A number of good, conservative candidates are going to come up short on Tuesday. And there are two prime reasons…
1.) Not because they weren’t good candidates, but because they ran bad campaigns. Or worse, they paid “Karl Rove” wannabes, who don’t know sh*t from apple butter, to run a lousy campaign for them. Talk about insult to injury.
Once again, especially in Nevada, there is more incompetence in the field of political consulting than in any field other than psychiatry. Oh, how I would love to see one or more of these badly mismanaged candidates sue their self-professed professional “campaign manager” for malpractice!
2.) The moderate, establishment-backed candidates had a sh*tload more money and used it to great effect to (a) lie about their opponents, and (b) lie about themselves, their own positions and voting record.
The most egregious, of course, being the campaigns of Mark Hutchison for lieutenant governor and Moderate Mike Roberson for Senate District 20. But here’s another example…
As Ray Hagar of the Reno Gazette-Journal reports, in a 2010 debate between conservative Ty Cobb and moderate Ben Kieckhefer for the open Senate District 16 seat, “Cobb point(ed) his finger at Kieckhefer and ask(ed) point blank if he would vote for a series of ‘sunset’ taxes if elected. Kieckhefer flatly said no.”
Kieckhefer went on to win that race. Then voted for the $620 million worth of “sunset” taxes in 2011. And then again in 2013. Then added support for an additional new $600 million mining tax as a cherry on top. In other words, he lied.
Fast forward to this year’s GOP primary and Kieckhefer actually had the stones to tell Hagar that he’s “as conservative on tax issues as anybody.” Um, not as conservative as the true conservatives in the Legislature who kept their word and voted AGAINST extending those “temporary” tax hikes! In other words, Kieckhefer’s STILL lying.
This phenomenon/fraud, by the way, is not unique to Nevada. Establishment Republicans have been doing the exact same thing all across the country this year, including in U.S. Senate races. Click here for examples outside of Nevada.
Bottom line: The establishment GOP candidates who win on Tuesday will have bought their victories on a bed of lies. God help them if they ever have to run on a platform congruent with how they vote. But they won’t, because they’re too dishonest. Hard to see how a Democrat is any worse.
In any event, conservatives moved the ball down the field considerably this GOP primary season, but to really change the direction of state government back to the right we’re going to need to do some serious fixin’ of the above two problems.
