• The success of tea party voting in electing Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts in January, chasing Charlie Crist out of the GOP U.S. Senate primary in Florida last month, ousting Sen. Bob Bennett in Utah two weeks ago, and nominating Rand Paul yesterday in Kentucky has been seen as less likely to be replicated in Nevada’s U.S. Senate primary race because tea party activists here have generally been split, rather than unified, between the various candidates.
• However, the all-but-official defection today of RedState.com blogger Erick Erickson from the Danny Tarkanian camp to the Sharron Angle camp – combined with the Angle endorsement by the highly influential and exceedingly successful Club for Growth this morning – could signal the start of a major shift and coalescing before election day that will result in an Angle vs. Lowden showdown on June 8th.
• By the way, both Angle and Lowden will be speaking at our Conservative Leadership Conference in Las Vegas on Saturday. You’d almost think I planned it that way!
• By the way, two interesting questions here: Does Danny Tarkanian despise Sue Lowden enough to publicly drop out of the U.S. Senate race – though his name would still be on the ballot – and throw his support behind Sharron Angle? And will Sarah Palin soon weigh in on this race…and on behalf of whom? Inquiring minds wanna know.
• Not only is raising taxes bad public policy, as it only feeds government growth, it’s also very bad politics for Republicans. Because when some Republican elected officials vote with Democrats to raise taxes, it gives aid-and-comfort to the Democrats who face GOP challengers in the next election. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.
• Elizabeth Halseth is challenging RINO state Sen. Dennis Nolan in the District 9 primary in Las Vegas. In response to criticism by Halseth about Nolan’s tax-hike vote in the Legislature last year, one blog commenter wrote yesterday: “It (the tax hike) was by majority vote of the Senate, not Senator Nolan alone who decided to raise taxes in order to minimize our great state’s debt.”
• This is EXACTLY the defense Democrats who voted for the billion dollars worth of tax hikes last year are going to use when Republicans running against them raise the raising taxes issue. Democrats will hide behind tax-hiking Republicans and point out that since some Republicans voted to raise taxes, too, it was the “responsible” thing to do.
• Which makes Republican tax-hikers such as Dennis Nolan the equivalent of what has been referred to as “useful idiots” – but I mean that, of course, in a good, Christian way.
• In a straw poll at the conclusion of a recent debate hosted by Right Pride and the UNLV College Republicans in the Assembly District 13 race in Las Vegas, Joshua Gust came out on top with 37% of the vote, followed by Nathan “Li’l Nate” Taylor in second with 33% and Scott Hammond finishing last at 22%.
• In other words, in a low-turnout primary in which none of the candidates are particularly known, none of the candidates have captured the interest or support from grassroots activists. Maybe that’s because none of them have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge promising to take a firm stand in defense of Nevada’s citizens and small businesses if elected.
