Posted on 12/07/2010 11:27:00 AM PST by Moseley
Heh...I thought you couldn’t.
Your lies come easy. Backing them up does not, I see.
It is your responsibility to document your attacks.
Nice try, but nobody is falling for that old trick.
If you want to attack someone, YOU have to prove your attack.
It is a dishonest old trick to expect someone else to respond to your baseless attack for which you have no evidence whatsoever.
However, I will point out what an idiot you people are.....
Remember that there are TWO (2) completely different townhouses involved.
You, being dumb, talk about “half” of Christine’s rent.
That’s the “half” for 1 of 2 townhouses.
1 townhouse is 100% dedicated to office space, and David Hust lived there.
That’s the half paid for by the campaign.
THE OTHER townhouse (#2) is the half *NOT* paid for by the campaign.
That is living space for Christine and her sister.
My don’t you feel stupid now, don’t you?
YOu essentially replied 4 times to my posts, all of which agreed with my premise while thinking you were arguing against me.
I said we need a candidate who can get elected without the establishment, and you argue against that by saying that any good candidate will be attacked and ridiculed by the elite. Who are, in fact, the establishment.
I argue we need a candidate who can cut through the crap thrown at them by democrats AND establishment republicans, and appeal to the people without help from those we are trying to beat. And you ARGUE against that by pointing out that no good candidate WON’T be attacked and ridiculed — which is precisely my point.
And yet somehow you are blaming the republican establishment in Delaware, even though you seem to fully understand that they acted PRECISELY as we would expect them to act. And you pretend I’m living in the unicorn world, when I’m the one who is arguing that O’Donnell was a bad candidate PRECISELY becuase we DON’T live in your unicorn/rainbow world where the establishment will bust their butts to elect candidates who will oppose their interests.
However, since your arguments all fit well with my point, the fact that you can’t see that isn’t important — your arguments simply support my conclusion: O’Donnell was a bad candidate, because she was an attack on the establishment but failed to win without establishment help.
Now, let’s see if you get it, or if you will argue that we should live in your world where the establishment signs up for their own destruction.
Hard to believe I once supported this clown. What a disappointment he turned out to be.
CharlesWayneCT: We must be prepared to win without the establishment. But that has very little to do with the candidate. It has to do with our own infrastructure and abiltity to function as a team independent of the insider elites.
Charles, where do you think you will ever find a better candidate than Christine O’Donnell?
You want one who is part of the establishment? Is that the answer?
Shall we get behind PART OF THE PROBLEM and elect a candidate who has so much invested in the system and the GOP establishment that he or she owes allegiance to the insiders, not to us?
Let us puzzle for a moment about this unicorn fantasy candidate. You want a candidate so deeply entrenched in the establishment that they side with the insiders, instead of you?
You will never have a better candidate than Christine O’Donnell was — and IS, and WILL BE soon.
However, what is lacking is US, not the candidate.
When you listen to the attacks of our opponents, YOU JOIN THEIR RANKS.
Every time the liberal media or activists attack our candidate, ANY candidate, AND YOU BELIEVE IT — YOU JUST CHANGED SIDES AND JOINED THE RANKS OF THE LIBERALS.
And that is the point. They tricked you.
You no longer fighting on our side, you are fighting for the liberals, the moment you LISTEN TO the attacks against our candidate by the liberals.
That is the whole idea. They seek to divide and discourage and demoralize, and confuse the conservative ranks. Their lies might be disproven.
But if they can cause donors to hesitate, volunteers to stay home, dissension within the ranks, time wasted on debating these issues within the campaign being attacked... they have gained an advantage.
The fault, dear Charles, is not in our candidates.... the fault is in ourselves.
The CANDIDATE needs to be able to change the voters, so the voters will select the candidate (50%+1 at least).
Charles, where do you think you will ever find a better candidate than Christine O’Donnell?
Pretty much off of any street corner. In a year where republicans were up dozens of points in some cases over their numbers in 2008, and with $6 million dollars, O'Donnell managed only a 5% improvement over her own 2008 campaign, even though 2008 was against a popular incumbent, and 2010 was against a fairly unknown throw-away candidate.
Fortunately, I don't have to "believe" anybody to make my judgments. I can simply look at the facts.
DO you know anything about Delaware? I don’t live there, but I know that “everybody” didn’t like O’Donnell in 2008.
There was no primary in 2008 — nobody else even cared to bother to run against Biden. They all knew it was a lost cause. She had come in 3rd in the 2006 senate primary. But she was the only one campaigning for the republican ticket in 2008.
She was unable to raise any money, and ended up in debt, and failed to pay everybody who worked for her campaign (I’m hoping that’s beeen straightened out now that she has a million dollars in her campaign bank).
She underperformed the McCain/Palin ticket (her 65%/35% vs 62%/37%). Fact is, in a state like Delaware, people register democrat because they get to vote in the primary, where they know they will get a choice. It was the same in Maryland when I lived there — a LOT of conservatives were registered democrat because being registered republican meant nothing. 35% was pretty much what the republican line was going to get in an election, regardless of who’s name was on that line.
I’m fine with an argument over how much we should expect a candidate to do. But there’s no point in ignoring the evidence. In 2010 the tea party fully backed O’Donnell, and you keep saying that the tea party is one of your “ourselves” that can support a candidate, and O’Donnell was crushed.
