Category: Nevada

Conservatism 101:
Never Let Your Enemies Tell You Who Your Friends Should Be

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Conservative Republicans seeking political advice should not take it from a liberal Democrat like Jonathan Chait:

You don’t have to love Sue Lowden to understand that a 90% chance of Lowden winning is better than a 20% chance of Sharron Angle winning. Nor is there any recognition on the right that conservatives paved the way for health care reform by driving Specter out. In conservative lore, the Pat Toomey primary challenge remains a glorious triumph, when in fact it’s a disaster of historic proportions.

You can read the whole thing, but not without minding this important caveat: Jonathan Chait doesn’t want Republicans to win.

If Lowden had won the Nevada GOP primary, Chait would be busy-beavering arguments intended to help Harry Reid defeat Lowden. If Specter had stayed in the GOP and defeated Toomey in the primary, Chait would now be offering arguments to help Joe Sestak defeat Specter in November (as, in fact, the New Republic did throughout the Democratic primary).

Long ago — in February 2009, when the Tea Party movement was just being born — I explained this fundamental issue:

Among the ill effects of liberal bias in the media is that much political “news” amounts to thinly disguised DNC talking-points. The conservative must learn to think critically about news and politics, to filter out that which is misleading, or else he will internalize the funhouse-mirror distortions of reality that define the liberal weltanschauung. . . .
[O]ne of the major problems of the Republican Party, that so many of its supporters have unwittingly accepted liberal beliefs as political truths. . . .

The GIGO principle (Garbage In, Garbage Out) is as applicable to political discourse as to any other information system. If you let liberals like Chait tell you which Republican candidates you should support, you will never support any Republican candidate — except in a GOP primary, when liberals will invariably tell you to support the most liberal candidate on the ballot. As soon as the primary is over, however, your liberal friends will then return to their usual arguments of why you should vote Democrat. Sic semper hoc.

It may well be, as a source tells Ben Smith, that the Nevada GOP primary was a “total f*** up by the state and national Republicans” — Never underestimate the incompetence of the Republican establishment being another basic lesson of Conservatism 101 — but that is neither here nor there as to the task at hand, namely, defeating Harry Reid.

Chait and his friends are trying to do what liberals in the media always do, shape Conventional Wisdom to their own advantage.

“Sharron Angle Can’t Win” is the Meme-O’-Th’-Day, and liberals are going to pound it as hard and as long as they can. Why? Because they know that a lot of Republicans base their political decisions on Conventional Wisdom so that, by promoting this Angle-Is-Doomed message, liberals will erode support for Harry Reid’s opponent — especially from the Dumb and Rich Coalition who comprise the GOP’s big-money donors.

Sharron Angle can win, and should win, and will win, so long as the conservative grassroots don’t allow themselves to be bamboozled into believing the liberal Conventional Wisdom. 

Obviously, you can’t expect the Dumb and Rich to write any fat checks to make that happen, so it’s up to the grassroots to give those small donations — $10, $20, $50 — that will add up to match the millions Harry Reid gets from his Democratic fat-cat friends.

SHARRON ANGLE for U.S. SENATE

‘Now Imagine If Hunter S. Thompson Was On Twitter . . .’

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@rsmccain — Robert Stacy McCain has aptly been described as “the conservative Hunter S. Thompson.” Now imagine if Hunter Thompson was on Twitter!
— Matt Lewis, “The Top 25 Conservatives on Twitter”

About time I got this kind of recognition, considering that we’re now just three weeks away from the 2010 Right Online Conference in Las Vegas.

