Redstate

Constructive criticism and the required kick in the pants when needed.

Well put.

You referred to him as "dKos poster Hackett" but I haven't been able to find anything attributed to him.

If he's a regular contributor there it might shed some light on his actual stances on the issues.

I made this comment in the 0-16 Kos bashing thread

I think it's obvious that there are a couple things that happened here.

   1. Bad Republican candidate made it through 4-way primary with 31% of the vote.

   2. Leftist Veteran Democratic candidate excited the leftist partisans in the district (and online)

   3. OH GOP is in a poor state right now and their hand chosen candidate came in 4th of the 4 major primary candidates.

How much each of these factors matters is hard to ascertain.  I think that 2006 with its GOV and SEN races will up turnout from 91K to closer to the 300+K that happened in 2004.  Thus the 20-30K hardcore liberals in the the district will be drowned out by the Republican tilt overall.  Hopefully one of the GOV, SEN, CON candidates will excite conservatives in 2006.

The main two leasons I got from this are:

   1. In a staunchly conservative district, run a staunch conservative not a moderate.

   2. The OH GOP needs to wakeup, now

Paul Hackett

A primary can be a very, very good thing if all involved play nice with each other and use almost all of the media coverage and attention to hammer the other party.

Nice summary Adam. Over in this thread - http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/8/2/195446/7580 I asked Kevin Holtsberry about Blackwell. See if you can drag him into this discussion, since this is what the state faces for the next year and a half.

Both Blackwell and DeWine should be far enough away from Taft, and I don't think Taft is so bad so much as he's ending on a sour note not of his making, but the State does need a single leader.

Voinovich should have been it, but he's pretty far off on his own now.

I was honestly hoping to see something from him that might give a better insight onto his positions on the issues.

in general.  But I don't think it is what the OH GOP needs right now.  Rival factions create petty grievance and we don't need more of those.  If it was done with true respect and collegiality, it would be a plus.  I don't think it's worth the risk to try it.

That being said, I have little control over the situation.  I'd prefer a situation like we have in the MN SEN race where we are already united behind Kennedy.  Much easier to refocus the GOP machine behind a single candidate and flush out the scandal-related members.

A knocking of heads together to make sure no one challenges DeWine from the right is needed, soon.

This isn't even an internally consistent point. You complain about Schmidt for basically being a RINO.

And then you say we all should back DeWine, who's being accused of being, well... a RINO.

Frankly, the problem in OH seems to be politicians/RINOs like Taft, Schmidt and DeWine.

We need to defeat guys like this in the Primary, so we actually have a chance in '06.

I'd prefer a situation like we have in the MN SEN race where we are already united behind Kennedy.

The GOP is still, effectively, the "insurgent" party in MN. That makes it much easier to do what you'd like to see happen elsewhere.

In OH, by contrast, the GOP is TPIP (The Party In Power), and they're tired and sick and in need of replacement.

Much easier to refocus the GOP machine behind a single candidate and flush out the scandal-related members.

With the situation you have in OH, that's not going to happen.

So the "insurgents" here (in this case, conservative GOP'ers) need to rally round a single insurgent candidate in the Primary, and do everything they can to defeat TPIP candidates there. (Blackwell may be the one exception to this, as he's made a name for himself in Office fighting the OH GOP TPIP politicians.)

But the "single insurgent candidate in the Primary  against TPIP candidate" is virtually the only chance the GOP has in '06 on the state level, IMO. (And that includes DeWine's seat...)  

Dewine has some time left to move right, and by comparison, he's got Voinovich sitting on his flank. It seems his primary RINO act is the gang of 14 deal, which can be self-correcting if he takes the next opportunity to smash it to shreds.

He and Graham have indicated as much, and have their chance in the mid-2006 Rehnquist replacement hearings for justice (take your pick, Brown, Luttig, Jones, etc....). He steers hard right then, and he's sailing into the general election.

The governor's race is the problem for the GOP.

OH-02 is a staunchly conservative district.  A conservative would have excited the base in this off-year election with low turnout.

OH is a swing state that will have high turnout in the 2006 election for GOV, SEN, and CON.  As I said above, Blackwell is my early favorite for GOV.  But an incumbent middle-or-the-road Republican in the SEN is not something to get worked up about when your state party is crumbling.  Leave DeWine alone and focus all efforts on the GOV.  Blackwell has an opportunity to make inroads in the black communities and still shore up support from the conservative activists.  Along with his support of TABOR, these factors put him at the top of my list.  The OH GOP should make up its mind and start focusing on winning.  The infighting isn't helping and taking on a sitting Senator is not where their (limited) efforts are best used.

