Posted on 11/09/2022 8:34:08 PM PST by SeekAndFind
On an otherwise disastrous night for Republicans, who were the biggest winners?
ANSWER: Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida and Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia -- the two Republicans Donald Trump hates with the hot, hot hate of a thousand suns.
Which Republicans most underperformed?
ANSWER: Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia -- two nominees hand-picked by Trump.
The first horror of a long Tuesday night came soon after the polls closed in Pennsylvania, with the GOP gubernatorial nominee, Mastriano, getting clobbered. Some of the tipoffs that Mastriano might not have been the strongest candidate for the GOP were:
-- A week before the primary, he spoke at a QAnon rally, featuring a film claiming 9/11 was an inside job and that John F. Kennedy Jr. was assassinated because he "knew too much."
-- He called abortion the "No. 1 issue" and promised to ban all abortions with no exceptions even for rape, incest or the life of the mother. He also said women who violated the ban should be charged with murder.
-- He vowed to de-register all Pennsylvania voters and make them re-register to vote and said that, as governor, he would choose who was allowed to certify elections.
Naturally, Trump endorsed him. After all, Mastriano had slavishly supported the ex-president's stolen election claims -- convening slates of fake electors and even showing up at the Capitol on Jan. 6. That's just the ticket for a purple state, no?
On Tuesday night, Mastriano lost 42% to 55%. That can't have helped Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican running for Senate, who was still hanging on the next day, conceding with 47% of the vote to John Fetterman's 50%.
In Georgia, we got both types of Trump's electoral wizardry: the bad and the horrendously bad. First, after narrowly losing the state in 2020, he went on a jihad against the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger.
Still enraged with Kemp, he recruited and funded a primary opponent to the popular governor. Luckily, Trump's designated candidate, former Sen. David Perdue, was available, having lost his own reelection to the Senate entirely because of Trump.
In case you've forgotten, Trump held rallies in Georgia leading up to the runoff between Perdue and Raphael Warnock, denouncing the popular Republican governor and telling people not to bother voting because the system was rigged. Warnock won and Perdue was unemployed, so Trump got him to run against Kemp.
Trump so hated Kemp that he finally dipped into his $100 million political PAC to fund something other than his own businesses and rallies, giving a half-million dollars to Perdue.
Primary election results: Kemp trounced Perdue 74% to 22%.
Raffensperger -- the Georgia secretary of state who Trump bullied because he refused to scare up 11,780 more Trump votes in 2020 and who he accused of committing "a criminal offense" -- won his primary by nearly 20 points.
I think Georgia voters were trying to send a message: Please just give us a normal Republican.
Trump: Message not received!
Having already caused the loss of two Senate seats in Georgia, Trump's second great idea was to hand-pick a candidate for the Senate based on stupid, narcissistic reasons having nothing to do with strategy or the state, but just because he knows the guy.
In March 2021 he put out a statement: "Wouldn't it be fantastic if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia? He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL. He is also a GREAT person. Run Herschel, run!"
Senate candidate Herschel Walker is 100% Trump's baby.
It's not as if running for the Senate had been Walker's lifelong dream. It was Trump who decided he would be the nominee simply because he'd played for Trump's (now-defunct) United States Football League and had appeared as a contestant on "Celebrity Apprentice."
This is how Trump picks candidates.
Still, the race should have been a cakewalk. On Tuesday night, Kemp and Raffensperger each won their elections by about 8 points. It's reasonable to conclude that any other Republican would have beaten Warnock by the same healthy margin. Same state, same election, same political party.
Instead, the Georgia Senate race ended up being the most expensive in the country -- money that Republicans really could have used in other races. Walker, as of this writing, appears to be headed for a runoff. Trump is on track to screw that one up too, by announcing that he's running for president, so he can make it all about himself again.
That's exactly what he did at his campaign rallies this week, showing up where he wasn't wanted and doing the same old schtick about the Russia investigation, his "perfect" call to Zelensky, "Shifty Schiff" (Rep. Adam Schiff) and what an awesome president he was -- including what a badass he'd be on crime. (Trump during the first debate with Biden: "You called them 'super-predators.' African Americans are super-predators ... I'm letting people out of jail now!")
