(What Micheal said…and then some…)
Karl Rove must be scared spitless about the Missouri GOP’s prospects of either Todd Akin, Sarah Steelman or an as-yet-unnamed republican emerging from a primary able to beat Claire McCaskill.
Why else would he already be going around the state party and launching $50,000 worth of radio attack ads sixteen and a half months before the election?
Look at it from his angle. The state party has two unpalatable options. There is Sarah Steelman, and there is no way in hell the state GOP is going to let her have the nomination because she is a loose cannon and a nincompoop who makes Sarah Palin look smart. That leaves them with Todd Akin, who is under fire for illegally voting in a precinct where he no longer maintained a residence and whose vote to kill Medicare and his record of rubberstamping every one of Bush’s wacky schemes that got us into the mess we’re in will not go over well with the people who are being looked toward to pay for his folly now.
That’s some pretty weak tea they’re brewing up.
If I were a higher-up in the Missouri GOP (stop laughing, and suspend disbelief for a moment. I could have been a republican — if my mother had dropped me on my head a few times as an infant) I would be really offended that we were being undermined by outsiders — and knowing my fellow Missourians the way I do, I have a feeling that this may not work for them as well as they think it will — especially in the rural areas north of Kansas City, where she is very, very popular.
I won’t be surprised at all if their “attack early, attack often” strategy backfires on them. In fact, I expect it will.
See, we Missourians — especially those of us with rural roots — are notoriously stubborn. We are stubborn to the point of being spiteful, we don’t like being told what to do, and we sure as hell don’t like outsiders coming in and attacking our own.
Claire is one of our own, and the Crossroads a-holes are not. This is going to rally the Democratic base, offend independents and even the last 12 remaining sane republicans in the state, and after a couple of months of their nonsense, the remaining ones will start tuning out the noise.
I say this about the northern tier frequently and can’t stress it enough — the population may not be dense up there, but neither are the people. Rove writes them off as gullible rubes at his peril.
To say she is a noncompoop is foolish. She is, by far, the tougher of the two announced GOP possibles. She is neither crazy nor stupid. She also knows how to run statewide.
Chris Kelly
the represent the work of outsiders? Or do they just remember the memes that they plant? I hope that I am being unduly alarmist, but all those GOP corporate dollars worries me.
on the head. Crossroads represents one of the dangerous and unpatriotic forces in the history of the Republc; the secret use of huge dollars to lie to the American people. That is the real danger.
BTW, “fact challenged” does work. So does “sloppy” but that does not distinguish Steelman from many Democrats.
One of the great disappointments in 2010 was that Carnahan’s only issue was “I’m not corrupt like Blunt.”
Claire will not be so stupid.
Because of the Republican/Ryan Plan, she will hammer the fact that shared sacrifice for Republicans means the working people sacrifice so that the wealthiest can get an even bigger share.
We know the top of the ticket in statewide offices in Missouri will be extremely weak and there is reason to believe their nominee for President will not be very strong either. Claire’s opponent will be severely handicapped.
It isn’t going to be easy, but she can win.