Worked all day yesterday so I couldn’t reply till now.
Should have seen this coming when he said weeks ago that he wouldn’t back Pelosi again. I said at time it didn’t matter cause he wasn’t gonna be there in Jan 2011 to vote for Speaker. He came to the same conclusion obviously.
Now he seems to voted against all the major crap this year so I wouldn’t have trouble supporting him. I think he’ll vote in the future like an average Republican congressman.
His GOP primary foes are staying in the race it looks like (they will probably face pressure to quit). They have terrible things to say about his record claiming he’s not as conservative as says he is, had a bad record in the state legislature and has voted with the rats on things this year.
The smart thing politically is to back to him and encourage similar rats to switch.
I will say though he is not entitled to win because he’s the incumbent. He’ll need to win the primary if Mo Brooks and Les Phillip stay in. Primary voters in the distinct will decide. If I lived there I’d be hard pressed not to vote for Les Phillip anyway.
Greg Laughlin of Texas switched after 1994 and then lost to Ron Paul in the primary (and has a loyal Republican and endorsed Paul). AFAIK no other recent era switchee faced primary difficulty.
I said if Bobby Bright was smart, he’d follow Griffith to the GOP. Now, if Artur Davis REALLY wants to be Governor of Alabama, he’d switch to the GOP, too, and that would draw enough (national) focus to him he might win the primary in a divided field. ;-)
You may be right that Laughlin was the only 1994-1995 switcher to go on to lose the primary, but after Michael Forbes of the NY-01 switched from the GOP to the RATs in 1999 he went on to lose the 2000 Democrat primary to a librarian or some such named Regina Selzer who benefited from RNC or NRCC billboards thanking Forbes for his votes for the Contract with America, etc. (and Republican Felix Grucci easily defeated Selzer in the general, with Forbes getting like 2% as the nominee of the now-defunct Liberal Party).
Wow. It’s in your blood. God bless you, Impy. Merry Christmas.