The lesson from Alabama?
Stay on offense.
Roy Moore’s team spent ALL of their time having to deny their guy was a perv. (Never mind that there was no real evidence. Never mind that the same media and the same crew beating Moore about the head and shoulders for the last few months cheered as legendary pervs Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy got elected and reelected.)
Republicans will throw their scandal-tainted folks overboard in a New York minute. Democrats will dismiss said scandalous allegations against their people and call you a narrow-minded, Bible-thumping hypocrite and bigot for daring to bring it up.
In business, if you’re spending all your time responding to attacks and criticism from your competition –you’re going to lose badly. The same goes for elections.
Dan Forest better study this recently-completed Alabama race carefully. He’s already proclaimed he’s not going negative for the 2020 governor’s race. He’s got NCGOPe jackals (backing Pat McCrory or Thom Tillis) to contend with in the primary. If he makes it through that, he’s got the Roy Moore treatment waiting for him in the general.
The “peace-and-love” crowd ain’t so nice when it comes to elections. They bring several guns and lots of extra ammo to a knife fight.
The libs have already offered a taste to Forest of what’s to come. They’ve put out nasty articles painting him as a religious fanatic. They’ve also tried to tie him to “the child abuse church.”
The key to victory in any kind of campaign is to always keep the enemy off-balance and back-pedaling. Push your message, sell yourself and your program, and also explain why you are a much better choice than the other guy or gal.
Lt. Dan needs to get out there NOW and define himself to the voters. (There are way too many vicious predators out there who will be glad to
do that FOR HIM — and not in a way he will appreciate.) He also needs to make the case of why the other guys would be so bad.
The road is being paved right now for the Forest campaign to spend substantial amounts of time and energy telling people: “Hey, our guy is not a narrow-minded Bible-thumping bigot. No, he does not favor beating homosexuality out of people.”
Conservative-minded folks with deep pockets need to rethink their game plans too. Traditional,drive-by media is a lost cause and a waste of time. Dumping money on Dallas and his grandpa or some Art Pope group is too.
If you’re serious about standing up against the statist juggernaut, support our state’s burgeoning conservative alternative media. Patronize the web sites and radio stations. Share the information you learn there with your family and friends. Advertise with them or simply donate cash that you would normally be wasting on Dallas or John Hood.
Big media and statists in DC, NY,and LA basically picked Alabama’s new senator. The establishment and the radical left have an impressive infrastructure in place for disseminating lies and setting the tone.
Will we continue to let them get away with it?
And for God’s sake, read Kurt Schlichter and Scott Adams.
Moore did not even want the seat. He practically put himself in house arrest not coming out to meet the people of AL. He even decided to go to a football game in Pennsylvania just before the election when the polls showed how close the race was. He did not want the seat.
It SURE does not help that after he admitted to dating teenagers when he was in his thirties that he turned around and called them all liars. That just pointed to the high probability that his accusers were telling the truth.
What has recently been exposed in “The Hill”, a liberal leaning DC newspaper about politics, raises the question of who was lying on the claims against Moore. It seems a woman came forward with some pretty solid evidence that liberal lawyer Lisa Bloom had offered her $700,000 to make sexual harassment claims against President Trump, which she was then going to shop to the media.
Lisa Bloom is the daughter of controversial liberal lawyer Gloria Allred who brought forward one of the two most damaging accusers against Roy Moore. Allred’s accuser was the one who later had to admit on national TV that her yearbook “evidence” was forged.
The reality is that there are a lot of people out there who would sing any song you want for $700,000.
GREAT ADVICE TDH. Give $$$ directly to “Lt. Dan’s” campaign. NOT to NCGOP (Woodhouse) and certainly NOT to anything John Hood is connected to (Pope / JLF).
