Friday, November 07, 2008

Behind schedule

We will get back to Luzerne County politics next week. I'm working on postmortems of the Pennsylvania 10th and 11th Congressional Districts races so you can rip apart the candidates in the comments. I usually try to do this during the week when people are wasting time at work and not interrupt important things like College and Pro football.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:51 AM

    Want to give you and update- The beloved Club for Growth was involved in four challenger races and now the final numbers are in. They lost 3 out of 4 including Mr. Hackett. The final one was in MD-1, they supported a no earmark challenger to Wayne Gilchrist. Gilchrist was a moderate and on the hit list of Mr. Toomey. They lost just like they always do. They have cost conservative's many races over the past couple of years due to there negative ads they run. Congratulations Club, the best thing that could come out of this is the end of Toomey's political life. I am not saying that this Democratic tsunami could have been averted but the club for growth is the most disruptive force in Repulbican politics. I guess Hackett will be rethinking his decision to hitch his wagon to this group and Maderia's recommendation to do so.

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  2. My biggest surprise in NEPA was the magnitude of the Hackett loss. If my memory does me good, I believe the breakdown of the 10th is approximately 55% GOP, 35% Democratic, and 20% other. I don't believe Obama won the 10th, so a lot of GOPers voted for Carney.

    I always thought Carney had an uphill battle and I would have put his re-election chances at best at 50/50. Expect Mr. Carney to be roaming the halls of Congress for a while. I think he will have battles in the future just due to the Republican registration advantage in his district, but the first challenge is always the strongest.

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  3. Anonymous4:50 PM

    Agreed- first is always the toughest. Remember that this was a Democratic tsunami we just saw. Very similar to 1994 when it went in favor of the Republicans. Carney must stay to the middle and reach out to constituents at all times. The Republicans need to put up a candidate who creates jobs and who will run on a conservative platform, and somebody that people will trust. Hackett's problem was that nobody trusted him. He beleived in the Club strategy of scorched earth and paid the price. Mr. Hackett's unfavorables were higher than his favorables, that shows that people (Dems, Reps, and independents) did not trust him due to his primary campaign and the constant lies he tried to sell to the people. I am not trying to take anything away from Carney, I just think this was a bad time for any Republican especially one that could not tell the truth because he has no moral compass.

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