconsin during his heyday. I'd gladly trade him for at least a half dozen so-called "true conservatives" in the Senate who turned out to be duds and accomplished nothing in their political careers besides winning office, like John Thune, Pat Toomey, John Cornyn, Saxby Chambliss, etc. I can easily get behind Thompson in November with his track record.
Fitzgerald was, ideologically, a good candidate - if we excuse his dalliances with ethanol. Unfortunately, he did not work as hard to cultivate Tea Party support as Hovde.
As for Tommy, his expansion of state government, and support for statist solutions at HHS are indisputable. He also supported his brother’s third party candidacy for governor when he left to join the Bush Administration - a third party candidacy which cost his lieutenant governor Scott McCallum the governorship, and left us with 8 years of Jim Doyle, who proceeded to undo much of the good that Tommy did in this state. So, no, he’s not a conservative.
That said, he’s far better than Tammy Baldwin, and I will support him. But Hovde would have been a far better choice. As would Fitzgerald. As would Neumann.
Not that it matters with the primary over, but I've been hearing this "Thompson endorsed his Libertarian brother over his own Lt. Governor" stuff throughout the primary, and it doesn't gel with what I remember happening at the time. (I even remember a reporter asking Ed about his brother and Ed saying that Tommy was avoiding him and they hadn't spoken in a while) I'm pretty sure Tommy kept his distance from his eccentric brother. (even if he HAD endorsed him, I could excuse it because blood is thicker than politics, but I still don't think he did)
Anyway, I googled it, and nope, Thompson endorsed McCallum in 2002 -- NOT his younger brother. That's actually a VERY statemenlike decision on his part, given that he had to put the good of the state over family ties.
In short, the story seems to be as factual as "the pro-abortion Chris Christie" I don't know where the rumor got started, but it's flat out false, and there's plenty of evidence on the internet from 2002 demonstrating that:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Sep 21, 2002 Thompson Endorses McCallum
The Lawrentian: Tommy Thompson has verbally endorsed McCallum
So, the most evidence we have for Thompson being a "RINO" is that he followed George W. Bush's big government directives when he worked for him as HHS Secretary, and an FALSE story that he endorsed a Libertarian candidate because the guy was his own brother. Sorry, no sale.
All I really know about Tommy Thompson was some “exposé” on TV some years ago about how he restructured the welfare system in WI. Was he once a good conservative who stayed too long in DC?
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