First thing that popped into my head when I saw this tweet* about Greg Charlie Crist Orman:
When I talked to orman, he dodged on keystone, fed min wage hike, same sex marriage (1/2)
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) September 29, 2014
…and this Washington Post article, listing the stuff that Greg Orman doesn’t want to get into.
Greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline? Orman said he doesn’t have enough information to say yes or no.
What about gun control? He said gun restrictions should be “strengthened” but would not specify whether he backs an assault-weapons ban.
And on the biggest question of all — Would he caucus with Democrats or Republicans? — Orman insists he’s not sure.
“It’s not in the best interests for us to say that,” Orman said in an interview here last week.
Bolding mine. You know, Charlie Crist over in Florida made it a point to highlight the fact that if you don’t like what he has to say, then Charlie Crist will stand on his principles – until they rupture under the weight, thus freeing him up to adopt new principles more to your liking. And that strategy of Crist’s worked. For a while. It’s not working particularly well now.
Mind you, it’s not a particularly bad strategy to try to not take a position on anything… normally. In this particular case Orman has misjudged the situation. His basic hope for success is in convincing enough conservatives to vote for him; and to do that, he has to present himself as a convincing conservative alternative to Pat Roberts. Which means that he should have endorsed the Keystone Pipeline, told the interviewer What part of Shall not be infringed is unclear?, and said that he’d be caucusing with the Republicans whether they took the Senate or not. Because Kansans don’t want the Democrats running things all their own way anymore.
What’s that? If Greg Orman does that, then all of his Democratic funding just shrivels up and blows away on the wind? Well. Isn’t that a thing.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Part two was a list of all the stuff that Orman is currently pretending to be ‘bipartisan’ about. Needless to say, the Democratic leadership would break him of all of that in a heartbeat, because that’s what the Democratic leadership does. They lie, and then they make other people lie.
My Democratic handlers have informed me that I can not have an opinion on anything until I’m safely elected. At which time my opinions will be to the left of Bernie Sanders.
Orman COULD have come out with one strong conservative position on ONE of those issues, stiff-armed or weaseled a Democrat position on the rest, and he’d have come out okay with voters.
Keystone really is a no-brainer, for anyone with a brain.
Any red-state Democrat ought to be able to weasel a 2A position with enough wiggle-room to vote with Feinstein (one of mine, alas) when push comes to shove.
But you’re right, every word out of that man’s mouth right now involves neurons buzzing frantically to avoid losing the Dem fringe.
…and I would note, as someone who under different circumstances might not at all mind being rid of Roberts, the GOP ought to beat Orman like a filthy rug on issue after issue after issue, I’m guessing Kansas is one state where there aren’t many of these where the Dem Base Position on any significant issue is going to bring many voters to the polls.
“Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!”
As the old saying goes: if you stand for nothing you’ll fall for anything.
I am not going to say that “any Republican is better than anyone else.” There are a couple Republicans I wouldn’t vote for. But I will say: 1) that any Republican is better than any Democrat, 2) that Greg Orman is a Democrat no matter what his “official” affiliation might be, and 3) that in a close race, it’s better to hold your nose for one night than to cover your eyes for six years.
Unfortunately in this race you have to embrace the healing power of and.
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Regardless of which way you vote you’ll be doing both. Although I do agree with you in general I have two exceptions. One, if you use the language of the left to attack me and the tea party, call me a racist I will not vote for you or support any of you cronies. Two, if you are anti first amendment or anti second amendment I will not support you.
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Those are non-negotiable. The country will survive a democrat for a few years. The Republican Party will not survive folks like that.
Sorry, have to disagree about your first two sentences. Pat Roberts can be made fairly ineffective by more conservative senators, and he’ll vote for Republican nominees to cabinet positions and Supreme Court posts. Whatever his apostasies, that makes him automatically superior to Greg Orman — and superior enough that, were I in Kansas, I wouldn’t think twice about pulling the lever for him.
The country will survive a democrat for a few years.
You know, people said that about Barack Obama, too. I hope they were right.
But more and more, I’m inclined to believe they were wrong.