Brant, you are spot on that “not going negative” is a loser. There are races you can actually do that, but when you are running against an incumbent, it is essential to show voters why you are a better choice than the incumbent, and that means contrasting your issue positions with the incumbent. If Forest is thinking that he needs to change his thinking. McCrory lost his first race for governor because he refused to go negative, even to the point of not even answering the negative things thrown at him. A primary against Tillis or McCrory would also require at least some comparison ads, if not some that are outright negative.
I don’t think Forest will have the problem of being out front and visible. He has always excelled at personal campaigning.
The other lesson from Alabama is how absolutely fickle establishment Republicans can be when the nominee is a conservative. Don’t turn your back on them or they might plant a knife in it.
That last lesson bears repeating. Mitchell and his NSRC flunky, our very own Thom Tillis, royally screwed up in Alabama by failing to stay out of Alabama. To protect their incumbent buddy, first they launched one attack ad after another at a very good candidate in Mo Brooks, and now this. I’ve gotten solicitations for both, the NSRC and for Tillis himself, and couldn’t get them out of my hand and into the trash fast enough. Isn’t it interesting that Tillis, who is technically a member of the NCGOP ExComm, gets a pass from NCGOP for violating the rule against involvement in a Republican primary. Reading Article VII, Section G, we see that it applies to Republican primaries outside of NC as well.
You have hit the nail on the head. It is imperative to keep McConnell and his meddling busybodies OUT of OUR primaries. It is up to the GOP voters in a state who they want representing them, NOT a political boss from out of state. We need a state chairman with the gonads to stand up to DC busybodies and tell them to stay out of our state primaries, and if they get in anyway to publicly denounce them for out of state interference.
Mo Brooks, who would have been the strongest general election candidate was on track to make the runoff instead of Strange until McConnell launched an $8 million barrage of negative ads against him; Strange’s voters would have likely gone to Brooks in a runoff with Moore, making Brooks the nominee. McConnell wasted millions of dollars of GOP contributors money, which should have been saved to fight Democrats, meddling in the Alabama GOP primary instead.
JBP: Where did you learn your well honed craft of disinformation? Are you an old PSYOPer troll … ?
I am thinking he may be from the NC Policy Watch crew. They hire trolls to go out and spread fake information.
Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of Virginia, and currently president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, warns of some of the national lessons from Alabama:
“Liberal Doug Jones (D-AL) narrowly won the special election in Alabama yesterday and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has now helped elect yet another Democrat to the U.S. Senate.
While President Trump and others tried to save the seat for Republicans, Mitch McConnell was determined to defeat Judge Roy Moore (R-AL) at all costs.
From pushing the Governor of Alabama to appoint an unpopular candidate in Luther Strange (R-AL) to spending millions against our endorsed primary candidate, Freedom Caucus Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL), to urging voters to oppose the Republican nominee, Mitch McConnell did everything possible to lose this seat.
Sadly, it’s not the first time he has done this.
Conservatives remember how he abandoned Darryl Glenn (R-CO) last year. We remember how he refused to campaign against Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) in 2010. And we will never forget how he urged Senate Republicans to drop Donald Trump “like a hot rock” against Hillary Clinton.
All Mitch McConnell cares about is electing pro-establishment Republicans who will continue business as usual. It’s why he vowed to “crush” conservatives “everywhere”.
Now McConnell has helped cut the Republican majority down to just 51 seats and put the majority at risk next year. But he doesn’t care. As long as he remains the Republican leader, he will be happy.
It’s time for Senate Republicans to elect a new leader.
Mitch McConnell has not repealed Obamacare, he has not secured our borders, and he has not balanced the budget. He’s a liberal Republican who will never stand up to the Democrats in the Senate.
Mitch McConnell fights conservatives, but refuses to fight liberals. That’s why replacing him is an essential step to draining the swamp.
Thank you for standing strong for freedom and for being willing to fight for conservative leadership in Washington”
.http://mailchi.mp/senateconservatives/mitch-mcconnell-elects-another-democrat?e=a274769e89
The lesson? Don’t run the ONLY Republican in all of Alabama who could find a way to blow it.
