#ncsen: Drive-by media already writing #NCGA, @NCGOP political obit
We got two more polls this weekend showing Thom Tillis down to Kay Hagan. NBC News has the race at Hagan 44, Tillis 40. CBS News / YouGov’s online survey has the race at Hagan 46, Tillis 45.
Several drive-by sources are already chalking up Tillis’s troubles to the “unpopular” Republican majority in the North Carolina General Assembly. Never mind that the average voter can’t name their state representative or state senator.
The N&O’s RobRielleWho is the latest drive-by boob to pile on:
[…] The Republicans have tried to nationalize the race to make it a referendum on the president and the Affordable Care Act, which they call Obamacare. The Democrats have tried to localize it and make it about the legislature and education funding.
So far, the Democrats seem to be winning the argument.
Both Obama and the legislature are unpopular, according to the polls. But this is the fourth election that Republicans have run against Obama and the third election they have run against the president’s health care plan, and both may have lost some of their potency as campaign issues.
Conversely, this is the first statewide election where Democrats will have a chance to express their displeasure at what they view as an overreach by the Republican legislature. This may be the Democratic tea party moment.
[…]
The Tillis campaign AND the NCGOP have each made the same mistake: Allowing the BluePrint / Drive-By / Moral Monday / NCDP coalition to frame the debate. We have to give kudos to state Senator Chad Barefoot — A/K/A the $800,000 man — for actually airing commercials defending the record of the GOP majority on Jones Street. There needs to be a LOT more before election day.
Polls have shown people hating Congress AND the General Assembly since the dawn of time. Stupidity, corruption and overreach know no partisan bounds. Suggesting that this is a new phenomenon now that the GOP is in charge is patently dishonest.
Tillis and the NCGOP have failed to make it clear to voters JUST EXACTLY WHAT the difference is between them and Kay Hagan. Attendance at committee hearings is not going to do it.
National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru has a very thoughtful piece comparing THIS year’s GOP campaign strategy with that of 1998. His point? In 1998, they ran on the message that THEY were NOT Bill Clinton. No other real agenda was communicated. Republicans were expected to pick up 25 House seats that year. Instead, they lost FIVE.
I heard a caller from California on Rush’s show the other day. He said he asked a Republican US House member from California about why the GOP is not putting forth something akin to the 1994 Contract With America. The congressman’s response? “Oh, we were in the minority then. We’re in charge now.”
If things don’t work out all that well for Republicans this year, you can’t honestly pin it on GOP “overreach.” It can honestly be blamed on that good ol’ American tradition of shooting one’s self in the foot.
I do think that the republicans should be worried even if the media is biased to the left, and I agree that they are. The republicans are not offering anything in place of the democrats and the NCGA negatives are getting great traction with voters. The question Tillis should be asking, without his own partisan blinders on is this, “Why should anyone vote FOR me?” I’m not Obama, I don’t vote with him 95% of the time, and I don’t support Obamacare, are not those reasons. Those are reasons not to vote for Hagan but not FOR Tillis. In NFL parlance, he’s playing not to lose, and that usually ensures a loss.
Tillis would not fight implementation of it in NC and has called Obamacare a great idea. He does not have anything to offer. He’s as flea bitten a hound as his opponent and his Plott is failing. Tillis has 5 opponents, Hagan has 1. Wonder why people don’t like Tillis so much? He’s very unpopular and his party calls their base racists even funds attack campaigns against their own base. I guess that’s a winning strategy. Get outnumbered by your opponents 5-1 and attack your base. I guess that could work.
Another ”no message” campaign year was the ”feel good campaign” of 1986 when we lost control of the Senate, including losing a seat here in North Carolina. Idiot consultants are to blame for these no message disasters. Rove and the NRSC should be boiled in oil for what they are doing to the party this year.
What local idiot consultant Shumaker has done with the Senate race in NC is hand Hagan control of the election agenda because Tillis has refused to put forth one himself. Hagan has done what was highly predictable and played to false Blueprint gambit. It was also highly predictable that there would be high Democrat spending on that with much lower resources for GOP pushback. Rob ”Rielle Who?” has it backward. Tillis’ blunder of a campaign will make our GOP legislature collateral damage. Tillis and his moronic incompetent campaign is the biggest disaster the NCGOP has seen in quite some time and is likely to hurt the whole ticket.
Or maybe North Carolina is just simply moving more and more to the left. Obviously the voters are leaning to the “moderate” Hagan.
I agree. I will add that I think we are seeing both the middle-right voters moving left and the opposite (middle-left voters) moving right. It is a Centrists game this year and Hagan fits the bill.
Making NC a darker shade of purple………..
A socialist Obamacrat is a far cry from a ”centrist”. One cannot vote 96% of the time with Obama and be anything other than a far left Democrat. A centrist would never have voted for such extreme left legislation as Obamacare or amnesty for illegal aliens.
