Honestly this should be every party's policy

Side with incumbents, should primaries occur, stay neutral in open seat contests. All 8 Committees (Governor, House, Senate, National Committees) should be protecting their current members, as any club should unless they have reason not to (William Jefferson!) but stay out of the voter selection of n00bs.

This does however make KY-Sen, NH-Sen, and FL-Sen much more interesting, though. :-)

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by: trowaman @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 08:27:29 AM CST

I agree

An official party endorsement in a contested primary isn't really fair to the voters, or to the candidates. What if the electorate rejects the party's pick? That's embarrassing for everyone.

That said, I think the Republicans are really screwing themselves over by not nipping this teabagger movement in the bud. Shrinking to their ideological core will not help them re-take Congress; anyone with a brain could tell you that. The NRCC and RNC were right to support Scozzafava after she was nominated by the local GOP, and the fact that she was forced out by a conservative nutjob will have far-reaching repercussions in races all across the country.  

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by: NJCentrist @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 13:51:28 PM CST

[ Parent ]

These people are beyond flippin' nuts

Progressive Punch has John Cornyn ranked 96/100, and Pete Sessions ranked 427/433.  But because both of them recognize that not every district can elect a teabagging birther or some such lunatic, the base is calling for their heads.  Literally.  An emboldened Redstate is "demanding" that Sessions be removed from his position.

This would be the same as if our side was taking marching orders from Code Pink.  What the right wingers don't realize is that their candidates in New Jersey and Virginia won in part because they postured themselves away from the lunatic fringe, and Hoffman lost because he was part of it.

But, keep the faith my right wing brothers and sisters!!  Don't stop at Dede!!  You've got to finish the job!  Time to "Melt the Snowe" in Maine (and push her into our caucus!).  Get rid of Collins, too!  And squishy moderate RINO's like Senator Bennett in Utah.  He needs to be purged.  All you need is people like Michelle Bachmann be the face of the GOP, and Americans will flock to conservatism.

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by: IndianaProgressive @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 08:30:51 AM CST

How can we use their madness to our advantage?

Can Kos endorse selected candidates in R primaries? Would it be worth the trouble, say in FL-Sen?

(e.g. if Kos were to endorse Crist, could Meek beat Rubio, or would we just end up facing an attractive wingnut who could appeal to Hispanics?)

If Tom Campbell shows traction in CA-Gov, could Kos endorse him, say in the name of a "reasonable opposition party"?

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by: tietack @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 08:40:43 AM CST

You seem obsessed with the idea

that Kos' endorsement actually means anything.  It does not.  The vast majority of teabaggers don't know who the hell Markos Moulitsas is.

From their perspective, that is a pure party of "real conservatives", they are quite rational in opposing Chafee, Specter, Kirk, Castle, Scozzafava, Crist, etc.  These guys deviate from the party line almost as often as Blue Dogs do in the Democratic Party.
Where they get off the deep end is in opposing actual conservatives like Hutchison, Isakson or Bennett because of one or two issues.

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by: JSmith @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 08:47:50 AM CST

[ Parent ]

It worked with Scozzafava

It became a meme with wingnuts such as Malkin, etc. Just googled

dailykos endorsed scozzafava

and got over 180,000 hits.

To answer DavidNYC, I did not see his statement(s)? on Kirk, Simmons, and Crist.

But I suspect the endorsement has to be of a similar vein, specifying issues of agreement - and a statement as bold as:

"It's official, I'm rooting for [person x] to win the Republican nomination for [position y]."

To measure it's effectiveness, it would have to be quoted in a similar vein to http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

She may be the only candidate ever endorsed by both Newt Gingrich and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the leftist website Daily Kos. He called her "actually the most liberal candidate in the race" and said, "It's official, I'm rooting for the Republican to win."

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by: tietack @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 09:06:54 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Here you go

But I'm rather pleased I've been used to attack Scozzafava by the likes of Club for Growth and Glenn Beck. Such mischief is almost Rovian! So in that vein, I'm ready to make some new endorsements. I endorse Mark Kirk in Illinois, Rob Simmons in Connecticut, and Charlie Crist in Florida. In fact, if you are the type of Republican than can actually win against Democratic opposition (in other words, not batshit insane), I "endorse" you. Oh, and I also "endorse" David Vitter, even though he is batshit insane, because he's hilarious.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo...