But an incumbent middle-or-the-road Republican in the SEN is not something to get worked up about when your state party is crumbling.  Leave DeWine alone and focus all efforts on the GOV.

I'm not ready to concede that point yet.

At the least, DeWine justifies a close watching. If he steps out of line (in a big way) again, I think a Primary challenge will be justified (and will be an almost certain development).

Most residents of the state of Ohio are really not all that unhappy about the whole "gang of 14" thing.  Many (even Democrats) are getting pretty jaded when it comes to politics, at least up here in the Dem-powered NE corner of the state.

I received a form letter from Blackwell a couple of weeks ago that was encouraging young Republicans to get involved in the political process at the county level, on election boards and the like.  He was very strongly emphasising the importance of the "next generation" of Republican leaders in the state.  

Personally, I can nearly see him as a shoo-in for the Governor in 2006 as the Democrat challenger could be ranging from Hagan to Springer.  The religious base will be very excited with Blackwell, as he was touring the state during the last election cycle with Jerry Falwell and the Christian Coalition folks.  Republicans in general seem to be rather pleased with his work during the last cycle when it came to the charges of election fraud.  

The Ohio GOP is in serious trouble, indeed, since Ohio Democrats have found a way to run competitively in this heavily GOP state:

1.  Find Iraqi war vetereans to run for open seats.
   
2.  Have those candidates conceal any liberal or traditionally Democratic leaning.
   
3. Have those candidates run ads suggesting they support President Bush and vice versa.

There are some flaws with this approach.  

1.  There are a finite number (i.e. very, very few) of canddiates who could fit these criteria.
   
2.  A small percentage of those very, very few could pull it off without cracking up.
   
3.  Those who could may be suffering from some sort of psychosis.
   
4.  Vetting is very important to eliminat candidates who are actually Republicans masquerading as Democrats masquerading as Republicans.
   
5.  Candiates may start to believe their own propaganda and start voting with Republicans once in office.

And the most fatal flaw:

6.  The GOP might run war veterans with conservative records, who actually have the support of the President, confusing the voters further.

I admit I haven't looked up his every vote, but he doesn't appear to be a Chaffee or Snowe.

tends to be overused, applied to just about anyone who is "off the plantation" on just about anything. I can see using it describe to someone like Chaffee who almost never supports GOP positions, but when someone deviates on just one or two matters they don't serve the appellation.

applied to people who don't deserve it.

For instance I don't think it is a fair application to McCain (although his biggest mistake alone-that horrible campaign finance bill-could be considered enough to stick him in the RINO catagory to some).  But for the most part McCain isn't a RINO-he does head off the reservation a lot, but he is also a reliable vote on many big GOP issues.  I think McCain would do better to stop playing the media darling, and to stop attacking portions of the party base-he needs better party discipline at times, but he isn't a Chaffee or a Snowe-he also isn't a Spector.

Sometimes it can be a good thing when the reservation seems to be heading off a cliff.  McCain to his credit voted against the $849 Billion Medicare drug benefit, the energy bill, and the latest transportation bill.  When he ran in the 2000 primary, I seem to recall that he was the only candidate with the guts to go to Iowa and say he was against the boondoggle known as ethanol.

on the medicare bill.  

I still don't understand what possessed him to stick his name on that idiotic campaign finance reform law.

McCain's problem with the GOP is more one of ego than what he votes for, and when he votes "no" on bills everyone else is lined up to vote yes on, he almost always has a principled fiscally conservative reason for doing so.  If he would just get over his love affair with the media, and would actually try to build bridges with the GOP base instead of attacking them, he wouldn't get the RINO charge the way he does.

I have no problem with trying to control your message and not let your opponent or the MSM define you nor do I think it is bad for Republicans to necessarily run more liberal candidates or Democrats to run more conservative candidates if they're a better "fit" for the district.

Kos and others seem to advocate going beyond that approach in suggesting that candidates actually try to masquerade their views (sort of a donkey in elephant's clothing) in order to run as a sort of "stealth candidate."

I think that the problem with this whole approach of treating elections as some form of stealth warfare in which you try to get your guy elected by having him or her pretend to be something that s/he is not is that the "enemy" you're attacking isn't the other party, it's the voters.

At least Kerry would come right out and tell you that he voted for it before he voted against it. This business of running TV ads with Bush in them, and then slipping onto Kos to whisper, "Don't worry, it's a trick. I'm really one of you" is absolutely despicable.

