What I find amazing about these “Manchin” threads is the number of FReepers, from all over the country, who “know” what’s going on here in WV.
Hell, I’ve been here for 15 years and STILL have a hard time understanding a lot of it. That 2008 Super Tuesday first ever (and thankfully, only) WV GOP Presidential Convention that sealed the McNasty nomination really threw me for a loop. But, hey....nobody said Mountain Politics was easy. LOL
But wasn’t that Huckabee coming in and rounding up all the evangelical vote thus freezing out Romney? At least that’s what I remember my brother telling me. I was a reluctant Romney support back then. I thoroughly disliked McCain (Still the case but more so!) but better then a RAT (barely!) I work with a lot of Navy & ex-Navy people (many of them former aviators) and their disdain for McCain is so thick you can cut it with a pair of scissors. But when it came down to McCain & the Zero, no contest there! They like me voted for McNasty.
My father was a GOP’er (served on the county & state executive committees) back when a WV GOP’er was as common as the WV Mountain Lion! People claim they see or here one but no one can prove it. That’s what being a GOP’er in WV was like back in the 1960s -1990s. Though they did have 2 GOP governors - Arch A. Moore (Capito’s father!)- a quasi-crook but a successful governor and Cecil Underwood - alright, reasonably honest (or he was good at not getting caught!) but ineffective.
But remember most of my perception from the 1980s on of WV politics comes through my brother & father. I have been in NoVa since 1980. I have always disliked NoVa but no work for a PhD Engineering Physics in WV other then academia, so I came here. Not too far away, I mean too return!