I took a fast right on Russell, then a left onto Maryland Parkway . . . and suddenly I was cruising in warm anonymity past the campus of the University of Las Vegas . . .  no tension on these faces; I stopped at a red light and got lost, for a moment, in a sunburts of flesh in the cross-walk: fine sinewy thighs, pink mini-skirts, ripe young nipples, sleeveless blouses, long sweeps of blond hair, pink lips and blue eyes — all the hallmarks of a dangerously innocent culture.
I was tempted to pull over and start mumbling obscene entreaties: “Hey, Sweetie, let’s you and me get weird. Jump into this hotdog Caddy and we’ll flash over to my suite at the Flamingo, load up on ether and behave like wild animals in my private, kidney-shaped pool . . . .”
Sure we will, I thought. But by this time I was far down the parkway, easing into the turn lane for a left at Flamingo Road. . . .
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The list of speakers for this year’s conference includes Erick Erickson and Ed Morrissey — both of whom are far more interesting than me, which is why they’re on the list and that bastard Erik Telford didn’t invite me, just like he snubbed me last year.

Obviously, Telford fails to take me seriously. After I spared him the long-promised ass-whupping at the Pittsburgh conference, he mistook mercy for weakness. 

Telford probably thought I’d forget his promise to put me on the agenda for this year’s Right Online conference at the posh Venetian Resort Hotel (where they’re offering rooms at the discount rate of  $169 a night.)

“It’s Vegas,” Telford thought to himself. “Surely that redneck loser can’t make it all the way to Vegas.”

Telford obviously didn’t believe that, for the second year in a row, I’d be able to rattle the tip-jar and scare up enough cash for this trip.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days.

If we could average $100 a day until then . . . But that would be crazy.

Wouldn’t it?

RIGHT ONLINE
LAS VEGAS, JULY 23-25

Sharron Angle 48%, Harry Reid 41%

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Nevada is not wild about Harry, according to Rasmussen, and Professor William Jacobson observes:

What is amazing is that for the past two weeks Harry Reid has been pouring on the attacks against Angle, both through his own advertising, astroturfing, and through friends in the mainstream media and left-wing blogosphere.

Reid’s union-goon buddies are even using ads on conservative blogs to attack Angle.

Why isn’t it working? The Reid campaign has been pumping out opposition research on Angle, depicting her as a dangerous extremist — “she said this” and “she voted for that” and the predictable “she wants to take away granny’s Social Security check.”

The problem for Harry is that when people in Nevada turn on their TVs, they look at Sharron Angle and don’t see the person portrayed by the Reid attack. Instead, they see . . .

Sharron Angle. 

She may not be the greatest living American political leader, but she doesn’t “fit the profile” of a scary kook. She seems like a nice ordinary woman — your Mom or your wife or your neighbor.

Most Nevada voters only recently learned Angle’s name as a result of her Cinderella upset of Sue Lowden in the GOP primary. What they’ve seen of Angle with their own eyes and heard with their own ears, they like, and so when she comes under attack, these voters ask themselves: “Why is Harry Reid saying those mean things about her? What is he so afraid of?”

Think: Charles Johnson vs. Pamela Geller.

At some point, the credibility and motives of the attacker become a legitimate subject of inquiry. People rightly consider this a question of character. Once the attacker is demonstrated to be a vicious bully, the details of his accusations become irrelevant. He loses the argument for a simple reason: Nobody likes a bully, especially a bully who picks on girls.

Meanwhile, Professor Jacobson reminds us that Harry Reid called General David Petraeus a liar. If John Cornyn and the NRSC knew what they were doing — strictly a hypothetical, of course — Reid’s attacks on Gen. Petraeus would already be the subject of a Nevada campaign ad.

SHARRON ANGLE FOR U.S. SENATE

Sharron Angle Fights Back

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Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and his MSM allies have tried to score a pre-emptive knockout against Republican challenger Sharron Angle by depicting her as an extremist kook. Here is Angle’s first ad of the general election campaign:

Philip Klein at the American Spectator provides the text of the ad:

Unemployment has skyrocketed. Billions in bailouts to Wall Street millionaires with little to show for it. The national debt reaching critical mass. Iran close to going nuclear. The Gulf Coast submerged in oil. And the Majority Leader of the Senate moves quickly into action — not with solutions, but by attacking his opponent.
Within hours of Sharron Angle becoming the nominee to face Reid in November, Reid launched a brutal advertising assault that is a slap in the face to all Americans. Not only is Reid not offering solutions to our problems, he’s using special interest money to throw mud and try to tear down his opponent. America deserves better.
If you care more about sound ideas than negative sound bites, if you think it’s time to end the bailouts, end the power of the special interests, and, above all, take back the America we love, then please visit SharronAngle.com and contribute today — and do it before Harry Reid attacks again.