. . . bridge-building is a two-way process.  One could argue that McCain has been "reaching out" through his dynamic support and public defense of the war, his speech at the 2000 and 2004 RNC in favor of the man who defeated him in the 2000 primary, and heading up the President's campaign in Arizona.  Come to think of it, most of the time McCain does come off as someone who tries to be cordial in public to members of both parties and his praise for Republicans is often ignored while his politeness to Democrats is often seen as disloyalty.

While I don't doubt that McCain is one of those few politicians who likes to hear the sound of his own voice or see himself on television ;), there is almost a knee-jerk reaction among many in our base to oppose something just because he's for it or to believe that he's doing it to put the screws to Republicans rather than because he thinks it might be a good policy.  There was a piece on global warming a month or so ago in which the BBC had implied that McCain was attacking Bush on the issue which completely distorted the context of what he was saying.  Even after it was shown by yours truly that McCain was not being quoted accurately the response was generally, "yeah well he's still a jerk."

Also something to consider is that while the base is (rightfully IMO) upset over McCain-Feingold and "the Deal," there's a case to be made that both of these policies have actually been beneficial to Republicans.

The New Republic which supported McCain-Feingold editorialized that it would probably do more to hurt Democratic fundraising than Republican thereby giving us (or helping us to maintain) a money advantage.

"The Deal" as many have suggested seems to have worked in our favor (for now) on getting an up-or-down vote on Supreme Court nominees while making future filibusters more difficult and giving Democrats a black eye for reflexively opposing nominees and then having to approve them.

Neither policies may be beneficial to conservatives but they may have worked out all right for Republicans.

Good points, and perhaps you are right. I consider myself a really strong pro-life Conservative, so naturally I'm often in that same camp that you mention that might be a bit guilty of the charge at times. McCain has some truly great qualities about him. He articulates the War on Terror well. He actually seems like a guy, if given the chance, that would "cut" spending (rare these days). What makes McCain so infuriating is that he goes out of his way to not be partisan. I actually had a chance to listen to Rush the other day, rare for me on lunches these days, and he was talking about this very issue and made excellent points. If you're not a partisan, than you have no business in politics, and I agree with him. I mean looking at my views, sure, I can mope along and pretend that I want to "see the other side" on things and be a reasonable man, but I'm not. Reason being, I'm 100% right, in my own mind, about what is good for the country, and McCain lacks this. The reason I like politics is not only because of how strong my views are on things, but because I truly believe that Democrats, that understand and have thought out their policies, are destroying us. Abortion, it's wrong, I don't want to compromise on that. Religious bigotry, it's wrong. The income tax, it's wrong, it hurts people's lives and potential. All of these things that Republicans and Conservatives believe in, they're better articulated by folks that are more stern in their contrast between themselves and Democrats. McCain just sits there on every talk show trying to mend sides. John, I admire the honor in your heart, but these people hate us, get it through your head. I don't want to compromise with Democrats and Liberals, I want to destroy them politically so that their distorted view of the world is bashed into an eternal trash heap of the past. This is my problem with McCain.

Other than his involvement in the "Gang of 14" (which may turn out to be a brilliant strategic move by McCain, et al, as it appears to have secured easy confirmation for a conservative Supreme Court Justice) he hasn't had any votes that throw into question his status as a member of the conservative wing of the party (it was Voinavich that voted against Bolton in the committee, not DeWine, right?).

If we call DeWine a RINO and try to throw him overboard as the Club for Growth tried to do to Spectre last year, we waste money that could be better spent helping the GOP hold onto the Senate and control of important states like Ohio.  I don't even want to know how badly things could've been last year if the dems had one of their own in as Ohio Secretary of State or Governor.

It could've gotten ugly.

Let's keep winning.  DeWine is a true conservative.  Don't waste money trying to bounce him out in the primary.

Californians pay big time for this ethanol scandal.  I'm glad someone has the guts to challenge orthodoxy on that matter.

of his way to thumb his nose at the base, even when he is agreeing with them.  He also seems to want to overly distance himself from the conservative Christians in the party base, and while I don't think he needs to be best friends with the Christians involved in politics (Dobson, Robertson etc) he seems to go out of his way to insult the voter who fits in that group, and as much as some in the tent don't want them there, the facts are that conservative Christians are a major voting block within the tent, and you should probably at least make some attempts to reach out to them, instead of insulting them.

