The Other McCain

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Red State’s Erick Erickson Endorses
Rick Barber in AL2 House Race

Posted on | March 4, 2010 | 6 Comments

The Tea Party-backed candidate is added to Erickson’s “Candidates I’m Supporting” list, and Barber’s Web site quotes his statement:

“Rick has the support of the grassroots in the district, which we are seeing more and more is going to make the difference in a close race.  It’s not that his opponent is the establishment person.  It’s that the grassroots trust and like Rick for who they know him to be and what they know he will do.  He’s the type of candidate everyone always says they want to run. Well, he is.  We should support him.”

Democratic “Blue Dog” incumbent Rep. Bobby Bright is bragging that his own poll shows him beating the Republican establishment’s handpicked candidate, Martha Roby, and National Journal notes:

Roby was introduced last week as one of just 10 candidates nationwide to reach the top of the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program, proving just how much GOPers think of her chances in this GOP-heavy [congressional district] (John McCain took 61% here in ’08).

Roby has been campaigning for 10 months, while Barber has only been in it for seven weeks. The difference in their poll numbers? Four percent.

And yet the geniuses at NRCC are still promoting Roby. Ask Alabama political insiders why the national GOP is trying to lock up the nomination for Roby and the answer is simple: Connections. 

Roby’s father is Joel Dubina, chief judge of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That means that lots of lawyers in the district have an incentive to contribute to Roby’s campaign. And Roby knows how to play political hardball. Some Republican donors in Alabama are said to be afraid to donate to the Barber campaign, for fear of offending Roby and her powerful supporters in the state GOP.

Not to disillusion any idealists out there who think politics is like a Norman Rockwell painting or a middle-school civics textbook, but this is how it really works.

Unlike the situation in NY23, where the national GOP backed a RINO, the problem with Martha Roby isn’t ideological. She is solidly conservative, but she’s not exactly a dynamic candidate and has run a lackadaisical campaign. That’s one reason why Bobby Bright still thinks he can coast to victory in November. And it’s also one reason that state school board member Stephanie Bell is talking about entering the Republican primary this week:

Bell, who is leaning toward running and plans to make a formal announcement on her decision this week, said she was very encouraged by the numbers.
“To be, at this point, at the same place as some other candidates … it’s much better than I would have hoped for,” she said.

If Bell gets in, that benefits the Barber campaign. He would be the only man in a 3-way primary against two women, and as a former Marine sergeant could count on the support of traditionalist voters in a district with a substantial military presence from the Army’s Fort Rucker and Maxwell AFB.

It’s becoming glaringly obvious that the people at GOP-HQ are running a sort of affirmative-action program for women candidates in primaries this year. Carly Fiorina in California and Sue Lowden in Nevada are two establishment-backed examples of this trend on the Senate side, and the people who are pushing Bell to enter the AL2 primary are probably operating from the same focus-group playbook.

Maybe the D.C. consultants with their focus-group surveys are onto something, but “we need more Republican women in Congress” is a pathetically weak argument when it has the practical effect of orchestrating GOP insiders against a strong, hard-working conservative candidate.

RICK BARBER FOR U.S. CONGRESS

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Category: Alabama, Congress, Red State, Republicans

Comments

6 Responses to “Red State’s Erick Erickson Endorses
Rick Barber in AL2 House Race”

  1. Live Free Or Die
    March 4th, 2010 @ 7:59 pm

    Add NH’s Kelly Ayotte to the NRCC’s ‘Elect-a- VaJayJay to Congress’ Stategy. NOT ONE RED CENT!

  2. Live Free Or Die
    March 4th, 2010 @ 2:59 pm

    Add NH’s Kelly Ayotte to the NRCC’s ‘Elect-a- VaJayJay to Congress’ Stategy. NOT ONE RED CENT!

  3. Phil
    March 4th, 2010 @ 8:50 pm

    What’s wrong with Kelly Ayotte?

    Look, picking a candidate based on identity is not bad unless it means conceding principles.

    Ayotte is pro-life, pro-gun, anti-SSM, fiscally conservative. She’s also an intelligent youngish (41?) woman in a party (somewhat rightly) considered a clique of old white males.

    So why not put her front and center? “Optics,” etc. Let’s think strategically, not just ideologically. (And in Ayotte’s case, ideology is no big issue, she fits the bill well enough.)

    Phil

  4. Phil
    March 4th, 2010 @ 3:50 pm

    What’s wrong with Kelly Ayotte?

    Look, picking a candidate based on identity is not bad unless it means conceding principles.

    Ayotte is pro-life, pro-gun, anti-SSM, fiscally conservative. She’s also an intelligent youngish (41?) woman in a party (somewhat rightly) considered a clique of old white males.

    So why not put her front and center? “Optics,” etc. Let’s think strategically, not just ideologically. (And in Ayotte’s case, ideology is no big issue, she fits the bill well enough.)

    Phil

  5. Live Free Or Die
    March 4th, 2010 @ 11:12 pm

    Kelly Ayotte has no voting record, never held elective office, was appointed to position of Attorney General in NH, and while I would concede she did that job well, she’s the establishment’s blank slate candidate, to do with what they wish. Any candidate can SAY they are for something, few live up to the name, ‘candid’-ate. To vote for a never elected, establishment, blank slate, VaJayJay-Person for U.S. Senate just because of her plumbing is, well, a bit much. Caveat Emptor.

  6. Live Free Or Die
    March 4th, 2010 @ 6:12 pm

    Kelly Ayotte has no voting record, never held elective office, was appointed to position of Attorney General in NH, and while I would concede she did that job well, she’s the establishment’s blank slate candidate, to do with what they wish. Any candidate can SAY they are for something, few live up to the name, ‘candid’-ate. To vote for a never elected, establishment, blank slate, VaJayJay-Person for U.S. Senate just because of her plumbing is, well, a bit much. Caveat Emptor.