Last year’s election victory by President Trump resulted in a lot of angsty whining, and not all of it was from Democrats. Likewise, last week’s election loss by Roy Moore in Alabama resulted in a lot of angsty whining, mostly from Republicans – and an “I told you so” from the President. Which leads me to this article on the importance of strategizing in the selection of candidates. Excerpt:
In Virginia, we had a huge, bloody primary fight that left the winner weak going into the general. Ed Gillespie is an Establishment meat puppet, but he would have been okay, and “okay” is better than any commie Dem. We need to pick our fights. Here’s a news flash – the most conservative candidate won’t win every time. We need to figure out who is the most conservative candidate who can win, and back him/her – that’s the old Buckley rule. The purge of the squishes must come later. We need raw numbers, and if that means accepting the occasional Susan Collins, fine. She’s the closest thing to a win in Maine, so accept that and move on.
In Virginia, the Democrats nearly took the legislature by identifying vulnerable seats, sneaking in with money, tech, and logistics, and pushing turn-out of motivated pinkos. They caught us napping. That’s their plan in 2018 too – but now we know the score. We need to identify our vulnerabilities and start building our defenses – and we can also to identify their vulnerabilities so we can snatch some Democrat seats in Trump country. That means we need to give money and time and not do the grumbly “I’ve got the madz and the sadz at how the GOP isn’t perfectly conservative so I’m staying home, darn it, and ensuring the Democrats win” thing.
We’ll never get 100% of what we want. Ever. Deal with it. So, John McCain torpedoed the Obamacare repeal? I guess the rational response is to let the libs run rampant, right? Sheesh. Stop being a pouty teen, man up, and get back in the fight.
While the language here is somewhat strident, there is a good point; The GOP hasn’t been doing that hot of a job at selecting candidates. Roy Moore lost an election that Luther Strange probably would have won easily. John McCain in 2008 wasn’t the best candidate, although in all honesty the GOP wasn’t going to win that year anyway. But in 2012, President Obama would have been eminently beatable by the right candidate, which nice guy Mitt Romney wasn’t.
As I recall President Trump made some noises about running in 2012. Might he have beaten President Obama? Who knows – but in the debates, he wouldn’t have left a few stinging rebukes laying on the table the way Romney did.
The strategery here is obvious: Pick candidates that can win. You can’t do anything unless you win elections.
