Posted on 06/12/2018 7:14:40 PM PDT by TBP
Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart won the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Tuesday night.
Stewart fought off an unexpectedly tough challenge from Virginia state lawmaker and former Green Beret Nick Freitas. E.W. Jackson, the 2013 Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, ran a distant third.
The contest highlighted regional and generational divides within the Republican primary electorate, as Stewart embraced President Trump, Virginia's Confederate heritage symbols, and a strong stance against illegal immigration. Freitas aligned himself with more libertarian Republicans nationally, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and pressed Stewart to distance himself from the "alt-right."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
C'mon, any proof of this? How exactly were they gonna make him go through with that? No one does stuff like that.
As for Palin she isn't interested in running for office, thank goodness.
‘Cept Kirk wasn’t half. He wasn’t even a third.
We discussed it at the time. It was a serious rumor I heard, and I gave it considerable validity. Given that the Dems putting up second-tier Coons against Castle when they could’ve run a first-tier Plugs Junior, I knew something serious was up. Castle, as I already said, had been in collusion with the Democrats for some time. This was par for the course.
I expected the “reward” for the septuagenarian Castle was a cushy post with the Zero regime.
DJ, that “rumor” doesn’t pass the laugh test. If Castle was in cahoots with Obama and Biden to give the Senate seat to Beau Biden, Castle *wouldn’t have run for the Senate in the first place*. If Castle truly was a Democrat mole within the Delaware GOP (as opposed to a socially liberal-to-moderate Republican), Castle would have asked Obama to name him to some plum position in 2009 and the RATs would have won both the House and Senate seats without any drama. Why the heck would Obama and Biden prefer to have Castle run for and win the Senate seat?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Well obviously I don't remember. The brain can only hold so much nonsense, so that discussion must lost out to retaining the names of the Kardassian sisters. ;d
Auh2 chimes in with irrefutable logic in post #44. If Castle wanted Biden Jr. in the Senate why the hell would he have even run? He was desperate to be add "Senator" to resume for a couple years before quitting? That's preposterous.
Seems to me when some people oppose the election of RINOS they go out of their way to make up ridiculous hyperbolic reasons why, perhaps to justify their acquiescence of the resulting democrat victory to themselves. If you want to oppose the election of liberal Republicans on principle, fine, own it, there's no need for silly hyperbole. Whomever made up this "rumor" about Castle was a crackpot or perhaps seeking to aide O'Donnell in the primary. With so much legimate ammo against Castle that was patently unnecessary.
I’ll take a rat that’s 5% conservative over zero% rat too, which is why I urge CA Republicans to vote DiFi over De Leon in that 2 way election.
Pan over fire, which is why I had to vote for Rahm over Chuy (who will soon be my Congressman, yay..........).
Kirk looked like GD gold compared to Turban, Suckworthless, the Guit, and Chuy. He’s the only member of Congress I had that voted my way even part of the time.
The more I’ve seen over the years about the collusion between Democrats and the Republican Establishment, the more such rumors are anything but far-fetched. I absolutely believe this is what he would’ve done.
It’s not nearly as preposterous a claim as you might think. The lengths to which Establishment RINOs will go to stop Conservative outsiders, colluding with Democrats, is already well-established. I absolutely believe the agreement took place. Castle gets a ringer for the election, serves for a short period, then “graciously” resigns to allow Plugs Junior to slip into the seat.
It was simply “too much” to have Junior jump in to the race for daddy’s seat at that particular point. It was gross nepotism. By allowing Castle to win, and then allowing the Governor to appoint Junior at a later date allowing him to run as an incumbent, it was more advantageous. Of course, O’Donnell destroyed the plan and both the Dems and the GOP Establishment had to scramble to anoint the “ringer” Coons, lest this outsider woman actually win. That couldn’t be allowed.
That similarly happened in IL in 1996, when the Combine selected Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra to be their designated Senator with Dick Durbin as the Democrat ringer (to be rewarded for his service at a later date). Al Salvi upended that arrangement, and the Combine anointed Durbin. Ditto again in 1998 when Lolita Didrickson was the pre-selected Combiner challenger and designated loser to Moseley-Braun and Fitzgerald upended that arrangement... only that Fitz had enough $$ resources to overcome the Combine.
So, yes, this corruption DOES go on. Even in tiny Delaware.