Human Events has an interview with Angle:

We know that we’re a national campaign and we need a national presence—a solid presence — a coalition of the willing that Reagan said we needed and my purpose here is to bring the coalition of the willing to bear on a campaign that is aimed at defeating Harry Reid, which is really a referendum on Harry Reid, not so much about Sharron Angle, but a referendum on Harry Reid and his policies and why he has not only failed Nevada but also America.

SHARRON ANGLE FOR U.S. SENATE

Of Tea Parties and Leaders

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The Washington Post:

Frustrated and lacking agreement on what to do next, self-identified tea party leaders say the movement may be in danger of breaking apart before it ever really comes together.

Bill Dupray at Liberty Pundits calls this article by the Post‘s Amy Gardner an attempt to write a premature obituary on the movement.  Regardless of its intended purpose, however, there was some information of interest in the article:

“We don’t want a leader,” said Barbee Kinnison of Henderson, Nev., who supported one of Angle’s Republican opponents, businessman Danny Tarkanian. Kinnison’s testy e-mail exchange with organizers of Tea Party Express was published in the blogosphere last week. “We like it being a collective group of voices. This is the first time in a generation when we feel like our voices are being heard.”

Who is Barbee Kinnison? She was quoted by the New York Times at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville in February:

At a panel discussion titled “Defeating Liberalism via the Primary Process,” the room erupted in a standing ovation when Barbee Kinnison, a delegate from Nevada, stood up and declared her intention to unite Tea Party groups behind a candidate to defeat Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader.

Evidently, the candidate around whom she hoped to unite Tea Party groups was Danny Tarkanian, and as soon as the Tea Party Express endorsement of Angle was announced in April, Kinnison expressed her dissatisfaction:

The Tea Party Express endorsement provoked a backlash of sorts among some conservative activists, who accused the California-based group of carpetbagging in Nevada and inserting itself into a competitive Republican primary.
“They are drastically overstepping their boundaries,” said Barbee Kinnison, a retired Las Vegas businesswoman and activist who supports Tarkanian. “Anger is brewing. This is not how it is supposed to work.”
Kinnison said she and friends e-mailed the Tea Party Express on Thursday asking for a return of money they had donated.

Why did Kinnison support Tarkanian and not Angle? Why did the Tea Party Express support Angle and not Tarkanian? We don’t know. However, I’m intigued by Kinnison saying she wants to be part of “a collective group of voices” and to “feel like our voices are being heard.”

At the end of the day, making your voice heard in politics — in any really effective way — requires winning elections. Winning elections at the level of a U.S. Senate race isn’t easy, and depends on a lot of details that have nothing to do with national trends, so that the success or failure of any one campaign cannot automatically be taken as evidence of a trend.

Neverthless, if Kinnison and others cannot accept the nomination of Angle as legitimate, that’s a real problem. And if the Tea Party movement ends up encouraging people to be soreheads when they lose a primary, that’s a real problem, too.

When You Land on the Wrong Beach

The Democrats and their labor-goon buddies are going to pull out all the stops to re-elect Harry Reid in November. In fact, they’re already doing so. If Barbee Kinnison is still committed to uniting a movement to defeat Harry Reid — the sentiment that got her a standing ovation in February — she’ll have to get over her disappointment at Tarkanian’s defeat in the primary.

Let me explain it this way: Everybody knows about D-Day on Omaha Beach. Most people, however, don’t know the story of what happened on Utah Beach.

When the first-wave assault troops of the 4th Infantry Division hit the beach on June 6, 1944, the officers consulted their maps, trying to locate the places they were supposed to attack. It took a few minutes before they figured out the problem: They were on the wrong beach.

Because of an unanticipated cross-current in the English Channel, the first wave had been put ashore more than a mile south of their planned objective. The second wave was due to land in a few minutes, to be followed by more and more troops — and all of them were heading for the wrong beach, a mile away from where the division was supposed to be landing.

