Apparently having taken his cue from our post-primary posting, political statmaster Michael Barone analyzes the turnout for the 2006 Ohio primary, compares it historically, and concludes that while Blackwell is not necessarily a sure thing, the Ds should be doing better for a party that hasn't held statewide power in this swing state for 16 years and has the benefit of major scandals among the Rs and a weak statewide economy.
Barone's reason is SWNID's: the Rs brought out more voters than the Ds.
We believe that when Blackwell's remarkable political ability begins to take hold in campaigning and advertising, all will be over quickly on the evening of November 7, 2006. We don't predict a landslide, but we expect to go to bed on time on election night.
Thank you, Michael Barone, for following our advice. We dub you Knight of the SWNID Fellowship. You too are Seldom Wrong.
3 comments:
The same Republicans (mostly social conservatives) will be voting for George Allen come May of '08. Methinks I will go to bed early that night.
Blackwell will win by a coalition of social conservatives and others. That's the only way anyone can win. Can Allen fashion such a coalition on the national stage? We haven't seen that yet, but we'll be happy to be convinced.
First, no political tent is big enough for the ever-changing positions of John F. Kerry.
And well, um, Rudy is already a Republican. He's a nationally known Republican, a member of the GOP in good standing for his entire adult life. He campaigned for Dubya in 2000 and 2004. He's only about 25% as "liberal" as you make him out to be on the issues that you name, and not at all liberal on the issues that you don't name. Factor his having to campaign in NYC, and he's even less than that.
It's not expanding the coalition to consider him as a presidential candidate. It's acknowledging political reality. The "conservatives" have no bench. The alternative to Rudy is Hillary. Yikes!
It's not just about a candidate's views. It's about the people with whom he's in coalition. No President does just what he wants. He takes his party with him.
Sometimes I believe that people want to keep their political party pure because they are less than fully confident in the truth and persuasiveness of their core ideas. Let someone run as a Republican who isn't 100% pro-life, and the whole party will quickly become a bunch of Planned Parenthood volunteers.
You continue this one-note samba about the purity of the party's convictions, but what about history? Lots of the significant moves on controversial issus have been made by presidents who were acting against type (Lincoln in freeing the slaves, Johnson in passing the voting rights act, Nixon in opening China, even Clinton in balancing the federal budget). What happens when a pro-life party in a pro-choice country nominates a mildly pro-choice presidential candidate. Can the impasse be broken?
Or for that matter, how much more legal can a pro-choice Republican make abortion than it is already?
You'll be interested to know that in Great Britain abortion is considerably more restricted than it is here, with second trimester abortions virtually illegal, and third trimester abortions even more so. Neither major political party takes a stand on the issue; MPs are free to vote their consciences. And they, though more secular as a society, are more pro-life by law than we.
So much for political purity.
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