At some point, you just have to let it go. Once you’re getting effed over ideologically more than 50% of the time, you’re already headed in the wrong direction. If it has reached the point where you consider 95%+ leftists a viable option to 100%, you need to do some soul-searching. California’s method of “selecting” candidates for a general “runoff” is demonstrably totalitarian and unconstitutional, denying the right of the parties and the people to select THEIR nominees.
A binary choice is a binary choice, I would have jumped off the WTC too rather than choking to death on smoke.
That’s two-dimensional thinking. When there’s a choice between steak and fish, I’ll order lasagna.
I fail to see the appeal for Castle of being a Senator for 5 minutes or how Castle’s resignation could have been enforced, other than by offering a meaningful cabinet position.
Why not let some Biden family (d)og like then incumbent Kaufman be a stand in for Beau?
Fact is Beau would have run if he wasn’t scared of a competitive election with Castle, not enough people give a damn about nepotism, Princess Lisa is still in office.
Personally, I think the Castle runs/Beau Biden didn’t scenario was much simpler than any arranged deal for Castle to win and then bug out later.
The 2010 election was looking like a bloodbath for Democrats that even a state like Delaware couldn’t escape. (Remember that we had already taken Massachusetts with Scott Brown’s victory by then, so for a time it looked like we could win almost anywhere) Coupled with the fact that Castle was the state’s at-large congressman and former two-term governor, and the seat looked like too much of a gamble for even the son of Biden to take on.
I also find it more plausible that Castle would have tried to occupy the Senate seat until he went out feet first. Delaware isn’t far from D.C. He could have kept going there even with increasing age and health problems (he wasn’t a spring chicken when he ran for the Senate and had suffered two strokes in 2006). Look at how many senators recently that refused to vacate the chamber even in light of bad or terminal health and eventually died: Byrd, Kennedy, Inouye, Lautenberg, and almost certainly McCain to come. These guys don’t let go of power easily. I doubt Castle would have done so either.
It wasn’t an issue of being scared, but an issue of nepotism and the wrong time to run. He could wait a bit to get the seat, that was the plan. But he was going to get the seat. Plugs Senior was grooming his son for the Presidency.
Castle would’ve left early for that cushy reward in the Zero regime, or he simply would’ve switched parties had he attempted to stay in the Senate. He was more than comfortable with the Democrats.
If Castle was “more comfortable” with the Democrats rather than the party to which he had belonged for a half century, why didn’t he switch to the Democrats in 2007? It would have made his life easier, as well as facilitate his double-secret plan to deliver the Senate seat to Beau Biden. The GOP had no bench at all in Delaware, so Castle forgoing a Senate run as a Republican would have handed the seat to the RATs in a silver platter.
Sometimes thinks really are as simple as they look. Castle wanted to be a U.S. Senator since 1994 (back when he was finishing his first term in the House after two terms as Delaware’s governor), an election in which he would have been elected easily had GOP Senator William Roth retired, but Delaware Republicans never know when to step own and the aging Roth ran for reelection and won easily. Roth again ran for reelection in 2000, by which time he visibly had slowed down, and under a far worse electoral environment for a Republican in Delaware, and got blown out by RAT Gov. Carper; had it been Castle running for reelection, it’s quite possible that Carper wouldn’t even have run, and even if he had Castle would have been tough to beat (as he was in the House for over a decade). In any event, Castle being elected to the Senate would have allowed a younger, more conservative Republican to have been elected to the House in 1994 and thereafter; and maybe the GOP would have had a viable candidate apart from Castle in 2010.
But none of that happened, and other than a political comeback by the long retired former Gov. Pete DuPont (which I would have supported), Castle was pretty close to the GOP’s only chance of winning the 2910 Senate election; that the DE GOP had no bench was proven by the fact that no one with any chance of winning ran for the House in an open-seat scenario in a very good GOP year. It was clear that a deadbeat and gadfly like COD would have no chance in the general even against a second-tier Democrat like Coons, not because she was conservative, but because she was a terrible candidate with no record of achievement in any field or endeavor and who only had to offer an embarrassing past and an uncertain future. I have made some bonehead political decisions in my life, including supporting Todd Akin in the 2012 GOP Senate primary and Judge Moore in the 2017 AL Senate primary (both candidates went down due to things that came out after the primary, but, still, I should have been more careful when endorsing in the primary), but having held my nose and supporting Castle in the 2010 DE Senate primary over COD was not one of them.
