Rasmussen: Pat Roberts 5 pts down in one-on-one race against “Independent” (#KSSEN)
Someone needs to shake Pat Roberts out of his stupor if he’s going to win, now that it appears there will be no Democrat on the ballot.
The last time we visited the Kansas Senate race, we noted that Republican Pat Roberts was at risk, but that he may have caught a lucky break when the Democratic candidate was not permitted to take his name off the ballot in order to unite around the independent candidate.
Having the Democrat’s name on the ballot would have siphoned away some votes from the independent challenger, helping Roberts.
The Kansas Supreme Court, however, ruled yesterday that the Democrat’s name must be removed from the ballot:
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the state must remove the name of the Democratic candidate running against Republican Sen. Pat Roberts from the November ballot, adding another twist to a now-hotly contested race.
The court’s decision leaves independent Greg Orman, who has been rising in the polls, as the only major opponent currently in the running to take on the 78-year-old incumbent.
The court agreed with Democrat Chad Taylor, saying his formal letter of withdrawal to the secretary of state’s office was sufficient to get his name off the ballot.
The court also said it did not “need to act” regarding Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s “allegation” that the Democratic party must name a new candidate for the race. Kobach said earlier Thursday that the Democratic Party is legally obligated to pick a new nominee and set a Sept. 26 deadline.
There had been the possibility that Democrats would be forced to name a replacement:
[Secretary of State Chris] Kobach said Thursday that he would require the Democrats to select a replacement, a step he insisted was required by law. Mr. Kobach said he would extend the deadline to mail those ballots so the Democrats could pick someone else. If the party refuses to do so by noon next Friday, Mr. Kobach said he would “review our legal options.”
But, as of this writing, it appears the ballots will be sent out without a Democratic name, according to TPM:
In an apparent reversal, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office is instructing election officials in the state to send out overseas military ballots without Democratic Senate nominee Chad Taylor or any other Democratic Senate candidate listed.
Kobach spokeswoman Samantha Poetter confirmed to TPM that the ballots would be sent out by Saturday, the deadline under state and federal law.
“Our ballots are going out without Chad Taylor (or any Democratic candidate) for U.S. Senate,” Poetter said. “They’ve been ordered to send them out as soon as possible.”
TPM obtained a copy of the official order sent to local election officials.
“The list does NOT contain the name of a Democratic nominee for United States Senate,” the order said. “There are three candidates, Randall Batson, Libertarian, Greg Orman, independent, Pat Roberts, Republican.”
“All (overseas military) ballots MUST go out by tomorrow to comply with the 45 day requirement under state and federal law,” it said.
Orman is pushing his supposed independence, even though Democrats are uniting behind him and maneuvering for him to defeat Roberts. Democrats don’t care who holds the seat, so long as it’s not a Republican with control of Senate possibly hinging on one seat.
This all raises a bigger question as to Roberts’ viability. He’s just a horrible campaigner, and doesn’t seem comfortable in his home state. I hope Roberts wins, but someone has to shake him out of his stupor.
Polling shows a tight race, with a Rasmussen poll released today showing Roberts trailing by 5 points.
As for Roberts’ Republican challenger, Dr. Milton Wolff, from whom Roberts had to be rescued by the NRSC, comes the obvious:
#ThrowbackThursday —> Remember when the GOP establishment said that they, and only they, can win in November? Good times, good times.
— Dr. Milton Wolf (@miltonwolfmd) September 19, 2014
Kathleen Sebelius: "Democrats, we don't win elections in Kansas. Republicans lose elections." Sad but true.
— Dr. Milton Wolf (@miltonwolfmd) September 19, 2014
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Comments
The best hope the Republicans have is if they can include the senate race as part of the Straight Party vote.
One of the surest signs of Fall is Karl Rove being nice to the base.
From the article: “This all raises a bigger question as to Roberts’ viability. He’s just a horrible campaigner, and doesn’t seem comfortable in his home state.”
I don’t understand why you feel this way. This time of the year is lovely in Virginia, what’s not to like?
Turd Blossom will be nice to anyone if he’s paid. There’s a word (or two or three) for that.
Karl Rove needs to remind me again why the GOP Establishment candidates are the only electable ones. The voters seemed not to have received the memo on that one.
My Senate predictions for 2014: the GOP wins Democrat seats in Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota – and loses Kansas. The GOP Senate candidates in Alaska and Colorado are especially weak and flawed, and in Louisiana Mary Landrieu will be the beneficiary of the meanest and filthiest political machine outside of Chicago and Hollywood. Net GOP gain: 3 seats.
Mission accomplished, Karl! Maybe if you and the rest of the GOP Establishment had spent more time campaigning against amnesty and Obamacare and less time spiking the football in the Tea Party’s face, things might have been different.
The Institutional Republicans do not give an obese rodent’s gluts about winning new seats. Their goal is to suppress any conservative impulses in the party and preserve their place at the trough. That said, I would offer a couple of differences. Note that I am here in Colorado, am active TEA Party, and like many am mickle-pissed at how the party rigged Cory Gardner’s nomination in a back room. He has also pissed us off on a specific issue. That said, I think that Gardner has actually a pretty decent chance against Udall, from the increasing desperation of Udall’s commercials. Enough that he has a good chance of beating Udall AND the 5% margin of vote fraud that benefits any Democrat candidate.
I note that you do not mention Mississippi. Since Cochrane is not going to get any of the Democrat voters that he, McConnell, and Cornyn paid for in the Republican Primary election, and also is not going to get the R-A-A-C-I-S-S™ Conservative/TEA Party votes in Mississippi; I see him as losing to the Democrat. How do you see it?
