As I say, an "able" candidate who has not gone through major campaigns that expose weaknesses, dirt, ANYTHING that might damage a campaign is asking for trouble.
This is precisely the kind of head-in-the-sand problem that so many Tea Party candidates have: campaigns vet candidates. Say what you want about Hillary, virtually everything that could be thrown at her has already been thrown.
It is unnecessary to remind me of Roberts' weaknesses. But those weaknesses were a "devil we know" kind of thing compared to an unknown. To continue to restate the virtues of people such as Milton while ignoring the practical, very important weaknesses of inexperienced outsiders running will continue to produce the same results.
The classic example of this was Alan Keyes. Keyes is a brilliant man, extremely articulate. But he carefully never ran for a seat he could actually win---a House seat, for example. He ran as a very conservative candidate for the senate in Maryland, then had a joke of a campaign for the senate in Illinois. Not a STATE senate position in either case, but the US senate. Such candidates are not serious. I think Milton was more serious, but lack of name recognition combined with the "un-vetted-ness" that allows the last-minute dirt campaign of the opponent is a sure loser. Cantor is not a good example here because that was a US House seat in a vastly smaller territory where name recognition could be overcome quickly. And, as I said, Roberts didn't have a bad ACA rating, despite his age and despite his inability to "drive hard." Being able to simply post "Here's how I voted" and have people look at it and say, "Well, that's a pretty good record" is very hard to overcome.
So, I'm not surprised at all, and don't think it has anything to do with being "unable to reform." It has to do with political realities that too many Tea Party types ignore (see Christine O'Donnell).
LS and 1010RD, both of whom I have profound respect for, regard the primary results in Missouri to be
sui generis and probably inconsequential. On the other hand I regard the results to be significant and part of a larger pattern. Is it coincidence that both LS and 1010RD oppose the Article V movement while I support it?
I see the pattern repeated in South Carolina, Mississippi (albeit by treachery but the involvement of the establishment there is only more blatant than elsewhere) Kansas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Each one of these losses can be rationalized by localizing the races but, considered cumulatively, they constitute a pattern of undeniable failure of reform. If we believe that the Republic is hurtling toward a fiscal cliff, if we believe our liberties are being usurped by executive tyranny, then we must be avid for reform. Sadly, this pattern of failure likely signifies that the primary process is not the vehicle which will lead us to saving reforms.
But primaries are only the first half of the two-step process, the second half occurs on the first Tuesday in November when we can expect an election and we will then hope to see Republicans take back control of the Senate. Will a November victory produce saving reform?
We don't have to speculate, we know how the Senators will behave in January 2015 because we saw most of them in action for decades especially during the Bush years when we had the House and Senate and used our majorities to explode spending, add more trillions to the debt than ever before, put Medicaid on steroids, pass prescription drugs, and invade our schools. The list of progressive triumphs in these years goes on and on. We are now expected to exalt hope over experience and believe that the electoral process will put the same people plus a few more back into control, but this time they will somehow be different.
I believe that the electoral process in November offers no more realistic hope that did the primary process to facilitate saving reform.
I would not like to believe that my discouragement about the outcome in Kansas is colored by my pessimism about the primary process as a vehicle for reform. Equally, I would not like to believe that fear of the Article V movement would color anyone's beliefs about how we have fared overall in the primary process.
The virtues or hidden traps of the Article V movement are worthy of debate and I, of course, relish the chance to participate with you two.
