Posted on 06/10/2014 9:24:49 PM PDT by Steelfish
“He probably shouldn’t be crowing quite so loud or someone’s probably going to pick up on his underwhelming victory.”
I don’t think Graham really cared whether he got 52% of the vote or 74% of the vote.
He got what he needed and now the worthless POS is on his way back to DC and it’ll be another six long years of watching this asswipe undercut the GOP.
Is there a single instance when 6 (or more) candidates ran against an incumbent in a primary and forced a runoff?
I hope this will be the last we hear (and we heard it until our ears bled) about how packing the primary field is a sure fire way to keep an incumbent under 50, drag him into a run off, and then beat him.
just because it worked for cruz doesn’t mean it will ever work again, anywhere else.
my God, some of the people here were relentless on that point. relentlessly wrong, as it turns out.
South Carolina provides for a runoff. Runoffs are supposed to make vote splitting safe.
In this case, the sum total of the vote splitters didn't add up to 50%. If it had, then Graham would have been forced into a runoff with the most popular of the vote splitters' candidates. Then, assuming the vote splitters could be bothered to turn out for the runoff and vote for the second guy, the third+ having been eliminated, the second guy would have won, and Grahamnesty would be gone.
There was little dust-up in 2012 in Texas, in which eight candidates went after the GOP-e's guy (who was not an incumbent), and the GOP-e guy lost badly in the runoff.
| Republican primary results[58] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
| Republican | David Dewhurst | 624,170 | 44.6% | |
| Republican | Ted Cruz | 479,079 | 34.2% | |
| Republican | Tom Leppert | 186,675 | 13.3% | |
| Republican | Craig James | 50,211 | 3.6% | |
| Republican | Glenn Addison | 22,888 | 1.6% | |
| Republican | Lela Pittenger | 18,028 | 1.3% | |
| Republican | Ben Gambini | 7,193 | 0.5% | |
| Republican | Curt Cleaver | 6,649 | 0.5% | |
| Republican | Joe Argis | 4,558 | 0.3% | |
| Totals | 1,399,451 | 100% | ||
| Republican runoff results[59] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
| Republican | Ted Cruz | 631,316 | 56.8% | |
| Republican | David Dewhurst | 480,165 | 43.2% | |
| Totals | 1,111,481 | 100% | ||
It is truly stunning how easily people let themselves be lied to. Or how willingly.
How does a person look at that mans public comments and positions and then vote for him? Especially when there are alternatives?
Not a single one of those people has any right at all to complain about what the GOP has done to America, nor what they will do. they had ample chance to help correct it and instead willingly chose to help.
Thanks for nothing SC. You deserve Linda but the rest of us don’t. SC joins AZ, OH, and KY as RINO HQ.
True, but having so many candidates really dilutes the message that someone would be a viable and appropriate alternative to Graham...instead he just dominated the race and the rest of the candidates were just background noise because there were so many of them...and with the nearest challenger having 14% apparently none of them were very organized at all. It’s a shame...out of all of the incumbents that it would have been beneficial to defeat, this guy would have been the most beneficial to replace. Oh well...
Thanks for the education! I forget important things like that from time to time.
Three works pretty well in forcing a runoff if one of the two really resonates. In MS, unfortunately, the third guy took just enough votes to force a runoff for McDaniel. Had it be the other way around, with McDaniel a point down on the incumbent, we would have been thrilled to have that guy in the race. As it is, it prevented the out and out victory.
I agree...a crowded field doesn’t help. It also doesn’t help that none of them got any real traction. There just wasn’t anyone to be ‘the one’ be able to take on Graham.
Unless some of Lindsey’s went to a stronger opponent, which would have likely happened if all the energy had been poured into just one strong candidate who could articulate the conservative message. Need to think smart.
55-56% in a 7 candidate race is far from underwhelming. We were assured over and over by FR experts on SC elections that it was actually just great having a large number of challengers, because that would keep Graham under the requisite 50%.
Too many assumptions there. People today are mostly uneducated. Large majorities won’t be able to tell the name of the US Chief Justice. They don’t read. They are fed one-liner campaign commercials. Women voters skew things up. They tend to vote Democratic and vote “soft”:i.e. Graham-type candidate. Even without looking at the internal poll numbers there’s no question Graham would have won a lop-side female vote.
We do, but there was also a democrat primary taking place as well.
Not at all. Every word you wrote reinforces fully my assertion of how willing people are to be led.
The fact that they voted at all puts the majority of them in a ‘smarter’ more aware bracket than most. Remember this was a republican primary. Most of them can read and aren’t full subscribers to the gibdsmedat mentality of the Dems. Or at least shouldn’t be.
Ultimately there is no excuse to be an uninformed voter. None. Any assertion that there is is itself an excuse. Are there uninformed voters? Sure. Some of these morons just hit the party button as usual without a conscious thought given. Which is exactly WHY we have a Uniparty system with closet case Republicans.
Linda reached out to democrats, encouraging them to vote for him in the primary. And they did.
Not that I've ever had one.... Besides this Goober.
As much as I’m enjoying Cantor’s loss I would have traded that seat for this one. I real thought there was a chance of forcing a runoff.
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