Luther Strange, Mo Brooks or a random Republican picked out of the phone book would have won this seat by a mile.
Only someone as controversial as Roy Moore could find a way to lose… and he did.
Bannon has said his goal is to make sure Mitch McConnell isn’t the majority leader next year. I think he is going to succeed…. but by making the GOP the minority party in the Senate.
Moore lost because we had Republicans who threw party loyalty overboard and joined Big Media’s jihad against their own nominee.
Thom TIllis and Richard Burr were among them. The party needs to decide if we are just going to sit back and tolerate that behavior or if we are going to do something about it. It was this series of attacks from his own party that kept GOP voters from the polls or led them, as some suggested, to write in another name.
The loss of this Senate seat has very far reaching implications, and we cannot take what Tillis, Burr, and others did lightly.
When it comes to campaigns, staking yourself out with a pledge not to go negative is foolish. It is like the Burr-Hamilton duel, where Burr deliberately fired his pistol straight up in the air, allowing Burr to take careful aim and kill Hamilton with his shot. The candidate pledging not to go negative is like Hamilton, with often the same result.
A huge mistake of Greg Brannon’s primary campaign against Tillis was to wait very late before doing anything at all to take on Tillis’ liberal record. That should have been done early and continuously. It was also a huge mistake in the state chairman’s race last time not to go after the incumbent’s lousy record.
Oops, that was Hamilton who fired his pistol straight up in the air.
Is that really your analysis of the Alabama election? Surely, you jest.
I guess a former Duke University political science professor such as yourself would have a different take, which would probably be closer to Big Media’s spiel.
The race was so close, that any number of things could have changed the outcome, but the most obvious is that if the GOP establishment had not piled on along with Big Media, Moore would have won. We in the GOP can thank our own establishment weanies for the loss of this seat.
Given your Duke connection, what was done to Moore smells a whole lot like the Duke Lacrosse frame up, and notorius liar Gloria Allred being involved with the attacks greatly increases that stench.
Roy Moore, Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin.
All candidates that folks on this website preferred over other, more electable GOP candidates. In each case, they blew the general election and cost the GOP a seat in the Senate.
Had the more electable Republican won the primary and gone on to win the general election, then Doug Jones, Harry Reid, Chris Coons, Joe Donnelly and Claire McCaskill would either not be in the Senate today, and the seat would not be in Democrat hands. (I know Harry Reid has since retired and is no longer in the Senate.)
It seems obvious to the Duke prof, and most of the rest of the world, that nominating bad candidates often leads to bad outcomes….
It seems to me that Alabama, Nevada, Delaware, Indiana, and Missouri are the business of those state’s residents. If I did live in Alabama for example, I would have probably voted for Mo Brooks in the primary. If Luther Strange had won the primary I would have probably voted for him over Doug Jones. I think the larger question is whether an establishment type Republican would vote for a conservative Republican in a general election. I know lots of those dudes that would usually vote for the Democrat first.
You seem to read the Democrat media for your misinformation, or maybe some outlet of Karl Rove or Mitch McConnell, but you are wrong on most of these candidates.
In the Nevada primary, many conservatives preferred Danny Tarkarian, son of a legendary coach, in the Senate primary, not Angle. McConnell’s candidate made a fool of herself in the primary with a comment about people bringing in chickens to pay for their doctors visit, leading to her being dubbed “chicken woman”. Tarkarian was the most electable candidate, not Angle and not McConnell’s candidate.
In Missouri, Todd Akin was the establishment candidate in a 3-way primary, with conservatives being split between the other two. Akin was a vocal supporter of earmarks in Congressional appropriations, which was totally unacceptable to Tea Partiers and other conservatives. Akin was a social conservative and often liberal on other things. The Democrat ran ads in the GOP primary attacking Akin to drive GOP votes to him as the weakest of the three GOP challengers.