You may think McCain is building bridges, but from my perspective he still seem to be too busy burning them.

that it is pretty evenly divided between conservatives and liberals with a fairly large middle region populated by people like myself in between them. Knee-jerk partisanship may appeal to the True Believers and that may be enough to squeak by at election time, but it does nothing to move the country beyond its current impasse and it makes it difficult to impossible to actually govern. Bush was able to get more done in his first year or two in office when he was minority president who was toning down the partisan rhetoric and trying to work with the Dems than now when he has a solid electoral victory behind him but one that he owes largely to running to his base. The goal after all is not to be ideologically pure, nor even to just win elections. The goal is to actually govern and get things done.

Ask yourself this: who would be more likely to get things done (good and useful things that is) in the White House. Someone who can work with and horsetrade when necessary with the opposition. Or a bomb-throwing ideologue: McCain or, say, Ann Coulter?

Conservative Christians are the future of the base. There were east coast Republican types of the past, and there is the south and southwest of today. McCain is a guy in conservative growing Arizona trying to be from NJ, and I don't get it. For someone that obviously has higher goals than being a senator, I will never understand how he can openly go up against the Christian base. Duh, you can't win without them. There's already an anti-Christian party, and it's not ours. : )

that I agree that McCain deliberately thumbs his nose at Christians in general. Back in 2000 he threw some rhetorical bombs at Falwell and Robertson by name, not at all Christians certainly. And, I think, at the Bob Jones crowd as well. The latter, with their strident anti-Catholicism and racialist practices, ought to be well outside the pale, I should think.  While Roberston and Falwell disgraced themselves and are now largely personna non grata because of their 9-11 blame-America-first comments. Basically Mccain was a bit ahead of his time, but only just. Even the President ended up rejecting the Falwell-Robertson version of Christian commentary after 9-11.

and her job is essentially to stand on the sidelines and throw bombs at the other side.

The dems have their bomb throwers as well.

There is actually a place for bomb throwers in politics, but it is nice when the bomb throwers aren't actually the elected officials.

Also, the problem with McCain's horsetrading is that it often seems to turn into the other side leaving with both horses and the GOP left owing them money.  There is a place for horse trading, the problem is that the GOP is expected to take all the hits, and McCain is often there facilitating the fleecing.

Does anyone actually think the campaign finance reform law reflects conservative/GOP positions?  Does anyone think his immigration suggestions (where he is horse trading) reflects conservative thought?  It is almost like he is reaching out to the other side in an attempt to distance himself from his own base, rather than bring things to the discussion the base would like to see.

did need to go.

He seems to be in opposition to the party more than with it, and he seems very waffly on the issue of judge appointments.

are ghastly-- but so are President Bush's. Ditto for just about every such proposal that is coming down the pike. The entire governing elite whether GOP or Dem, is out to lunch on this topic and I almost wish a Ross Perot type candidate would emerge in 2008 and bring them all back to where the rest of the country is.

As for CFR, I really couldn't care less: it's a quixotic quest, politics will always go whoring after money no matter how many laws are passed. But neither am I outraged since I donlt accept the Orwellian precept that "Money is speech".

As for distancing himself from the base, that's what politicians always used to do in order to appeal to the general electorate (and see my point about needing to govern). Remember Bill Clinton and Sister Souljah and welfare reform and the DOMA? This business of being president (or senator or governor) only of and for the base is a big part of what's making this country so divided and so difficult to move forward.

at the GOP base.  And he does it everytime he goes off to play the maverick in the media.  Also, he tends to get himself on the wrong side of things, that in the end the GOP isn't behind-things like campaign finance reform (anyone want to defend that piece of crap legislation?), and he seems to be heading off the reservation on immigration reform (but in his defense I don't think Bush would be much better in that regard).

But he did essentially attack the Christian right in the party.  Calling two known leaders of the movement "forces of evil" in the GOP is not reaching out to Christian conservatives.

I think he probably could have made his point without the hyperbole.  But frankly, McCain doesn't seem at all interested in reaching out to the Christian conservative, and frankly Pat Roberston and Falwell are not the only christian conservative groups in the big tent.  As a Christian I don't see much bridge building from McCain, and I honestly have the feeling he would rather we not be in the tent at all.  Now maybe he doesn't feel that way, but if that is the case, he should be more vocal on it, and actually seek to build some bridges.