You act like O’Donnell was cut off from the world. She had two major national players endorse her in the primary. She was a tea party darling. She had Rush, Mark, Sean, and a host of 2nd-tier conservative talk shows working for her. She had web sites pushing her.
What she did NOT have was the delaware establishment republicans — and you have stated the facts that explain that, even if you think they should have. We were FIGHTING the establishment in delaware, they rejected the establishment candidate who was likely to win the general election. Our side said repeatedly we’d rather LOSE to the democrats than win with the establishment.
And yet you seem shocked the establishment didn’t support our candidate. You probably are upset Castle didn’t endorse her — forgetting that Castle was savaged personally during the race. Do you remember THIS gem:
“A conservative firm until recently employed by the Delaware primary campaign of conservative Christine O’Donnell against Rep. Mike Castle casually leveled an extraordinary — and unsupported — charge of a gay affair against Castle in a video posted to its website today, the ugliest salvo yet in an extremely bitter primary.”
It wasn’t O’Donnell’s campaign, but she never denounced the smear. Castle DID stay out of the race, didn’t run 3rd party, and didn’t campaign for or endorse the democrat.
Still, it seems silly to recognize that democrats own the state, and then suggest that a far-right candidate can win regardless of how bad a candidate they are, if the pathetically weak republican party apparatus would simply support her.
Oh, if it were that easy — then we’d win a landslide, because in most cases the republican party committees DO support candidates. That doesn’t win you elections — you win elections with a good candidate.
Maybe your problem is that you think O’DOnnell’s problem was simply that she made some gaffes. IN fact, she wasn’t really gaffe-prone, and she didn’t really stick her foot in her mouth (like some other candidates). She simply had severe baggage, FACTUAL baggage, that could not be overcome by a weak campaigner who refused to get out and sell herself, who came across as scared of interviews, and who dissappeared for almost 3 weeks after the primary, by which time her large deficit in the polls was cemented.
I’m not complaining about her owing people money. I’m offering evidence against your claim that she was a successful candidate in 2008, that “nobody had any trouble with her then”.
You clearly have a personal interest in this discussion that makes it difficult to speak logically with you on the matter. I make it a point not to try to have dispassionate, logical discussions with people who were personally involved with things, because emotion is a tricky thing.
Thank you four correcting my misunderstanding regarding the liberty video.
No, Charles, she was considered a perfectly acceptable candidate in 2008.
MOST campaigns end with debt.
That is not unusual.
Christine was considered a perfectly fine canddiate in 2008.
What changed was the SORE LOSER crowd of Mike Castle decided to go into smear mode with FALSE personal attacks in order to (so they hoped) deprive the Republican primary voters of an opportunity to choose the nominee.
The “Lords of the back room” wanted to make the decision instead of letting the voters decide.
So she didn't go on Bill Maher's show? She didn't run a commercial that started with "I am not a witch"? She didn't end 2008 with a campaign debt? She didn't take years to settle her college stuff?
She didn't cancel all her national sunday show appearances after she won the nomination? She didn't go through a year with $5800 in total earnings? She didn't publicly state she won two of three delaware counties?
I won't assert any of the disputed pieces of baggage are true; I don't know. I only listed the inctrovertable things, things she didn't deny or where she's recorded. You probably know better than I do what happened with her 2008 campaign manager, who I presume O'Donnell picked for that position but who now isn't so kind to her.
Oh, and before you get all hung up in an argument over "truth" of "falsehood" -- we were talking about baggage. When Castle was accused of being gay, that became BAGGAGE for Castle. Makes no difference if it's true or not, the question is whether it influences the electorate.
In a year when we were running on fiscal responsibility, all the questions surrounding O'Donnell's personal finances, campaign finances, home ownership, and school finances were BAGGAGE. Baggage that it was highly unlikely ANY amount of help by the Delaware repbulican party would have helped.
Nobody would expect a primary opponent to completely ignore these issues; and with Delaware having so late of a primary, the stories from the primary were fresh in the minds of the voters.
So far as I can tell, Coons never brought up any of that baggage, nor did it get publicity after the first week after the primary; Even Maher's threats petered out.
But that baggage, the perception of the voters, was cemented by that time. Nothing the talk show hosts said could help. Nothing the national or local republican committees did could change it. No amount of "defending" against that baggage by the tea party would make a difference.
IN fact, I argued at the time that it was impossible. But if there was ANYTHING that could have turned it around, it was only ONE thing -- the candidate. And she was unable to do so, because she was NOT a good candidate. Not for that election, at that time.
Someday she may be a great candidate somewhere. She could move back to New Jersey -- I actually think there's more opportunity there, although she'd have to re-settle in to reclaim her "home" status.
I love O'Donnell personally; I wish I had been able to make it to her speech here last week. But I don't let that personal attraction to her message and beliefs cloud my mind from the basic truth -- she is responsible for her loss.
BTW, If you want to argue that the establishment is so powerful that they can sink any candidate, or make them win, you are simply arguing that we might as well let them run the elections -- we can't beat them, according to your pitch. I don't think you believe that, and I KNOW I don't believe that -- but that is the logical consequence of your argument that O'Donnell isn't responsible for her own loss.
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.