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by: DavidNYC @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 20:58:04 PM CST

[ Parent ]

David, I appreciate the detail, but

To qualify as an "endorse"ment that energizes the wingnuts/teabaggers, I suspect it would have to be in the same vein as http://www.dailykos.com/storyo...

where he dedicated a single diary to the person in question - and said

So it's official, I'm rooting for the Republican to win.

The endorsement you linked was a part of a discussion on what happened with Scozzafava, and as such, seems somewhat gratuitous.

But no matter, I doubt it'll happen again - unless we have a similar situation where the R might be arguably more to the left of the D. I don't see that (yet) in any of the other noted races (or anything similar, say if Tom Campbell by some miracle looks like he's gonna win the R-Gov nomination in CA).

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by: tietack @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 21:24:08 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Markos already tried this

In some recent post, he declared he was "endorsing" Kirk, Simmons and Crist. I don't think anyone cares, though.

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by: DavidNYC @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 08:49:42 AM CST

[ Parent ]

As Roger Enrico (PepsiCo CEO) said in his

book a few years ago: (something like) "if they wouldn't make the 'real thing,' we would" (referring to classic Coke).

If I were running the DSCC and DCCC, I would very seriously considering supplementing the Club for Growth and playing in Republican primaries. That is, I would choose the nuttiest Republican and drop a media bomb on his behalf--especially in moderate districts.  

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by: andgarden @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 10:09:47 AM CST

[ Parent ]

That's how Gray Davis won in 2002

He ran ads attacking Richard Riordan for his pro-choice stance and other moderate positions and the GOP ended up nominating an unknown whacko.

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by: Marcus @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 10:34:32 AM CST

[ Parent ]

yeah Riordan was supposed to oust Davis

That was a smart move.

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by: DTOzone @ Fri Nov 06, 2009 at 00:13:53 AM CST

[ Parent ]

They create this base, is their problema

After create the problem, they are affraid? Is their problem...

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by: abgin @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 10:24:41 AM CST

I have been talking about this occurring to my old poli sci prof

since the end of the 2008 election.  This huge rift in the GOP to me was clearly going to happen.

First, you have a party that has created its base as the segment of America with the lowest amounts of education and as a double edged sword, are proud of their ignorance!  Relying on the anti-intellectualists of the country was mistake number one as they won't listen to reason, they won't look at the poll numbers, they instead follow their own dogma blindly and at the cost of their own benefit.

Mistake two was never being able to give them what they want.  The GOP has been unable to make abortion illegal, creating a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was never and will never be possible in the 21st century, kicking out 12 million illegal immigrants is completely irrational and impossible, and most importantly, government spending.  I think the American electorate's belief on tax and spending is a dichotomy, no one wants to pay taxes but everyone wants the government to pay for some social services.  If you cut this item of spending, you'll make this group happy but make another pissed.  Cutting government spending down to what the tea baggers would want, in my opinion, is impossible as you'll eventually have pissed so many people with the cuts that a 50%+1 majority will form against the cuts.  Furthermore, cutting gov. spending during a troubled a economic time is completely contradictory to what should occur and even Bush knew this.

The GOP entered a deal with the devil in taking on the anti-intellectual segment of our population and now it is coming back to bite them in the ass.  When we celebrate Sen. Meek, maybe they will have learned their lesson.

Limbaugh-Beck 2012!!!!!  And Palin as SoS of course.

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by: Andrew @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 11:43:26 AM CST

Actually that is a base of our party too

First, you have a party that has created its base as the segment of America with the lowest amounts of education

I doubt that the blacks and Hispanics that make up the base of the Democratic Party has that much more education as a whole than the Southern white working class that make up the GOP base.  Even on the ignorance factor, minority groups are much more likely to reject gay rights.

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by: JSmith @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 19:50:26 PM CST

[ Parent ]

oh definitely

It's pretty much links all of their social conservatism together, lower education levels.

Although I wouldn't 100% call minority demographics part of the "base" of the Democratic party.  Hispanics have a wide range of how much they'll favor the Democrats, as exampled by the huge swing from 04 to 08.  And blacks are always notoriously undecided at a higher rate than whites in polls leading up to an election, while they eventually come around to voting Dem 90/10.  I think that indicates that they dont feel like they are really a part of our base but more so vote which ever candidate they feel will help their demographic community the most.