The officers were in a quandry. In all the planning for D-Day, nobody had planned for this. The success of the entire operation was at stake.

Fortunately for the troops, there was one man on that beach who knew what to do: Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Roosevelt conducted a quick reconnaissance of the area, then returned to the beach and told the battalion commanders, “We’ll start the war from right here!”

And so they did, attacking inland to outflank the positions they originally had been assigned to take by frontal assault.

Barbee Kinnison says people in the Tea Party movement “don’t want a leader.” Fine — be your own leader. And if you’re going to be a leader, you’d better be an effective leader, or you’ll never acc0mplish anything. 

Effective leaders don’t waste time worrying about what might have been. If conservatives in Nevada sit around moping and malcontented because their favorite candidate didn’t win the primary, the result will be the re-election of Harry Reid in November. Complaining to the Washington Post sure as hell isn’t going to make things any better.

“We’ll start the war from right here!”

That’s still good advice.

SHARRON ANGLE FOR U.S. SENATE

‘Patriot Majority PAC’ Is Neither Patriotic Nor Are They a Majority: Discuss

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A “union-backed slush fund,” as Kyle Drennen called them in March. I’d never heard of them before, but when their ad bashing Republican Nevada Senate nominee Sharron Angle showed up in rotation on my blog, I decided to find out.

Among other things, Patriot Majority PAC claims to “support our troops” and “patriotic policies,” but who do they really support? Democrats.

Patriot Majority PAC “is in fact the creation of two men — Craig Varoga and George Rakis, Democratic Party strategists who have set up a number of so-called 527 groups,”  Joseph Abrams of Fox News reported:

Calls and e-mails to the Maryland-based consultant firm Independent Strategies, run by Varoga and Rakis, were not returned.
Outside of that firm, the center of their activity appears to be a single office in Southeast D.C. — 300 M Street, Suite 1102 — which plays host to a sprawling political shell game they have established.
Public records show at least seven political shops listed in Suite 1102, most of which are essentially clones of one another, but all of which have offered money — from measly thousands to game-changing millions — in state-level elections across the country:

  • The American Public Policy Committee
  • Patriot Majority
  • Citizens for Progress
  • Oklahoma Freedom Fund
  • Mid Atlantic Leadership Fund
  • Public Security Now
  • Pioneer Majority
  • Bluegrass Freedom Fund

Read the rest of that important report and do not be deceived by these bogus Democrat scam operations that are trying to cash in on words like “Patriot” and “Freedom” and “Security.”

While you’re at go help Sharron Angle fight back against these smears and Dump Harry Reid.

Primary Lessons: Don’t Bet Your Hopes

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Carle Hulse of New York Times conveys the politics of wishful thinking from inside the Democratic bubble:

On a primary election night when the heralded anti-incumbency sentiment was expected to again demonstrate its strength, Senator Blanche Lincoln proved there were clear limits to its power.
Virtually written off as a likely victim of voter outrage at veteran politicians, Mrs. Lincoln, a two-term Arkansas Democrat, showed that an experienced office-holder with money, message and determination still had a chance to prevail even in a toxic environment.

Yeah. You bank on that in November, Democrats. There is no anti-incumbent wave, no outrage toward Washington, no backlash against Obama and the fact that Blanche Lincoln defeated a union-backed challenger in a Democratic primary in Arkansas obviously proves that.

On the other hand, Republicans need to be aware that their party still hasn’t recovered from Bush-era “brand damage.” That was my personal take-away from the PA-12 special election last month: Tim Burns was a good candidate with a good message, but simply couldn’t win in a majority-Democrat district with an “R” beside his name.

This problem is not ideological, by the way. It’s not that GOP candidates or policies are “too conservative,” it’s that the failures of Bush-era Republicanism left the party with an image of cluelessness and corruption. Democrat candidates can fake being conservative a lot easier than Republican candidates can escape the toxicity of that “R.”