Who would get more things done... Not sure. But which proposals are you talking about exactly? The horrible perscription drug program? The education bill with Ted Kennedy where he abandoned vouchers? I get what you're saying, but I don't want to work with Democrats. There aren't enough bombthrowers in Washington if you ask me, thank God for Santorum, who goes on national television on the Today show and starts talking about the "evil" of Liberalism. I'm quite sick and tired of cordial discussions on Meet the Press, I want to go after these people while we have power and sink their kind into the political past. Why don't more Conservatives, on national TV, accuse the Democrats of being in synch with Socialism? Why don't more Conservatives talk about the real racism, that black children are dying in the streets of the inner city many times due to their policies, of breaking up families with their horrid culture and not doing more to encourage families to stay together? Why don't we actually talk prouder about being pro-life, and the fact that abortion is grusome, and "how could you support such a thing" right to their faces. Democrat ideas are evil, they are Socialist in nature, and their goals would have us leaning towards a Totalitarian state where religion and freedom didn't exist. That's the kind of politician that I want. And for the record, the last politician that was had throwing these kinds of bombshells, was Newt Gingrich, someone if you remember succeeded amazingly on partisanship. God bless the guy.  

I highly doubt the strong "red state" of Ohio is in such a predicament as state here.  Whilst it's no secret Taft is weak, DeWine is a different case.  In my opinion DeWine will be around securely.  However, who knows who will win the governorship

He got the GOP into power and then he (and the GOP) crashed and burned in a big way because he could not shift from campaign mode into governing mode. Now, I actually admire Gingrich (though I am not blind to his failings) but while he made a great minority leader he was a disastrous majority leader.

And it rather sounds to me that you don't want a sober Congress that passes good laws and repeals bad ones. You want a bombastic opera populated by drama queens, full of sound and fury, signifying (or at least accomplishing) nothing. Might I suggest that the WWF would be a better source for that kind of entertainment?

...is a fool, Sorry. Newt Gingrich lead your party, if you really are a Republican sir (yeah right), to a massive majority in the congress in the 90s, a majority that still remains there today. So don't insult the guy, please. Intellectually speaking, he's probably one of the greatest Conservative thinkers that we have right now, and to hear some McCain supporter attack him is just disgraceful. The point is simple, people like McCain and Chuck Hagel do the party no good. They constantly water down our vision and our ideas, and blindly trust Democrats as some formidable partner to work with.  

Secondly, no, I don't want to "get things done". The federal government "getting things done" means my rights get chipped away year after year. If things continue at this pace, in ohhh, 2050, I can't imagine what the country is going to look like. To hell with "getting things done", I'd prefer to have an Eisenhower in the white house that spent half of his time playing golf and leaving everyone alone. You're obviously a McCain supporter. Well why don't you go sit by a pond for a while on a nice sunny day and ponder why it is that Democrats like Joe Biden and John Kerry keep insisting on splitting a ticket with him. The guy is a damn liberal! He doesn't belong in the white house. I'll say it now, any Republican that votes for McCain should leave the party.  

to "Ohio," and the Idiot is staying home.

Jean Schmidt is a fine person and a decent conservative and the best choice we had during the primary.  Spending the treasure and energy of the area conservatives trying to replace her is simply a waste and wrong headed.

Messy primaries always give the opposition a break by assisting them in defining the negatives of the winning candidate without having to spend time effort and money, or suffer backlash.

Jean has been nailed for having a somewhat ineffective organization, but her great sin in this election was her seemingly high minded stance to not engage in negative campaigning.

This allowed the Democrats to define her in ways that are truely distortions, and she didn't define Hackett for who he really is or challenge him to define himself.

Only ads by the National Congessional Campaign handled this, and this is because of the sour grapes left over from the primary, and the exhaustion of our resources in the process.

I am not sure, but I believe that I am also seeing a pattern in the Club for Growth activities that boarders on tinfoil hat territory, labeling the former President of the Cincinnati Right to Life Chapter as a RINO.  This is lame.

Jean's vote on the Ohio Sales tax increase was against the proposal by Taft, not for.  If folks bother to remember the history of this.  Taft proposed about 50 separate new applications of the Sales Tax to various services and other goods that are currently exempt from Sales taxes, and this would be a permanent increase to cover a short term fiscal shortfall.  The Ohio Legislature pushed the alterative of the single simple tax rate increase that had a sunset to cover the deficit.  Ohio has a Balanced Budget amendment, and this means its a question of facing the music each time we have a recession. It stinks, but the alternative is to not have anything to force the state to trim and control its growth.

Its time the the folks who are activists to set their sites on taking Ted Strickland's seat and preparing to defend vigorously Steve Chabot's seat which might come under intense pressure this next cycle.

CFG isn't a social conservative organization.  Being right to life chair matters not to pro-growth policy.  It matters as much to the CFG as it does to the NRA.  We could have a much more pro-growth candidate in OH-02.  And hopefully, the TABOR will pass in 2006 just as then-GOV Blackwell is being sworn in.  But it's going to be an uphill battle.