My own anecdotal experiences and looking at the undecideds in polling I think reflects this pretty well.

Id rate our base as the pro-choice feminists, the justice and peace issue activists, unions, teachers, amongst some others.

Id also throw the GLBT community into the minority groups.  I think we've been pegged at 70/30 Dem but once gay marriage is affirmed and widely accepted, I bet that'll shift a lot closer to 50/50.  Once the Dem party stops giving us the reason, vote for us we're not rabid social conservatives like the GOP, they will have lost the main reason why the GLBT community votes for them.  Luckily, being gay and living an "alternative lifestyle" automatically makes us probably the most liberal demographic in the country, as I am pretty confident we have the highest ratio of atheists of any demographic, which really just paves the way for liberalism.

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by: Andrew @ Fri Nov 06, 2009 at 09:53:40 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I'm not so sure about this

Luckily, being gay and living an "alternative lifestyle" automatically makes us probably the most liberal demographic in the country, as I am pretty confident we have the highest ratio of atheists of any demographic, which really just paves the way for liberalism.

There are a lot of gays who are conservative on fiscal issues and even on military/nat'l security issues.  Much like blacks and Hispanics, they vote Democratic on civil rights issues, but when gay rights are widely accepted and the GOP (or which ever party succeeds it.) stops gay bashing, I think it will go to 50/50 as you mentioned.

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by: JSmith @ Fri Nov 06, 2009 at 12:55:09 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Union workers

I don't think they're such a reliable base. They were until Reagan, I think, but not so much since then.

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by: Pan @ Fri Nov 06, 2009 at 14:41:31 PM CST

[ Parent ]

This is great. While Cornyn is giving Rubio this courtesy...

The C4G has the complete opposite policy, which means Rubio can close the financial gap with the help of C4DG.  They're already going at it.  

H/t Scorecard:

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by: JeremiahTheMessiah @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 12:40:33 PM CST

I sure hope the CfG isn't actually showing

this ad on TV. It doesn't have a BCRA disclosure.  

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by: andgarden @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 12:50:41 PM CST

[ Parent ]

And is trying to backtrack on it

And embarrassing himself further in the process.

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by: conspiracy @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 13:15:23 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Should be great for candidate recruitment....

...when the NRSC and NRCC asks candidates to risk their neck and running while promising NOT to support them if they run into any trouble.

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by: Taget @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 12:59:35 PM CST

Pete Sessions is getting a primary opponent

Pete Sessions will finally have an opponent in the GOP primary.  His name is David Smith, and he's a writer for Dallas County Republican Examiner. (See http://www.examiner.com/x-1700... )

He's written articles supportive of the tea party movement, and has also written articles critical of Sessions' ethical lapses.

Should be an interesting primary season in TX-32, for once!

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by: CoolOnion @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 13:43:27 PM CST

If someone to Sessions' right wins that primary

A Democrat just might have a chance in an open seat. I wouldn't favor the Democrat, but it's certainly not out of the question.

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by: Pan @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 14:49:03 PM CST

[ Parent ]

We have a great Democrat running

His name is Grier Raggio, husband of Lorraine Raggio who was elected Judge in Dallas County in 2004--the first Democrat in over 20 years.  Lorraine Raggio and Lupe Valdez (Sheriff) started the tidal wave that turned Dallas County blue in 2006.

Grier's mother is Louise Raggio, who was a lawyer when their just weren't any women lawyers in Texas.

Grier is a laywer, and always gives generous support to Democratic Party candidates.  If you know anyone who's interested in giving, direct them to his Act Blue page:
http://www.actblue.com/entity/...

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by: CoolOnion @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 15:51:17 PM CST

[ Parent ]

ah, the Texas Tornado

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by: DTOzone @ Fri Nov 06, 2009 at 00:12:21 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Endorsement in the primary

I vaguely remember Donald Trump endorsing Ed Koch in the democratic primary.

It might have been some other democratic primary endorsement (not necessarily by Trump).

But it was only in the primary and not in the main election.

It happened in the 1980s. Does anybody remember?

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by: fai calif @ Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 13:58:40 PM CST