Notice, for example, that in the May 18 Arkansas primaries, the turnout on the Democratic side was more than 300,000 while the highly-contested GOP primary — with eight candidates — drew less than half that. In fact, Lincoln’s vote in Tuesday’s Democratic runoff (about 135,000) was nearly twice what John Boozman got (about 75,000) in the Republican primary.

If Republican primary turnout is so low in Arkansas — not exactly a bastion of liberalism — it’s obvious the GOP still has a lot of work to do in order to rid itself of the toxic taint of Bushism. 

Most Republicans don’t really understand what causes this problem, which so badly hurt Tim Burns in Pennsylvania last month. You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand. And so if anyone thinks the GOP will just waltz to a majority in November, they’re as naive as Democrats who think there is no chance Blanche Lincoln will fall victim to a backlash.

UPDATE: If you want to understand what “brand damage” is really all about, contemplate why former GOP state chairwoman Sue Lowden lost in Nevada:

“I’m not going to second-guess it right now. That needs a week or two to sit back and reflect what we could have perhaps done to better prepare for all the money that was used in the primary against me,” Lowden said. . . .
She also gave her critics ammunition, most notably a series of interviews in which she suggested that people should barter for their health care.

Way to fight that “clueless Republican” stereotype, Sue! Lowden had all the advantages going in, fumbled away the nomination because she couldn’t talk coherently about the issues, and then blames “all the money that was used . . . against me.”

Don’t let the door hit ya, etc.

UPDATE II: Video via the Las Vegas Sun:

Angle is obviously not a slick talker and she’s got hard work to do if she’s going to beat Reid in November. The fact that Angle defeated the GOP establishment’s hand-picked choice, Lowden, by 14 points is further evidence of Republican “brand damage” vulnerability.

PRIMARY ELECTION NIGHT HQ UPDATE: Lincoln Defeats Halter in Arkansas Senate Democratic Runoff UPDATE: Nikki Haley Tops SC GOP Primary With 49%; Runoff vs. Barrett UPDATE: Angle Wins NV-Sen GOP UPDATE: Whitman, Fiorina Win California GOP Gov., Sen. Primaries UPDATE: Graves Wins GA-9 Runoff

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12:56 a.m. ET Wednesday: Congratulations are in order for Nevada Tea Party people:

Republicans nominated former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle as their candidate to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Angle, the favorite of tea party activists, was endorsed by the Tea Party Express. She dispatched her two main rivals, and the Associated Press declared her the winner in the race with 39% of the vote and 59% of precincts reporting.
She was not the choice of the Republican establishment, who believed that former state GOP Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden stood a better chance of defeating Reid this November. Lowden was running a distant second with 28% of the vote.

Tough luck, GOP establishment. Also, in case you didn’t notice: Republican women went 4-for-4 in major primaries Tuesday.

12:40 a.m. ET Wednesday: The progressive netroots community raving moonbats blew $3.6 million trying to beat Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary. Dan Riehl has the DailyKos screen-cap.

12:27 a.m. ET: Maybe Dave Weigel thought no one would notice:

Matthew Berry, an openly gay FCC lawyer who’d attracted some national attention, went down to a narrow defeat at the hands of Iraq War veteran Patrick Murray . . .

Meanwhile, in the Nevada Republican Senate primary, Tea Party-backed candidate Sharron Angle defeats GOP establishment-backed Sue Lowden.

12:10 a.m. ET: OK, the double California bummers are compensated by an anonymous White House reaction to the defeat of union-backed Bill Halter in Arkansas:

“Organized labor just flushed
$10 million down the toilet”

Just imagine what Rahm Emanuel had to say about that. And listening to MSNBC talking heads singing the blues about the Arkansas results is pretty sweet, too.

Midnight ET: Billionaire beats billionaire in Republican primary in California:

After two former Silicon Valley executives pulled nearly $100 million out of their own pockets to carpet-bomb the state with TV ads, the venomous GOP battle between Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner was all over 15 minutes after the polls closed.
Results from mail-in ballots across the state showed Whitman, a billionaire who once ran eBay, beating state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner by 65 percent to 26 percent.

