Posted on 08/01/2011 7:24:32 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Hawaii's Republican former governor Linda Lingle said she would get along well with a group of former governors in the Senate should she run for and win the seat being vacated by Sen. Daniel Akaka's (D) retirement, the latest sign that she is seriously considering a race.
"Governors bring a particularly different approach in the United States Senate than those people who have come just from the legislative side," Lingle told members of the conservative Grassroot Institute of Hawaii at the Japanese Cultural Center on Friday. "They are less ideological. They are more practical. They are more agenda-driven. They are able to put forth something they'd like to achieve and then move to do it because as governor you have to. You can't hide behind a lot of other people."
Lingle would likely be the only Republican who could seriously contest the seat in the strongly Democratic state, especially in a year when President Obama, a Hawaii native, will be on the ballot. Lingle won reelection in 2006 with 63 percent of the vote, and there are almost no other well-known Republicans in the state.
Democrats will have a contested primary. Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and former Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) are already in, and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii) is also thinking about it. Case is a more centrist politician who angered the state's Democratic leaders when he challenged Akaka in a 2006 primary.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
This is a good sign. If Lingle runs, we have an outside shot at winning, but a real one. Remember, this is a state that Obama will likely win by a landslide again.
Right out of the Juan McLame "Across The Aisle" playbook.
No sale.
Yup, from what I can tell this would be pretty good news.
And yeah, our Hawaiian brethren will vote for Hussein in a landslide. They are nearly as hopeless as what passes for voters in the District of Columbia.
Particularly if Case wins the primary
Didn’t Lingle have Barry-O’s back on the first COLB go-round?
Do you want to win the seat? Or field some candidate that will lose with 31% of the vote and turn over the Senate seat Akaka is vacating to another Democrat for the next 50 years? Because that's exactly what's likely to happen if we don't win that seat this time around. This is Hawaii we're talking about.
"Governors bring a particularly different approach in the United States Senate than those people who have come just from the legislative side," Lingle told members of the conservative Grassroot Institute of Hawaii at the Japanese Cultural Center on Friday. "They are less ideological. They are more practical. They are more agenda-driven. They are able to put forth something they'd like to achieve and then move to do it because as governor you have to. You can't hide behind a lot of other people."
That's the full quote, and it's quite true. Governor's can't preen and cast votes they know don't matter because they've worked it out with leadership behind the scenes ahead time and know what is going to pass and what isn't. As executives they, more often than not, have to actually govern and get things done without hiding behind show votes cast for media attention.
Are you serious? Lingle would vote FOR spending cuts and entitlement reform with a new GOP president. This race could be our 60th vote to secure cloture.
As we saw with Obamacare, party labels DO matter. McConnell kept every GOP senator in opposition; unfortunately he only had 40 in December 2009, and he needed 41.
Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor etc - these so-called conservative Dems are the real fraud. I’ll take a Lingle GOP senator over a Democrat any day.
The Aloha state Mike Castle.
Stepping up to accept her place in the RinCracy.....
RinoCracy....
She will be like Scott Brown, slightly better than a Democrat from her state.
She is a crooked rino. That is the best Hawaii could do but the GOP does not need another treasonous idiot in the Senate.
No. The REAL frauds are the "less ideological" Republicans.
When I hear terms like "less ideological", I stop listening. We've already got 7 or 8 "less ideological" Republicans in the Senate.
Sorry, I just don't relish the idea of always having to look over our shoulder at another Collins or Snowe, wondering when the "aisle-crossing" will begin.
As much as I can empathize with the no-compromise approach, you do have to pick your battles intelligently.
Aye, it would be better if this was happening in a midterm.
But Scott Brown is probably gonna win and Obama is probably gonna get around 60% in MA.
Of course in HI it will probably be closer to 70%.
I hope Charles Djou runs again too but getting from 47% to 50 in that seat would be a bitch even without Obama on the top of the ticket.
It would be better, but the tidal wave of 2010 didn’t reach Hawaii. As for Charles Djou, he could be running in an open seat.
Obama got like 70% in HI in 2008, but that does not mean that only 30% of Hawaiians vote Republican. In 2004, President Bush got 44% in Hawaii, and that was after polls showed a single-digit race and scared Dems put GOTV on overdrive. And even if Obama got 70% again in 2012 (which he won’t), it would be because he would once again con Hawaiians into voting for a “native son,” not because he increased liberal turnout significantly. Just like Nixon’s and Reagan’s huge majorities in 1972 and 1984, respectively did not tilt the electorate so much to the right that Democrats couldn’t win Senate elections, Obama getting 60%-70% in HI (and I think that he’ll get less than that, maybe 58%) won’t mean that 60%-70% of voters would prefer Hirono over Lingle, and you can rest assured that Obama won’t be campaigning in HI when he’ll be fighting for his political life in PA, OH, MI, WI, MN, NH, FL, VA, NM, IA, NV and CO.
The open-seat Senate race in HI in 2012 gives us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to win a Senate seat in that state, and Linda Lingle would be the strongest possible Senate candidate. Maybe she’ll fall short of winning, but we won’t know for sure unless she tries.
Impy, as you noted, Charles Djou is thinking of running for HI-01 again. He’s our best possible candidate there (I had identified him as such even before he announced for Abercrombie’s seat in 2009), and he should run a competitive race, especially if Hanabusa decides to enter the Senate race.
2012 could be the year in which we finally break through in Hawaii. We won’t know unless we try.
It would be so great if he didn’t crack 60% in any state.
I don’t think he’ll do it again here in IL.
Lingle should run. It doesn’t mean that e should work with her. 6 years of a RINO is much better than 50 years of Akaka-Inoue.
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