National Journal is part of the same media group whose flagship is the far left ”The Atlantic”, and while they try to put more of a facade of objectivity on the NJ, it is nothing but a mask. Most serious political players take their ratings as either a joke or incompetent, but politicians who find them useful in their deception use them in ads. They were used to attack Walter Jones in the primary and are now used to prop up Kay Hagan. In both cases, they were far off the mark.
As to voters this election, they are struggling. Tillis is trying to run an issueless campaign, so they have no clear cut distinctions between the candidates on which to make decisions. This election says precisely nothing about the NC electorate except that they get frustrated when candidates run on fluff, which both of them are doing.
It was Reagan who gave illegal aliens amnesty. Are you calling Ronald Reagan a Socialist?
Many of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act, or at least what was initially proposed, came from the GOP national leaders and also GOP Governor Romney. Are you calling them Socialists?
The 1986 amnesty was an initiative from Congress, not the Reagan administration, and Reagan later told close associates that signing it was the greatest mistake of his presidency. That was part of one of these ”comprehensive” immigration deals and showed us how they work. The amnesty part gets done, but, funny thing, the border security part never does. Also, having done amnesty, that encourages even more illegals to flood in. I also find it interesting that the most outspoken opponent of the 1986 amnesty, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) in his very next election became the only Republican ever to win a majority of the Hispanic vote in a general election in Texas.
Romneycare was one reason many conservative voters (4 million by analysis of one of the editors of Almanac of American Politics) stayed home in the 2012 election. There was simply not that much difference between Romney’s version of fascist medicine and Obama’s. And looking at basic economic principles, both actually reflect the classic economic principles of fascism rather than socialism. But then fascism is just national socialism.
Thanks for the lengthy qualifiers. In conclusion, these two policies were centrist. BOTH parties (not the extreme sides Left or Right) necessarily subscribed to them but the Center did.
Your history is a little warped. Obamacare passed on a party line vote. All of the radical left Democrats voted for it. None of the moderate wing of the GOP did. With the 1986 amnesty bill, too many people fell for the blandishments of its proponents, but now we know better. We know that such schemes mean amnesty but no border security, and lots more illegals pouring in.
Raphael I think many of these people posting here are liberal infiltrators for propaganda (demoralization in their opinion reasons). It won’t work BECAUSE we reject their bullshit like “Hagan is a Centrist” or “North Carolina isn’t a conservative state anymore”.
No the reason that Tillis is losing is that he’s run a piss poor campaign, it’s that simple.
Pay them no attention: I think the prudent course of action from these two (and other libs) is: “Don’t feed the Trolls!”.
“The Democrats have tried to localize it and make it about the legislature and education funding.”
I find it kinda interesting that:
1) Everyone knew well before Tillis won the GOP nomination that it was coming, and it was really the only strategy Hagan had in her quiver… and that,
2) Tillis was the only candidate in the GOP primary field that such a strategy could be easily and effectively run against.
If you were “trying” to give Hagan a better shot…. *sigh*
If the GOP had been able to muster up a better, more viable candidate and campaign, this race could have been a solid blowout. It honestly should have been…
Ideology aside, I’ve noticed for a long time now that the NC GOP seems to be flat-footed and tone deaf way too often. I’m not convinced they’re all that capable at this “politics” thing. 🙂
The sad part is that the establishment Republicans funded other candidates opposing Tillis so he would win the Republican nomination. It worked and this is what we are stuck with. Sleaze is sleaze no matter how you dress it up.
Vote in every election but don’t reelect anyone sounds good on paper but too many people vote in elections based on name recognition only.
Some of the more observant media are starting to cut to the chase of the GOP’s Tillis problem, like this article in the Washington Times:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/5/thom-tillis-struggles-for-conservative-support-in-/
Kay Hagan has been North Carolina’s Senator for almost 6 years. If she is reelected then it is because the voters decided that she was better for North Carolina than Thom Tillis, plain and simple. All the people know about Tillis’ legislature is that the rich got a tax break and that NC schoolchildren don’t have textbooks because of Tillis budget cuts. Then there is the Moral Monday brigrade which has carried the ills of the legislature across the state. If Hagan is reelected I think it does mean NC is moving more to the left. I sure don’t hear much complaint about her record in the Senate. She supported Obama but then again she is a Democrat and that is what her party requires. It is the Republicans who are fractured so many ways that it is relatively easy for them to lose. I shudder to think how many Republicans will be left in NC once non-partisan redistricting comes about. School children may have to go to the museum to see a North Carolina Republican. The Republicans only have themselves too blame.
In the GOP obituary be sure to mention that the amnesty issue is over and done with and the GOP lost it big time. The issue of gay marriage is over and done with as well. The people of NC seem to be happy with Obamacare and big government. What exactly can raise the GOP from the dead? Maybe hire Rev. Barber and Moral Monday to plead the GOP cause?