Also, Carly Fiorina has bought the GOP Senate nomination in California. Way to fight back against that “party of the rich” stereotype, y’all.

Meanwhile, we hear that birther czarina Orly Taitz is leading the GOP primary for California secretary of state.

Yeah. Big thumbs-up. Heck of a job, California.

11:26 p.m. p.m. ET: Blanche Lincoln survives! Moonbat hearts are crushed. I just watched Ed Schultz on MSNBC, spinning bizarre election-fraud conspiracy theories for Bill Halter’s defeat. Life is good!

11:15 p.m. ET (Smitty): Lincoln at 52% over Halter’s 48% with 89% of precincts in.

11:04 p.m. ET (Smitty): VA Update: It’s Fimian in VA-11 against Connolly, and Patrick Murray against Congresstool Extraordinaire Jim Moran. Northern Virginia owes the rest of the country an example of getting behind the GOP candidate and offering heavy support, as we try to eliminate the blue death creeping south across the Potomac.

10:51 p.m. ET: Nikki Haley’s percentage in the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary vote is 48.9% with 97% of precincts reporting, so there will be a June 22 runoff against Gresham Barrett. In the Democratic primary, Vincent Sheheen cruised to the nomination with 59%.

10:35 p.m. ET: With 60% of precincts reporting in the Arkansas Democratic runoff, Bill Halter has now edged ahead 51-49% over Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

10:20 p.m. ET: In addition to Haley’s shockingly strong performance, here’s another South Carolina shocker:

U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R., S.C.) is poised to become the latest incumbent to be ousted in a primary contest. He trails a distant second in the Republican primary in South Carolina’s fourth district.

9:57 p.m. ET: Now with 89% of precincts reporting in the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary, Nikki Haley is still just shy of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff. She’s the biggest winner tonight, while the big losers are Jake Knotts, Larry Marchant and — most especially — Will Folks.

9:48 p.m. ET: Well, kiss my grits!

South Carolina state Rep. Nikki Haley (R) edged close to 50 percent in the Palmetto State governor’s primary race, an indication that personal attacks aimed at her in the final week of the campaign had backfired.
With 74 percent of votes counted, Haley stood at 49 percent while Rep. Gresham Barrett took second with 21 percent.

9:35 p.m. ET: Cassy Fiano: “Nikki Haley is kicking ass in South Carolina.” Clyde Middleton is tracking the Arkansas runoff results at Liberty Pundits.

9:30 p.m. ET: In Arkansas, with 4% of precincts reporting, incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln leads challenger Bill Halter 53%-47% in Democratic primary runoff.

9:25 p.m. ET: Republican Tom Graves wins the special election runoff in Georgia’s 9th District. He will enter Congress immediately.

9:10 p.m. ET: Michael Barone on Fox just said that the GOP turnout in VA-8 (to challenge Democrat Jim Moran) is more than double previous years. In South Carolina, with 35% of precincts reporting in the GOP gubernatorial primary, it’s Nikki Haley 46%, Gresham Barrett 26%.

8:35 p.m. ET: Now, with about 14% of precincts reporting, Nikki Haley leads Gresham Barrett 39%-29%, while Vincent Sheheen looks like he’ll avoid a runoff on the Democratic side.

8:26 p.m. ET: In very preliminary South Carolina returns, Nikki Haley has 42% of the vote.

7:35 p.m. ET: From USA Today:

Polls have closed in South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, where state election officials report low to moderate turnout today. The results of some of the most compelling races will come later tonight, after voting ends in Arkansas, Nevada and California.

Readers should feel free to contribute by linking/reporting the latest results in the comments.

7:50 p.m. ET: South Carolina results at WHNS-TV, the Fox affiliate in Greenville, S.C.

8:05 p.m. ET: As all decent patriotic Americans must despise Rep. Jim Moran, please follow the Virginia 8th District GOP primary results at Red NoVA8.