Christine O.Donnell happened to be in the right place at the right time when her primary opponent shot himself in the foot with not only the only GOP vote in the House for a high profile ultra-liberal bill but also his spouting off in the media in support of it. That alone turned around primary polling. No conservative group engaged in that primary at all, as neither candidate seemed to be worth backing. O’Donnell had previously filed a frivolous lawsuit against a respected conservative group which is a big reason why conservative groups shunned her in the primary.
As to Alabama, the key national conservative groups were behind Congressman Mo Brooks, not Roy Moore. McConnell spent millions in attack ads on Brooks, which is why Strange made it into the runoff. Brooks was the most electable candidate in the primary, and that is who conservatives backed. At runoff time, it was Strange who had by far the most known baggage, from the corrupt way he was appointed by a corrupt governor, who resigned in disgrace shortly after the appointment, so from what was known at that point, Moore was the more electable of the two in the runoff.
Mourdock was a good candidate who had run very well statewide in previous races, but unfortunately was not well prepared by his staff on a “gotcha” question popular with the media that cycle, and was then abandoned by the establishment.
Karl Rove put up quite a string of losers in wishy-washy candidates who lost Senate races the GOP should have won, which I could go into.
John Steed, you seem to want to turn Sharon Angle and Todd Akin into the “Establishment Republican” in these primary fights. Simply not the case.
Sharon Angle was endorsed by The Tea Party, Sarah Palin and the Club For Growth. Danny Tarkanian, while conservative, had less support from these types and finished a distant third.
Todd Akin was a member of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress. McCaskill ran ads that helped him win the primary by describing him as “too conservative” for Missouri — ads that appealed to the far right.
After Akin lost, he slammed Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Karl Rove. Clearly, he was no Establishment Republican either….
In the Nevada primary, there was a good article at Red State arguing that Tarkarian was the best conservative in the race, and citing the significant conservative groups and individuals that backed him in that primary. They pointed out that Tarkarian and Angle were both conservatives but Tarkarian had much better candidate qualities. McConnell’s candidate in that race, “chicken woman” made such a fool of herself in the primary that her candidate qualities were no better than Angle’s.
Akin was a Boehner loyalist in the House, and was a vocal supporter of earmarks, something that was poison to the Tea Party and to conservatives, no matter what caucus he joined. It is why Missouri conservatives as well as national conservatives were split between the other two primary candidates who were both full spectrum conservatives while Akin was a johnny one-note on social issues. Yes, Akin slammed his establishment buds after they knifed him in the back by withdrawing their support of his candidacy.
Angle was not establishment, but Akin was. In Angle’s case, McConnell’s choice was simply as bad in candidate skills as Angle was.
You also forget Colorado that election year, where McConnell’s candidate, with the DC establishment’s approval and encouragement ran a very nasty scorched earth attack campaign against the conservative frontrunner in the primary. which did not change the outcome of the primary but wounded the conservative nominee who lost by an eyelash in the general. McConnell’s candidate, BTW, had been a lobbyist for AARP pushing Hillarycare, a incredibly bad choice to run in a year when voters were outraged over Obamacare.
McConnell would rather defeat conservatives than defeat Democrats.
One of many good qualities about Dan Forest is that he’s obviously read – and successfully applied – the Ronald Reagan playbook on how to have conservative values and convey them in a sunny, optimistic way without alienating key voters. The GOP has done an amazing job of rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating candidates who are either (a) not conservative at all or (b) nucking futs. Thankfully, Dan Forest is neither. Conservative would-be politicians in N.C. and nationwide would do well to follow his example.
Here is a national columnist for the Washington Times who shares the opinion that Moore’s refusal to go negative on Jones was a big part of the problem: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/14/roy-moore-republican-conservative-alabama-autopsy/
Dan Forest has run in an open seat race and as an incumbent before, which was a different ball game. Running against an incumbent, he will HAVE to go negative to some degree if he really wants to win. The same is true running against high profile primary opponents like McCrory, Tillis, or Berger. He has run in races before where he could get away with not going negative. It will not work in a race of the nature he will have running for governor.