Bush Tries to Save Anne Northrup

President Bush will attend a Republican rally in Louisville on Friday, an Indiana party official said yesterday.

Bush apparently is planning a return visit to Louisville for Rep. Anne Northup of Kentucky's 3rd District, 4th District Republican candidate Geoff Davis and perhaps Mike Sodrel, the GOP challenger to Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana's 9th District.

Anne Northrup, 3-term Republican House member from Louisville, Kentucky is is REAL danger of losing her seat to an unknown, but handsome Democrat named Jack Conway. This is Bush's second visit to Louisville to try to help hang on to this seat, but it may be a lost cause.

Northrup has completely bungled this campaign. She has outspent her opponent 10-1... at least. Mr. Conway ran a few commercials in August that basically said something like, "Anne Northrup wants to take your Social Security money and put in the Stock Market". Northrup immediately responded with a series of effective ads to defend her commitment to the system. Oh... if only she could have contained herself.

After responding to this charge, she launched her own negative ad blitz accusing Conway of everything from lying and association with our disgraced Govenor to spending state money building golf courses!! ( OH MY! )

This negative ad blitz has been RELENTLESS!! It has been OVERKILL to the nth degree. Her poor little opponent has had no money to respond. The ONLY time his name is heard in in Northrup's ads!

In her one attempt at a positive message, she proudly proclaimed that she "brought home $40MM to Louisville to expedite construction of TWO Ohio river bridges". Unfortunately, one of those bridges is passionately opposed by Northrup's conservative base living in the prosperous East End area. In addition, this "I bring home bacon" message made her sound more like a "me too" liberal Democrat than a "compassionate conservative".

So.... now she has angered her base, riled up the Democratic base, and turned off everyone in the middle. This is NOT a formula for success in an area that has a healthy Democratic majority to begin with.

And... don't get me started about Presidential impotenence in local House campaigns. It's ALWAYS been true. And yet, Presidents ALWAYS seem to think they can make a difference.

Stay Home, George. Plan the war, beat on the RATS for not passing Homeland Security. This trip to Louisville will NOT HELP Anne, and WILL HURT you! IMHO.

She had no choice but to go with a heavy negative ad barrage because there will be countless independent expenditure ads run against her in the last week, just as there were in 2000 -- at least SIX groups ran ads against Northup in 2000, in addition to her opponent and the Rat party ads. She also needed to define Conway before he was able to define himself, since he had no record to speak of. If people are getting tired of her ads, they will completely tune out the ones that are about to hit by NARAL, the Sierra Club, AFL-CIO, etc. The polls I have seen show her with a pretty comfortable lead. I'm not sure why Bush would be returning at this point.

If "the base" thinks they will ever get a Congressperson more conservative than Anne Northup, and vote against her or stay home because they don't like a STUPID BRIDGE, they are insane. She is a pro-life Catholic AND she has stood up on a regular basis to the GOP leadership on spending. She is just about as good as it gets these days, especially in a competitive district.

I hope you're right about her "comfortable lead". All I know is, I live in Prospect, surrounded by people as conservative as I am, and I hear little or no excitement about Northup. All I hear is.. " ENOUGH ALREADY with the nasty ads".

I think she DID have a choice, and still DOES. After she responded to the SS attack, she could have gone negative for awhile, and then focused on a positive, upbeat message. She clearly has a good record to run on. She could have run with a patriotic "Reagan-style" theme that highlited the positive things going on in the community. THAT kind of message can be run for weeks on end. The dirty stuff can't.

We're six day away from election now, and I have yet to hear much from the Dems. I expect they're saving everything for a last second blitz. That's all they can afford.

As for the bridge.... My point is: Why bring up this issue, which is so controversial, in her key support area? I doubt anyone will vote against her because of this... but, I do think that ad, and her campaign in general will dampen the turnout in the East End. It's REALLY HARD to want to be FOR her after listening to two and a half MONTHS of constant negative campaigning.

Please God, let her win. Conway is barely qualified to be running for School Board. I don't know if I could bear the thought that he "represents" me! Uck!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.