UPDATE 8:08 p.m. ET: Scott Rigell has been called the winner in Virginia’s 2nd District Republican primary.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

PREVIOUSLY (6:30 p.m. ET):
Republicans for Blanche Lincoln *
* – Offer expires June 9, 2010

Smitty will be online later to handle the major task of providing coverage of tonight’s primary elections in several states, while I toil on a non-blogatory project. When the indispensible (and inimitable) sidekick called to check in this afternoon, I mentioned the runoff in the Arkansas Democratic senatorial primary.

“So we hope that Blanche Lincoln will be reading her political obituary?” Smitty inquired.

“No, no, no, Admiral Smith!” I replied, and explained that it is the duty of all good Americans to hope that Senator Lincoln breaks the vicious little hearts of Bill Halter’s moonbat supporters, so that she’ll be a wounded prey come November. Writing in the Manchester (U.K.) Guardian — which explains the Brit-style spelling — Jim Antle summarizes Blanche’s predicament:

Senator Blanche Lincoln has irritated organised labour and other liberal activists by voting against them on card check legislation for union organising, a public option for healthcare, and various free trade agreements, among other deviations from party orthodoxy. So the unions and the progressive netroots are fuelling lieutenant governor Bill Halter’s primary challenger.

Quite so and, as with the May 18 Pennsylvania primary — where the weakened incumbent Arlen Specter faced the young challenger Joe Sestak — the upstart progressive insurgent represents the stronger political choice for Democrats in November. Just as Republicans fare better when the GOP nominee enjoys strong support from the conservative grassroots, Democrats are more likely to win if they nominate someone who inspires enthusiasm by their (misinformed, demented and/or evil) core constituencies.

This may seem counterintuitive to advocates of moderation and centrism, but in any reasonably competitive election, a nominee who doesn’t have the loyalty of his own party will seldom defeat a hard-core partisan of the opposite party. This is why John McCain was such a weak candidate against Barack Obama two years ago.

Human Events has a roundup of pertinent info on the Arkansas runoff, including this poll result:

Bill Halter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49%
Sen. Blanche Lincoln . . . . . 45%
Research 2000, survey of 600 Democratic voters, June 2-4. (Margin of error +/- 4 percentage points.)

So the wackos, zanies, union goons and other menaces to society who constitute the core of the Democratic Party are this close to bestowing their stooge Bill Halter with the nomination. She’s probably doomed beyond all hope of redemption, but if somehow Blanche Dubois Lincoln can pull off a miraculous victory tonight, the moonbats will be so demoralized they’ll contemplate suicide.

Which is why every patriotic soul must permit himself to hope that the worthless old hag wins.

In other key races tonight:

  • California Senate — Carly Fiorina  buys the GOP nomination, which means the only hope for Republican victory in November is that Sen. Barbara Boxer gets caught on video in a Helen Thomas-style gaffe, disparaging gays and/or Mexicans. Barring an eruption of sudden-onset Tourette’s Syndrome — the Senator denouncing her hairdresser Ramon as a “g–d– beaner faggot” in an accidental CNN live-mike situation — we can expect Kollyfornia to keep electing Democrats and continue slouching toward Zimbabwe.
  • California Governor — Meg Whitman buys the GOP nomination, but stands a reasonable chance against Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown in November. Frankly, Republicans could nominate Martin Bormann and stand a 50-50 shot against Jerry Brown, a fossilized remnant of a bygone political era for whom no intelligent person could be nostalgic. Notice I said “no intelligent person.” But this is, after all, Kollyfornia . . .
  • Nevada Senate — Sharron Angle will follow in Rand Paul’s footsteps to become the second Tea Party-backed candidate to win a GOP Senate primary. Democrats and some Republicans are trying to depict Angle as a wacko extremist who will lose in November. No, she’s a GOP Bill Halter, and is likely to win in November, even if she does start ranting about “beaner faggots.”
  • South Carolina Governor — Nikki Haley places first in the GOP gubernatorial primary, although it’s doubtful she’ll avoid a runoff. However, let’s hope Haley does win it outright tonight, delivering a well-deserved kick in the gonads to Will Folks, Larry Marchant and Jake Knotts.