Castle wouldn’t have resigned and given his seat to Beau Biden; he would have been a moderate Republican Senator, probably not as bad as Susan Collins but not any better than Lisa Murkowski. But do you know what? Castle would have been reelected in 2014, and if even Collins and Murkowski voted to implement the nuclear option to end the filibuster of Justice Gorsuch, so would have Castle. The Senate would have one more vote for President Trump’s judicial nominees, instead of having a reflexive “NAY” vote in Senator Coons. Coming from a state in which President Trump couldn’t get to 42%, I’d take that in a heartbeat.
Castle didn’t switch in 2007 because it wasn’t advantageous of him to do so. Had it benefitted the Democrats, perhaps, but joining a party already in the majority with comfortable numbers would not have gained him anything. They certainly wouldn’t have handed him a chairmanship. It’s also unlikely he could’ve won the primary for the Senate seat, since Democrats are often unforgiving of someone switching over from the GOP. As left-wing as he is, it wouldn’t be enough. Hell, to CT Democrats, the almost 100% perfect left-wing Joe Lieberman wasn’t pure enough.
I’m quite glad Conservative Bill Roth didn’t step down in 1994 in favor of left-leaning Castle. Assuming he’d have won that year, a Sen. Castle would not have won reelection in 2000 as a Republican against then-outgoing Gov. Tom Carper. Remember all the seats the GOP lost that year. Now, if he had won reelection, he might very well have pulled a Jeffords before Jeffords (or they might’ve jumped together). In any event, he’d still likely have been out by 2006 (again, losing the Dem primary, probably again to Carper).
Had the House seat come open in 1994, perhaps either Jane Brady (running for Attorney General) or Janet Rzewnicki, the State Treasurer, might’ve jumped in. But I believe both women would’ve had trouble in or after 2000. Rzewnicki actually ran against Castle in the 1992 primary for the open House seat, losing 56-30%. She scored a decisive 67% of the vote in 1994 for her 4th term as Treasurer. She was the logical choice to run for Governor in 1996, but only got a dreadful 31%. In 1998, it was a complete fiasco, as she lost her job as Treasurer to future Governor Jack Markell, getting just 42%. I expect had Rzewnicki won the House race in 1994, she would’ve lost reelection in 1996, and the Dems would’ve held it ever since. Jane Brady probably wouldn’t have fared much better. She managed to hold on to her job as late as the 2002 elections, but won with a bare plurality of just 48%, and she moved over to the Superior Court before her term expired in 2007, giving the Dems the office.
As for Pete duPont, he should’ve run against Plugs in 1984, in what would’ve been the marquee race of the year (or at least tying the Helms-Hunt race in NC). At least that cancer would’ve been excised long ago. duPont could’ve sat in the seat until at least 2003 without too much of a problem. I wouldn’t have suggested at 75 that he try to run in 2010 (then again, my almost 75-year old ex-Governor Bredesen is trying for a first term in the Senate).
That a “gadfly” like O’Donnell was able to beat Castle exposed just how out-of-touch and arrogant he was. I remember seeing part of a town hall meeting from around 2010. The sense of entitlement was off the charts. He was the epitome of the establishment politician and as grotesquely anti-Conservative as one could get. He got his just desserts for his actions in office, and the screwing he gave the DE GOP and the political base. That was entirely on him. It was the duty of Delaware Republicans to defeat him, and that was that. BTW, O’Donnell still got roughly the party base in the state, over 40% (almost what Trump got 6 years later). That was better than her 2008 performance against Plugs, which she improved upon from 35%. It even topped that of the aforementioned Jane Brady, when she ran against Plugs in 1990 and got just under 36%.
Again, performing at or above the average for a GOP Senate candidate didn’t make her a disaster. Add to that the RINO Establishment, Castle’s flunkies (who refused to endorse her after her victory), the national Dems and the media running a disgusting, sexist and slanderous campaign against her, she still did well.
Valid point, O'Donnell's numbers were decent compared to when the DE GOP got their way and ran RINO Jan Ting as the party nominee because they said he was the only "credible" and "electable" candidate. The party backed RINO Ting beat conservative outsider Mike Protack in the primary, then went on to get crushed in November, and couldn't even muster 30% of the vote statewide. He was basically Delaware's answer to Steve Sauerberg. Ting went on to endorse Obama and was then forcefully expelled from the GOP and officially joined the RAT party. He won't be missed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.