Posted on 12/17/2012 8:16:39 AM PST by Qbert
Manchin knew the climate of West Virginia is strongly pro-gun and it would be suicide to say anything about regulating guns, so he lied through his teeth and the NRA fools bought it. Another example of Lucy with the football.
Running "moderate" Capito against "moderate" Manchin would have been an even bigger problem though. She's pro-abortion (or at least, middle of the road on the issue) and he's ran with a "A" rating from pro-life groups (probably lied about that too -- Harry Reid & Bob Casey Jr. redux) so Manchin would have also certainly tried to run to the right of her on abortion and gotten the pro-life groups to endorse him over her. If it were Connecticut, it wouldn't matter much, but one of the reasons West Virginia has moved so strongly to the right in the last 12 years is because of social issues (Gore got killed by "values voters"), so the Christian right choosing Manchin over Capito (especially all the church organizations don't mind if he's a socialist as long as he's pro-life and pro-traditional marriage) would have probably been fatal to her campaign.
There were quite a few West VA freepers talking up Manchin when he was Governor and gushing about what a wonderful "conservative" RAT he was. It reminds me of the freepers who were "disappointed" when "conservative" RAT Sam Nunn stumped for Obama on the campaign in 2008 and was on the short list for Vice President. They said they "lost a lot of respect for Nunn". Fortunately, I couldn't lose any since I didn't have any respect for him to begin with.
The worst offenders were the freepers who gloated about helping to re-elect Al Gore's partner-in-crime Joe LIEbermann though. (He's been really on the forefront f this latest "ban guns" crusade, along with Feinswine) Unlike Nunn and Manchin, LIEberman had overwhelmingly leftist record on EVERY issue besides Israel and made no bones about it. We lost George Allen, Jim Talent, and Conrad Burns by less than 1% in that same election cycle, while some "conservatives" were focused on re-electing the commie from Connecticut. Personally I hope he screwed them over good. They deserve it for screwing over the rest of us and getting in bed with the guy because the war on terror was supposedly "the most important issue". Hopefully it will be a wakeup call for them.
That's as may be ... I don't recall seeing it.
I certainly was NOT one ... I have thought he was a slimy crapweasel for as long as I have known anything about him.
“the Christian right choosing Manchin over Capito (especially all the church organizations don’t mind if he’s a socialist as long as he’s pro-life and pro-traditional marriage) would have probably been fatal to her campaign.”
BTW, Manchin’s treason is great news for Capito, since when some good-ol’-boy Democrat replaces Rockefeller as the RAT Senate nominee and claims to be “pro-life and pro-gun” she’ll be able to say “that’s exactly what Manchin said a couple of years ago, and he immediately started voting like the Democrat that he is.”
“Recall elections for Senators? What is the law?”
I remember years ago when I lamented that the NRA endorsed and spent money to support a rat Congressman (Baron Hill) a bunch of NRA nuthuggers got in my face and said it was good they were bipartisan, they couldn’t fathom their pet organization could do something wrong. “The NRA is not gay, it’s BI!”.
If the Republican was a gungrabber that would be one thing but he was not.
Being a democrat is the same as being in the mob. If you are a democrat you are guilty by association and the enemy of gun rights, human life, ect. ect. Party should least break the tie no?
But no it didn’t they SPENT money, donations on billboards for the democrat who was running against a pro-gun Republican!
And their rankings are USELESS. The GOA gives D’s and maybe less to some people that the NRA gives an A.
I posted on FR a couple years back that the NRA was FOS (full of sh..). Pretty much all of the 2A people I know (including some lifetime members), quit the NRA and joined GOA along with a state group, GOAL.
“And their (NRA) rankings are USELESS.” Yep!
To paraphrase what someone posted on the Robert Bork thread: “our guys are dying”. Add organizations like the NRA to that list.
General Pinochet, where are you?
Heh. I'm getting that on another thread right now (which I just pinged you guys to). It reminds me of how Ann Coulter's die hards fans refused to acknowledge for years that their beloved "hot" conservative author would ever say or do anything damaging to the conservative movement.
Ironically, I've actually defended the NRA on a few occasions when they've been bashed here. One time they were being criticized for endorsing a solidly pro-gun RAT (can't remember which RAT it was, but he had like a decade long track record of voting in favor of gun owners), but he was otherwise a socialist slimeball. But I agreed with others who pointed out they're called the National Rifle Association, not the Republican Rifle Association, so they're a single issue organization that's simply going to endorse the strongest pro-gun candidate in the race, regardless of how bad they are on other issues. Similarly, there's the rare circumstance where you have a pro-gun RAT candidate running against an anti-gun Republican (i.e., even a mildly pro-gun RAT would be better on guns than Republican Peter King), so in those circumstances I can see why the endorse the RAT, even I personally I wouldn't support the RAT because they suck on so many other issues.
But sorry, there's no excuse for the NRA endorsing a RAT when their Republican opposite has an equal or better track record on gun rights. The NRA has a very interesting and noble history that is exactly the opposite of what Michael Moore portrayed (in fact they were started by a bunch of UNION veterans after the civil war to protect the rights of ALL people to have firearms for self-defense), but today's NRA has strayed far from its core principles.
As I noted on the other thread, sure the left in this country makes the NRA out to be the boogeyman for every shooting but that doesn't mean we should "Stand with the NRA" anymore than we should "stand with Karl Rove" because he's a favorite punching bag of the left. In both cases, the NRA & Rove have far less clout and power over conservatives than the left believes, and they've done plenty of stupid things that inadvertently helped the left.
I've actually had the NRA call me up a couple of times and try to convince me to join their organization (even though I don't own a gun). No way would I pay yearly "membership dues" to these guys, they don't deserve one cent from conservatives. It's all a numbers game for them to boost about how many "card-carrying" members they have, but they're far from the best gun organization out there.
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