If Walker loses, let the record show that this will be the third consecutive Georgia Senate seat Trump has lost for Republicans.
When the Republican governor of the second-largest state wins his reelection by 55% and the Republican governor of the third-largest state wins by 60%, the GOP doesn't need another one of its moronic "autopsies" of the party, promising to be just like the Democrats. The only thing we need now is an autopsy of Trump.
And——YOU WIN THE THREAD!!!!
Wonder how many cats live in coulters house?
Both disrupters and cherished for that. Both alienating supporters unnecessarily because they couldn't keep it together.
Yeah, there is more that could unite us than divides us. Republican politics has become binary for some reason. Personally I think it is democrat activism doing this, pushing the total exclusion of people for one thought or action that is counter to Trump.
Anne was on the wrong end of that and went bonkers when she became the object of scorn for basically holding Trump to his promises. Look at poor Pence too. I guess that was his reward for being so loyal to Trump during his administration. For sure Mike tasted Trump's butt to the point of embarrassment.
But Anne is right about successes in this election with some going it alone without Trump, for sure that is Kemp and Raffensperger in Georgia. They didn't win because they were anti-Trump, but they weren't excluded by a certain segment of the electorate because of Trump's support. That is the obvious lesson with Walker who should have walked to the end zone.
Agree.
Bitter Skank Alert. Code Fucia!
The red wave came in under the radar and these fools missed it, big gains where they count at the local level
Yes, well said.
Many of us have a sense to not do anything to hurt our party ... our partisan loyalties require it.
We are thinking to ourselves that Trump, with his dreadful approval ratings, is no longer Presidential timber. So it would be complete folly to support him for the nomination. And knowing the consequences, we’re obligated to stop him.
His run will split the party in two and the Dem victory in ‘24 will leave the GOP in ruins.
... continued
Liz Coulter.
I only listen to Clay and Buck once in a while, but two or more times when I tuned in Coulter was blathering on and on.
Good post. I don’t like Trump going off the rails re DeSantis as of late as it doesn’t help him at all nor the future election. But he sure got a raw deal starting before day one of his presidency. I’m grateful he was brutal against Hillary and took her out. I’m grateful for what he was able to accomplish even with the whole machine against him.
>>Ann Coulter sold out a long time ago.<<
Yep. She lost my attention when she slathered all over Mitt Romney.
Sounds like a crazy cat lady who voted dem.
Sounds like you are projecting your personal life onto Trump. There is no perfect president; no perfect human being. His few shortcomings in relation to his manifold strengths don’t make him a rejected “ex-lover.”
He in in Rush's slot in the Baltimore area. He is tolerable, but the juvenile comedy for three hours gets tiresome fast. I end up tuning out. Rush was incomparable.
She had a good run at conning conservatives into buying her books. I’ve noticed her absence from the MSM. Maybe they’ve tired of her screech, too.
What's her FR nick?
She thinks the election was honest.
Fetterman winks
“Never give up. Never surrender.” —Winston Churchill
“Chin up. Never say die. We’ll get along.”—Charlie Chaplin
Two great Englishman said it, so it must be they’re right.
As for Ann Coulter, her head is up her a@@ because she likes the view from there.
I never knew that she “used to be a Freeper”...that explains a lot! In TWO of her earlier books I saw two separate comments of mine lifted almost word for word from my spontaneous posts/replies-—one on Clinton, one on GW Bush. Way too coincidental., And they weren’t generic-type comments—Bush’s I don’t remember, probably something giving evidence of BDS (though I had no use for him even then) and Clinton’s more subtle, something about him being a kind of “reverse-Jesus” while still carrying on as if he were the real thing-—he’s both dying for our sins by being impeached, and living out our fantasy sins-—the best of both worlds! was something like what I said, that Ann stole!
One of the best-crafted posts I have ever seen on FR!~
De Santis created an anti-fraud unit to make sure voter fraud wasn't going to happen on a large scale in Florida. I wish more Republican Governors had done the same.
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