{"id":12468,"date":"2013-07-23T09:34:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T16:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=12468"},"modified":"2013-07-23T09:34:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T16:34:36","slug":"alf-weighs-in-on-the-kentucky-senate-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2013\/07\/23\/alf-weighs-in-on-the-kentucky-senate-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Alf weighs in on the Kentucky Senate race"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, one note. \u00c2\u00a0Republican Primary Challenges are… maybe over-rated? \u00c2\u00a0Maybe not?<\/a>
\nIn practice, the task doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem so hard. Only six House Republicans lost their re-election primaries last year. Half of them fell to fellow incumbents in redrawn districts that forced two colleagues to oppose each other. The other three lost to challengers with strong tea party support.
\n<\/em>Still, that’s six in districts that don’t have enough Democrats to matter. \u00c2\u00a0Still, the exceptions are interesting here:
\nRep. Jean Schmidt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loss was instructive. A conservative by almost any measure, the three-term Ohioan was attacked nonetheless for voting to raise the federal debt ceiling and for giving President Barack Obama a peck on the cheek as he entered the House for his 2012 State of the Union address.
\n<\/em>If that sounds ridiculous, consider: \u00c2\u00a0New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has attracted a ton of Democratic support with similar affectionate gestures. \u00c2\u00a0Jean Schmidt should try another time around, and this time make sure to be seen flashing Obama the middle finger — that’s sure to win her the nomniation.<\/p>\n

So, we plunge into the matter of the Senate Primaries of the moment. \u00c2\u00a0Dateline Kentucky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After rumors surfaced of Bevin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plans to run, McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton said in the statement Friday that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Matthew Griswold Bevin is not a Kentucky conservative, he is merely an East Coast con man.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

And so, yes, Mitch McConnell is taking Matthew GRISWOLD Bevin (always a sign of things when you throw out the middle name) seriously.<\/p>\n

What say Rand Paul?
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not giving him encouragement or discouragement, I mean, its a free country and anyone who wants to run can,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Paul, who said he believes McConnell will win reelection.
\n<\/em>And from the ranks and files:
\nSome tea party activists have criticized Bevin because he accepted taxpayer money to help rebuild a bell manufacturing business he owns in Connecticut after it was destroyed by fire. The company had no insurance.
\n<\/em>And from random Internet Commenter with an Alf Avatar<\/p>\n

\"alfavatar\"<\/a><\/a>Gary Wayne Mize\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00b7\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Top Commenter \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>I have no idea who this guy is. I have never heard of this guy. BUT, I wish him the best. He has got to be better than Naiz Mitch. Mitch for the past several years has had one goal. That is to help Obama destroy American. Between the two of them, along with two or three others, they have almost succeeded.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I need you to understand: \u00c2\u00a0that is not Alf making the comment. \u00c2\u00a0It is someone who has hi-jacked Alf’s image, and is using it in spouting his political opinions.
\nActually what I wonder is… who are these two or three others, besides Obama and McConnell, who have almost destroyed America… but not quite? \u00c2\u00a0And “two or three others” suggests… there’s two and another one in a gray area between “destroying” and “not destroying” America, designation to be determined by a coin flip.<\/p>\n

And… Dateline Wyoming<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0Something worth mentioning…<\/p>\n

Of course, the more immediate conversation that Cheney is starting has to do with her choice of Senate seats, and the way Wyoming and its teensy population is incredibly over-represented in the Senate. In fact, when it comes to the way representation in the Senate in terms of population has gotten hellaciously out of whack, Wyoming is basically the test case. A March 2013 article in The New York Times puts the state of Wyoming alongside the city of Fresno, Calif., and,\u00c2\u00a0as is their wont, a “portrait emerges”<\/a>:
\nFresno, Calif., is a city of a half-million people with a long list of problems, including 14 percent unemployment, the aftermath of a foreclosure crisis, homeless encampments that dot the sun-blasted landscape and worries about the safety of the surrounding county\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s drinking water.A thousand miles away, a roughly comparable number of people inhabit the entire state of Wyoming. Like Fresno and its environs, Wyoming is rural, with an economy largely based on agriculture. It is also in much better shape than Fresno, with an unemployment rate around 5 percent.<\/em>
\nEven so, Wyoming receives far more assistance from the federal government than Fresno does. The half-million residents of Wyoming also have much more sway over federal policy than the half-million residents of Fresno.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why this relevant: \u00c2\u00a0Basically your anti-urban bias that will come from your Wyoming politician and voting electorate, and further… anti-federal government bromides.
\n\u00c2\u00a0Mike Enzi has a thirty point lead right now<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, one note. \u00c2\u00a0Republican Primary Challenges are… maybe over-rated? \u00c2\u00a0Maybe not? In practice, the task doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem so hard. Only six House Republicans lost their re-election primaries last year. Half of them fell to fellow incumbents in redrawn districts that forced two colleagues to oppose each other. The other three lost to challengers with strong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12468"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12491,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions\/12491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}