Posted on 06/10/2014 7:43:13 PM PDT by HokieMom
I don't know - SC is not my cup of tea - but a pattern emerges where six unfunded or self-funded amateurs decide to run in a statewide race against an entrenched RINO with unlimited funds, and they divide the anti-incumbent vote, often with each one of them representing a different conservative denomination (social, fiscal, libertarian, Christian, troglodyte, druggie, etc).
This cannot ever work. Success in a statewide race has to FOLLOW grassroots political work, it can never bring that work about.
There were six other candidates in the SC election. Failure to unite behind any one of them probably was what allowed Graham to win so easily. Also, he’s pretty popular personally with SC voters, and has been making more conservative noises lately - I don’t think Cantor was particularly popular.
In the case of Brat, it seems as if support coalesced around one person, who while being a political amateur, is obviously very intelligent and used to dealing with both the public and an institutional structure in his life as a college professor.
If conservatives want more wins, they need to stop fragmenting the voter base.
You’d be surprised then. There are towns in VA that have had a huge influx of illegal immigrants. Manassas and Culpeper are two that immediately come to mind. Culpeper happens to be in Cantor’s district.
There are so many differences between the two races that it’s foolish to even equate them.
For one thing, a House district is not an entire state. A compact district at that.
for whatever reasons, and I can theorize on a few, no outside groups and no talk radio types got involved in the SC race. It was clearly talk radio that pushed Brat past Cantor. Again, a house seat is one thing, a whole state another.
Jenny Beth Martin paid herself over 465 thou in the past year, did not put a dime into beating Lindsey Graham. So just why are people donating to some of these groups again?
You would be surprised.
I lived in North Carolina 2011-2013. Many small North Carolina towns are now very Mexican.
Around Thanksgiving, they kept playing an ad for a local shop/grocery store that sold these pecan pies. The ads made them sound to die for. One Saturday, we got in the car and drove the 90 minutes from Raleigh to this little (it turned out) grocery store for one of these pies.
Was I ever in for a shocker when we got there. I was the only gringo in the place except maybe one or two elderly folks. Not only that, the place had the most extensive selection of Mexican foods I had ever seen, even here in Arizona.
Another weird one--it was fourth of July and my nephew was in town. We had not made any plans and I was feeling like he was bored. I said, "well, let's hit one of the lakes". Again we packed up the car, drove down to the lake. It was full and they were not allowing anyone else in.
OK, so I harken back to my teen years growing up in upstate NY where we'd have certain areas at local lakes where you could pull over and swim, etc.
We drive around, find what looks like a spot. We walk down about .25 a mile path.
HOLY CRAP!!
I walked into some third world country. It certainly was not America as we know it. First I heard the competing radios, blaring that Mexican polka mostly. Dozens of them, all blasting.
Then the trash. Garbage every where, that they seemingly did not care that they were leaving behind or playing in.
Ofcourse, they were in giant packs. 10, 15 of them in a group and many, many groups.
Then the stares and glares. I mean, there I am --as Northern Euro as it gets. My husband is brown so he blends. But we had that antiseptically clean suburban look and feel. They never said or did anything but they looked at us like, "Get your lily what a$$es outta here"
I have traveled pretty extensively. Sometimes you go somewhere, in fact outside of Europe--most places--you get that vibe-that feeling of vulnerabilty due to your skin color or nationality (or both). I felt that that day. I felt like a stranger in a strange, mostly hostile land.
Thank you Chris Hillman
Nethercutt was a Repub.
Yes, I know that. He beat Foley in the General.
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