Posted on 12/02/2008 11:43:46 AM PST by BGHater
No. He lost against Nelson, he won’t win a Senate race. He barely got the lower-key Attorney General office.
I’m leaning towards fmr. Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings (who should’ve succeeded Jeb, not that fruitcake RINO Crist). I think we should run a tough, Conservative woman.
No mas Arbustos, por favor.
Oh, please, not again.
The man is exciting as watching paint dry.
He looks, as much as anything, like an old cartoon character called “Secret Squirrel”.
He has been rejected before, on a statewide basis.
Running this guy will look a lot like the Bob Dole candidacy, but on a state level. I can just imagine the prune juice jokes, along with some references to Viagra.
McCollum is a nice man. And he is capable. He is, by no means, an idiot. But he is not electable. Period. Full stop.
Jeb is capable. But his brother fouled the nest. A Bush is now unelectable, for the foreseeable future, in this state.
And Rhonda Storms, out of Tampa, isn’t it either. Another subject altogether, but she has a lot of baggage of the “loony Holy Roller” variety in the Tampa Bay area and media markets. She is popular with social conservatives, but there are not enough of them in FL to elect anyone on a statewide basis. Particularly after the Schiavo episode, which alienated a lot of the mushy middle voters.
We need to find someone else.
Good point. McCollum had full establishment support in 20000, when he ran against Nelson and outspent him by a significant margin. Even under favorable circumstaces, McCollum lost.
Tell you what, Jeb couldn’t lose if he ran. If he’s interested, I hope he announces early, since guys like Jeff Altwater (sp?) and Marco Rubio are chompong at the bit to run for either the Senate or the governorship.
I can’t see Jeb running, and frankly, he blew it when he didn’t take out Nelson in ‘06. That was the ONLY seat we had a shot at picking up, as the polls demonstrated.
Jeb Bush was an excellent governor here. Everybody, ranging from North Florida Crackers to South Florida Latinos, liked him and felt he was working for them.
He was the best of the Bushes and has a great public persona. He’s tall and heavy and loudspoken and is much louder than W. Supposedly, he takes after his Texas mother Barbara, a very outspoken person, more than after his dad, GH (W is the spittin image of his dad).
I think McCollum ran for AG just to prove to people that he can win a statewide race. I think McCollum could have won in 2004. It was a great GOP year. Plus, Mel Martinez ran behind Bush in north FL. McCollum would have done better in that region. Overall, let Mel Martinez be a lesson to conservatives for blindly endorsing someone just because he/she is the tallest midget of a group of shorties. Martinez won just because conservatives didn’t want Gay Foley and McCollum.
Toni Jennings might be intriguing. After two years perhaps G W. Bush fatigue would be gone and Jeb could run. Just keep Katherine Harris, Vern Buchanan, Gallagher, and anyone involved with Terri Schavio away.
Gallagher, Crist’s 2006 primary rival, initially looked strong against Nelson. However as the Governor primary went on, Gallagher made a fool out of humself appealing to the Schavio and Katherine Harris crowd.
He wasn’t running against Nelson, so I’m a bit puzzled by your first sentence. I do know he tried to tie himself to the KH diehards, which I found off-putting as one of the biggest anti-KH’ers on this board (solely because I could recognize the reality she couldn’t win any statewide race, and I was viciously attacked in the process for pointing that out, only to be exceeded by the slander of the Slick Willard cretins, but I digress...). In hindsight, I’d have preferred Gallagher as the Gubernatorial nominee. My support of Crist was a serious error in judgment, for which I deeply regret.
In 2006, polls showed both Gallagher and Crist being competitive against Nelson. GOP activists begged Harris to remain in the House and let either Gallagher or Crist take on Nelson. But both men insisted on being Governor. I didn’t like how Gallagher spread rumors about Crist being gay or fathering a child out of wedlock. My opinion of Gallagher fell down after all.
As for Katherine Harris, at least she did stand up to the Dems despite suffering media slander. How would have Mitt Romney handled it?
Ultimately, our biggest mistake was not running Toni Jennings for Governor and George needed a “Come to Jesus” set up with his brother and explain why he needed to do what Bob Graham did in ‘86. If we can’t get our most popular vote-getters to run for office, how will we ever keep or win back our majorities ?
Actually, rumors about Good Time Charlie fathering a kid out of wedlock probably would’ve improved his standing with Conservatives. Most folks on the ground know Charlie is barely in the closet. That impending “marriage” is as odious as the McGreevey fraud in NJ. I wonder how much the lady is being paid. As I said, my sole problem with Gallagher was his tying himself to a permanently crippled KH, whose campaign was a textbook example of incompetence. I had people telling me in private just how much of a nightmare her campaign was (yes, all along I gave her credit for her 2000 performance, she did her job there, but she was permanently crippled, not only by the media, but by herself). I had a sneaking suspicion had she even run for a 3rd term in ‘06 to her House seat, she’d have been defeated. She couldn’t get above 55% in both her runs, inexcusably low for a GOP district, and in ‘04. Half the primary voters viewed her as toxic, nevermind erratic. At least Vern Buchanan saved the seat for us.
As for Slick Willard, heaven help us had he bought the nomination and conned more rubes, he would’ve folded like a cheap suit in the fall campaign blistering media spotlight. The media would’ve taken enormous delight pointing out to the GOP base just how liberal he is, how much of a liar he is, and his other various flaws.
I think Jeb passed on the Senate race in 2006, because he was still spooked by his close defeat in 1994. I think you said once that the GOP rarely ousts Dem Senators even with a conservative wave across the country. So Jeb must think an open race is better. Should Jeb run, the field will be cleared for him. While GW Bush is political poison, Jeb still has enough goodwill residing in FL. Jeb did build a machine that enabled the GOP to take the FL legislature and statewide offices. When he left office, the FL GOP still stood strong.
On another note, the fight for RNC Chair is getting interesting. Saul A. of MI is trying to form a solidarity bloc with GOP officials above the Mason-Dixon line. He says the GOP needs shed its Southern image and be more diverse. Saul A. is hoping Chip Salsman and Kim Dawson will divide the Southern vote, while he gets all the non-dixie vote. Keep in mind, Saul A is a Romney ally. Should he get the RNC chair job, we know what his number priority will be in the next 4 years.
Comparing the ‘94 and ‘06 races were apples and oranges, though. Nelson couldn’t have made the ludicrous charges Chiles made in their “Let’s scare the seniors” schtick. I think he was partly tired and wanted out of the limelight for a bit, and secondly, with KH threatening a nuclear war if they didn’t give her the nomination, she would’ve tried to deliberately cripple Jeb (who would’ve beaten her) for the general. Still, I think he would’ve beaten Nelson just as Graham did with Hawkins in ‘86, and all polls showed Jeb beating Nelson, most especially because the latter had sky-high negatives. Nelson managed to luck out spectacularly because he drew one of the only Republicans in the state of FL with even higher disapprovals. Probably only Mark Foley would’ve done worse.
As for Michigan’s Saul Anus’s, that’s truly a sphincter-tightening spectacle. That man is to his state party what Slick Willard was to Massachusetts. I believe sincerely there is a deliberate and high-profile attempt by Democrat agents working in our party (which no doubt Saul seems to be) to make us a political non-entity at the national level and destroy us state by state.
So did Morning Joe.
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