Of course, I'm not surprised her primary race got zero press coverage given that RINOs run the Maine GOP and love being bipartisan with the RATs. Her primary opponent didn't even make it on the ballot and had to run as a write-in candidate (I would have written him in, solely as a protest vote). But Collins "won" unopposed on the ballot with only 48,000 votes or so, which proves it wouldn't take many votes to win a Senate nomination in Maine. The good news is an ACTUAL conservative won the ME-2 congressional primary (which was ignored by the national media, but it was my highlight of the evening), and Maine has a conservative Tea Party, which is in my opinion proves conservatives CAN be competative in Maine. I am sick of the argument from some conservatives that we should only go after RINOs in so-called "red states". We'll never end up with a conservative majority if we "wrote off" all the states that voted for Obama. You'll never know if you don't try.
If the argument is that we should challenge "EVERY" incumbent, no matter how conservative they are, because "three terms is enough", why wasn't the Levin crowd foaming at the mouth to "take out" Jeff Sessons? He also has a 90% consevative record like Enzi and Roberts, and is a solid Ted Cruz ally, but he's running for a fourth time, so according to their own logic, its "time for him to be shown the door" and he isn't enough of a "fighter" since he's not a celebrity outside of Alabama. Shouldn't the tea party recruit George Wallace's nephew to run against him? I don't think this selective outrage against incumbency helps your side.
Ditto with the Joe Carr race -- if Levin and the rest of the national conservative talking heads are going to ignore that race, maybe their fan club should call into the show and mention it. The problem is Levin fans think he's infallible, so if he says Roberts is public enemy no. #1 and shrugs his shoulders about Lamar, well gosh darn it, that must be because Roberts is 10X worse than Lamar.
You make a valid point about TN coming late in the primary election cycle and the bizarre timing of having a primary election on Thursday. I just hope the self appointed "conservative leaders" wake up before that election and stop ignoring it.
On Maine, there was a guy that was running against Collins but he was charged or convicted of beating his wife so she had clear sailing. This was definitely a missed opportunity because two years ago, somebody stepped up to the plate and said they were going to challenge Snowe and the next thing you know, she retired. I live in New England and I’ve never bought the “only moderates can win here” or “Scott Brown’s the best we’re ever going to get” arguments either. When Brown ran as a conservative, he won, hands down. When he ran as a moderate, he lost. And as you said, the conservative just got the nomination in the second district. It is possible. It takes people stepping up.
I would like every incumbent to be challenged in every election, and yes that includes conservatives like Sessions. And you’re right, his voting record is about even with Enzi’s. While I like Sessions, I still think three terms is more than enough, and if he were challenged by another good conservative, I would have advocated for new blood. But to answer your question, you can only support challengers where they appear, and neither Sessions nor Inhofe had challengers. I think there’s one or two others that I can’t think of but overall I think it is very healthy that we had so many challengers to incumbents this year. It definitely held them in check at least for this year and caused Harry Reid so much more frustration since he had to get help with cloture votes etc. from those that weren’t up for reelection such as Hoeven, Corker, Murkowski, Ayotte, etc. So the pressure is working.
I have no idea why Levin and company haven’t gotten behind Carr, or if they did, I haven’t heard of it. At least on FR we all know who he is due to all of our efforts.