If he lost, America won, if not we lost.
Posted on 07/23/2014 8:16:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
First-time political candidate David Perdue won a surprise victory over favored Rep. Jack Kingston in the Republican runoff for the US Senate nomination in Georgia. Kingston, who had the backing of the US Chamber of Commerce as well as conservatives such as my Salem colleague Erick Erickson, had been leading in almost every poll as the runoff approached. In the end, Perdue’s outsider message may have won the day:
Businessman David Perdue stunned Georgia’s Republican political establishment Tuesday by capturing the party’s U.S. Senate nomination in his first run for office.
The former CEO of Reebok and Dollar General toppled 11-term Rep. Jack Kingston by a narrow margin, setting up a battle of political newcomers with famous kin in the fall. Perdue’s cousin, Sonny, was a two-term governor and Nunn’s father, Sam, was a four-term U.S. Senator.
In addition to his famous last name and lingering political network from his cousin, Perdue deployed $3 million of his own money to back his bid. Still, he was outspent by Kingston and allied Super PACs – including the deep pocketed U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
That leaves the Senate race in Georgia to two political neophytes — Perdue and Michelle Nunn, who has also never run for office until now. Both come from political families, however. Nunn’s father Sam spent four terms in the Senate before retiring in 1996 as a blue-dog Democrat who voted in favor of tort reform and in support of the death penalty and balanced budgets. Nunn’s challenge will be to convince Georgia voters that she’s a chip off the old block while still representing the outsider, anti-establishment perspective.
Perdue’s win makes that a little more difficult, Politico’s James Hohmann points out:
The general election is likely to be a costly battle between two candidates running as “outsiders,” despite their politically powerful families. Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn’s father, Sam Nunn, represented Georgia in the Senate for 24 years. Perdue’s first cousin, Sonny Perdue, was the state’s first Republican governor elected since Reconstruction, serving two terms from 2003 to 2011.
With Kingston’s defeat, Nunn has lost her chance to run against Washington and the national debt. She is expected, instead, to contrast her background as a nonprofit executive against Perdue’s tenure as a CEO at companies like Reebok and Dollar General.
Georgia is the Democrats’ best chance to pick up a Republican-held seat this fall, which ensures it will be one of the most closely watched races on the map.
Democrats might have hoped for a GOP split such as that seen in Mississippi after a close primary and runoff. If so, they’re doubly disappointed as Kingston wasted no time in endorsing his former opponent:
Kingston immediately pledged his support in a concession call to Perdue and told him “once we combine our two camps we will absolutely be unstoppable.”
Erick blames the Chamber of Commerce endorsement for the narrow loss:
In the last two weeks, David Perdue made hay out of walking out of his meeting with the Chamber. He claimed the Chamber wanted him to vote with them 100% of the time. He would not.
That message resonated. Kingston was the career politician in the pocket of the Chamber and would pass amnesty.
Not now. He lost. And he did so largely because David Perdue made Kingston own his Chamber of Commerce endorsement.
Erick’s a lot closer to the race than I am, and the narrowness of the runoff makes this a very plausible analysis. It might be simpler than this, though. Kingston’s been in Washington for 22 years, and with or without the Chamber of Commerce endorsement, that’s baggage in the last few cycles. Georgia voters may just have wanted a reasonable alternative to a career politician, and Perdue managed to make that case for himself in the course of the primary and runoff. Don’t discount the power of populism in this cycle — and it might be fortunate for the national GOP that they defused that argument in Georgia, assuming Perdue doesn’t blow the general election.
Excuse me, but what’s that fella got laying out on that anvil?
LOL I’ll have to ask my offspring, she’s the Boilermaker in the family.
Of course you’re only joking. When work requirements were active, the people who left welfare went on permanent Disability—an even worse option. Then Obama gutted the reforms, but the lesson had been learned. The Disability rolls have exploded, & once on you can never be removed. A perfect example of DC ‘fixing’ a problem by making it 100x worse.
He voted yes on the Paul Ryan budget capitulation bill along with John Lewis and Hank Johnson IIRC. real conservative.
Well lets see how Perdue holds up. My bar of expectancy for him is so low he won’t have a hard time impressing me.
We agree.
Welfare Reform was effective for almost a decade. The disability gambit took off after Zero took over. It took the Republicans booting their control of the government to enable the left to undo the improvement.
I don’t know what world you live in. I live in the real world. Yes, I vividly remember the brief euphoria of ‘welfare reform’ ‘working’. Conservatives were so happy about it. But all the while the permanent disability rolls were expanding. Finally people started to notice. The racket has merely changed venues. A small percentage of welfare recipients went to work, but a far larger number learned to game the permanent disability system. It has been steadily expanding ever since. So the big problem DC ‘fixed’, according to you, has resulted in skyrocketing dependency rolls.
& you call that a success.
This is just a spin job. Back it up with time series data.
How about this. I asked you to name one serious problem the USA has faced over the past 22 yrs that DC has fixed. You said welfare. Another term for welfare is ‘government dependence’. Today government dependence is at all time, historic, epidemic, catastrophic, economy-crushing/killing levels. That is my exact point. When DC ‘fixes’ something, the problem ends up being a 1000x worse.
Rove’s candidate, Jack Kingston, lost:
‘“Kingston’s largest backer, who has pumped nearly $3 million into Kingston TV ads is 100% openly pro-amnesty,” the ad says, referring to Kingston’s support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The U.S. Chamber has been a fervent advocate for amnesty, desirable of low labor costs available from hiring illegal aliens, albeit at the expense of American workers. In December the U.S. Chamber announced that they’d formed a big-moneyed coalition with establishment Republican Karl Rove to join Democrats in attacking conservative Tea Party candidates who are against crony capitalism, but who support free markets.’
I have not seen any “Tea Party” comments about Perdue; was he considered one of the TP candidates, or just a GOPe alternative?
Amen! As in part two of my tagline...
In addition, it should be nearly impossible to exchange political donations for favorable legislative treatment. All donations should be anonymous; you can't sell influence if you don't know who is buying.
I've heard some say that all donors and recipients should be publicly identified, so everyone knows who is backing who and why. That would help if two thirds to three quarters of the populace was not too engrossed in American Idle or what celebrity outdanced the other celebrities to notice, and if the lamestream media would fairly and accurately cover that news. but you know neither will change.
You should have the right to donate any amount to anyone you want; that is freedom. But you should not be able to demand certain result from them in exchange; that is criminal. < /rant >
Perdue was not TEA party. He was just the GOPe alternative.
As for your rant, excellent!! Five stars+. There is so much that needs to change. Buying political influence has reached such proportions that our congresspeople no longer listen to or care what the constituents want. They are, as Rush put it, governing against the will of the people. Amazingly, they just keep on getting away with it.
The ‘getting away with it’ is the part that has to change. We the people have ALL the power; we just seldom recognize it & rarely use it. If, in every cycle, we voted 99 percent of the incumbents out [personally, I’d want people like Jeff Sessions to stay; he is a national treasure] we’d get dramatic results after just one cycle. The hacks that remained would be scared witless. Whatever we wanted, we’d get in a heartbeat.
But we just keep sending the incumbents back. Then some are surprised that the problems just keep getting exponentially worse. Duh. Things have got to change. We are the ones who can do it. Let’s hope & pray for a major house cleaning SOON.
From your keyboard to God’s ears!
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.