Posted on 09/07/2014 8:54:19 AM PDT by centurion316
Labor Day week ought to start clarifying the partisan battle to control the Senate, but if anything, the picture just got muddier and the map bigger.
An afterthought all year, conservative Kansas is suddenly abuzz.
An independent candidate drove the Democrat from the race and positioned himself to consolidate discontent with three-term Republican Sen. Pat Roberts.
Washington-based GOP strategists are rushing to help Roberts, who's accused of sleepwalking through the race in the deeply Republican state.
If Kansas brought welcome news to Democrats, Alaska did not.
First-term Sen. Mark Begich initially was seen as running a smart campaign with excellent TV ads. But he endured withering criticism for a new type of ad, which he clumsily scrambled to remove from the airwaves.
The ad alluded to a sensational Alaska crime and accused the Republican nominee, Dan Sullivan, of being soft on criminals.
Sullivan was state attorney general at the time, but he had nothing to do with the prison sentence in question.
Critics denounced the ad, the crime victims' relatives demanded its removal, and Begich's image suddenly went from savvy campaigner to truth-shaving attacker.
Democrats acknowledge that it hurt Begich, who's running in a state that President Barack Obama lost by double digits in 2008 and 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
And you do it better than anyone else out there. We are eagerly awaiting the unveiling of your strategy for 2014, and I’m sure that the plan for 2016 will not be hard to find. Just keep on hittin’ them out of the park.
That is rather absurd - they’re going to go to court to try to force themselves not to have a candidate on the ballot to defer to candidates running under another party banner? Sort of the reverse of the shenanigans from New Jersey several years back - they got the judges to rule that they should be able to violate the law and change their candidate (based on polling data) because it would be a “disservice to voters” not to have a “choice” even though there were in fact other candidates on the ballot.
Roberts has to get his act together - still plenty of time, but it will run out of it doesn’t get started. That ridiculous candidate running against him in the primary bears a lot of responsibility for this as well. The primary wasn’t that long ago so those wounds are still healing...more of the Republican base will come back into the fold after the some of the bad taste of the bitter primary subsides. That said, the Democrats and their shenanigans are alive and well, and nothing is guaranteed - trying to get a candidate on the ballot without the label “Democrat” to avoid the negative connotations that will come with it in this election cycle is a clever move.
My own notion is that this was the plan all along. Taylor was never a serious candidate, just a throw away to keep the Democrat brand in front of the public. Orman was going to be their stealth candidate, the “Independent” who would go to Washington and drive all of the party money lenders out of the temple. Except that he was just another liberal Democrat who was going to fool the voters just long enough to get a Democrat win.
Kobach called their bluff. Taylor has future political ambitions, he doesn’t want to declare that he is incapable of serving. By arguing to have a blank line for the Democrat, the Democrats are exposing their plan. This will cause a number of Orman supports to leave, and many clueless Democrats will still vote for Taylor in November.
Wolf should have served to wake up Roberts. He failed to achieve that purpose. Roberts still thinks that he is entitled to the seat by virtue of family inheritance and connections. He seems to consider it beneath him to live in the state and to campaign here. But, he’s still the far better choice for November. One hopes that the campaign shake up no ongoing will turn things around.
I supported Wolf in the primary, but it had nothing to do with Wolf. Many of us wanted a way to express our dissatisfaction with Roberts. Although he was shocked by the outcome, I don’t think that he took anything from it. He attributed it all to zombies and people lying about his record.
I hear you on Roberts, I wasn’t really happy with his attitude also. I’ll be damned though if I vote a stealth liberal democrat posing as an independent.
That actually pisses me off they would try to deceive Kansans like that. I too hope Roberts steps up and exposes this fraud. He needs to because he won’t get much help from the local medias around here.
I’ve been reading some of the local news online comment sections and there are no liberals or democrats raising cain about a democrat not being on the senator ballot (or at least running or replaced). And we know, democrats whine and cry about everything that doesn’t go their way. They’ve been more angry for Kobach doing his job on the Taylor issue. It’s like the liberals/democrats understand their candidate is already baked in. They practice to deceive, what and evil bunch.
CGato
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