Comments on: REYNOLDISTAS VS. HEWITTONIANS: WHO’S RIGHT?

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 02:50:59 +0000

I particularly like your last sentence. I choose optimism, laced with reality, any day. I am not cedeing the election to a Democratic House but if it should happen, I hope we Republicans rise above it and return to civil behavior. I hated what the party became during the Clinton years and since the Republican takeover, the Dems have been enjoying payback and nothing but shouting gets done.

By: spintreebob

spintreebob — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:19:34 +0000

“get out the vote program is the strongest in the history of American politics ”

Depends on district. Maybe districts Dems win are where they have a better ground game.

McSweeney v Bean and Roskam v Duckworth
In the IL 8th, and even more so in the 6th there appears to be no attempt at recruiting door-knockers. Conservative activists flagged in the DB as having knocked on doors in the past have not yet been assigned a precinct. At most they have received a vague request to “help somehow sometime … if you can”.

Maybe that is why these conservative activists have time to be on the internet whining in harmony with Reynolds.

The Duckworth staffers who assign the volunteers may not know where the district is located and send 20% of volunteer time out of district. But even with that, the 80% in district is magnitudes greater than the invisible Roskam ground game.

Oh, and the Duckworth volunteers report that the swing voters are lean Duckworth for two reasons.
#1 swing voters in that district hate trial lawyers.
#2 swing voters in that district think Roskam’s anti immigrant, code worded anti-Mexican ads are mean spirited. Roskam has been unable to learn from recent history. Oberweis lost the primary because some conservative anti-corruption voters could not get past his anti immigration emphasis.

I don’t hear any reports from the Duckworth voters of swing voters opposing Bush on Iraq. No, they have to imply that Duckworth stands with Bush on Iraq and only disagrees on providing more armor, more troops to fight in Iraq.

On the flip side, the Bean pro-abort ads are likely to do to Bean what they did to Corrine Woods. Most voters are neither pro-life nor pro-choice. The issue makes them feel uncomfortable. They want to avoid the issue. They reject the candidate who makes them feel uncomfortable. At the saem time, the Bean pro-abort ads can only energize the Kathi Salvi voters who were not otherwise energized for McSweeney. (Salvi had a single issue pro-lifer aura. McSweeney is a multi-issue pro-lifer with strong immage on cutting wasteful spending in strong understanding of economics.)

By: GawainsGhost

GawainsGhost — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 20:59:41 +0000

This reminds me of a commercial I saw on Sunday. Construction workers using tape measurers as lances and wheelbarrows as horses, pushed by other mad construction workers, jousting to see who had the stiffer tape measurer.

That was funny. This is farce.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 20:16:08 +0000

As Yogi Berra was fond of saying, “It ain’t over til it’s over.” Why on earth would anyone want to admit defeat between (by all reports) evenly matched teams before the game even starts? All this defeatist talk is decidedly a liberal trait, and not usually used to describe conservatives. Why play to lose? Only liberals (when they lose) try to redefine terminology to make them “feel” like winners after losing. Omigod…..could the polls be….wrong? After all, the only poll that ever matters is the one called ELECTION!