Subotai Bahadur
McDaniel has not quit. There is a shot in #mssen.
Agree GOPe has burned the bridges with Reaganites and the feeling is mutual. I don’t see us usurping the GOP with Teaparty, but I hope I am wrong. Boehner is a weasel and not a statesman. Chickens, home, roost.
I am ready for an Article V convention.
I expect Obama to initiate a civil war.
I live in Texas, not Colorado, so I will have to defer to your judgment about the political situation there. But from what I have read, I feel that Gardner has made two major unforced errors in the campaign.
The first is his support for renewable energy. As an engineer I can tell you there is a reason renewable energy has never caught on: it does not work well enough to make more than a minor contribution to our energy needs. Almost without exception renewable energy proposals are crackpot schemes to rake in the tax dollars while the getting is good. And is it possible Gardner never heard of Solyndra, the poster child for failed “green” energy?
The second is his insistence on talking about birth control. Over the past few decades the Democrat/media axis has spent millions of dollars creating the Republican-as-woman-murdering-rapist myth (the “war on women” is not new: it was a centerpiece of Jimmy Carter’s 1980 campaign). Does Gardner seriously believe this same Democrat/media complex will suddenly change its mind and calmly and meekly allow him to explain his position and give voters a chance to decide? Given a lot of money – and several decades – Gardner’s strategy might eventually make a dent in the War on Women fortress. But to me this is like trying to stop a cannon from firing by sticking your head in the barrel. Every time Gardner opens his mouth about birth control he runs straight into the myth Democrats have created. No one campaign – or even several campaigns – will change that.
Gardner should attack Democrats where they are weakest, not strongest. If he points out that the economy is a shambles, that Obamacare is a failure, that government agencies like the VA and the IRS are totally corrupt, and that ISIS is on the march, then he forces Democrats to deny the obvious. This would actually make his birth control proposals an easier sell in the long run, but I am afraid Gardner is hung up on the idea of being a “new kind of Republican” (whatever the heck that means).
As for Mississippi, I don’t have any strong opinion on who is likely to win. But a Democrat victory does not seem impossible anymore, which shows what damage the GOP Establishment has done.
From the beginning, Udall was hitting Gardner with a series of ads claiming that he wanted to outlaw abortion, birth control, and women wearing shoes. He countered with ads saying that birth control should be available over the counter, non-prescription, to get the government out of the way. And that worked. It is hard to claim he is trying to enslave women, when he wants birth control OTC. It turned him around in the polls here. There probably would have to be age limits, based on massive doses of extra hormones before puberty are NOT medically indicated. But it would also put Planned Parenthood out of business.
Subotai Bahadur
How would it put Planned Parenthood out of business?
Planned Parenthood gives away free contraceptives, provides free cancer related services, free pregnancy and prenatal care, free cervical cancer screening, free breast exams. And most of their clients are poor. How would selling contraceptives OTC affect them at all?
Is that what’s called wishful thinking?
To jayjerome66 … there are a couple of ways it would help curb PP:
1> Convenience … even the poor are less likely to make the trek to PP, when their Walgreens or CVS is just around the corner and the meds are cheap enough.
2> Fewer abortions … which produces serious cash flow for PP.
3> Undercutting the PP argument that anything less than full-on Progressivism is a “war on women”.
To: jayjerome66
1) Contraceptives are the cover story that PP uses to clean up their image. Most of the budget goes to abortion.
2) Much of the cost of birth control comes from the fact that it is prescription only. Thus to get it you have to go to a medical facility of some sort. OTC drugs both are cheaper by their nature, and when they go generic get cheaper still. Going to a PP clinic is a public act of support for it. Going to your drugstore, megamart, etc. [or if you are embarrassed, to one outside your neighborhood] is private. And it cuts off some funding for PP because much of their funding comes from grants based on visits, which will drop. They may give out some birth control free, but they get well paid for it.
3) Becoming publicly primarily an abortion mill, absent their cover story, will make them [and the Democratic Party rabid support for it above all other things] unpalatable in the the public eye.
4) And it gets the necessity of government intervention out of the picture.
:1) Contraceptives are the cover story that PP uses to clean up their image. Most of the budget goes to abortion. ”
No, that’s misinformation you’re passing around there… Be a good guy, and don’t distort the numbers. You’re not even close. Wikipedia says abortions account for about 3% of their total services — the lowly contraceptive accounts for over ten times that much.
Their budget is available online, Google it, and get the facts straight.
Perhaps someone can explain to me when the NRSC was formed, and if from its inception it started getting into saving incumbents in primary races. It seems that I am under an old illusion that the party organs were supposed to be neutral in primary races.
In any event, as usual the GOP finds a way to lose an election AGAIN. Having been burned by Tea Party nominations by lightweights Angle and O’Donnell, and third rail muttonheads like Akins and Mourbank, the Grand Pubah’s of the party (Rove, et. al.) decide that they only want “the most conservative candidate that is electable”.
So what do these fools do? They fight against the most conservative and attractive candidates in States where THEY ARE ELECTABLE AND PREFERRED. So they create bitter and divisive fights in Mississippi and Kansas on behalf of very old men whose electoral appeal is somewhere south of the falklands.
Wolfe was a GREAT candidate (smart, articulate, young) and would walk all over Roberts opponent. Instead we nominate a kindly old grandpa.
Good job Rove.
They only appear “lightweight” to those who strain at the gnats of nuance, while swallowing the camels of ignorance about simple, fundamental principles whole.
This is a symptom of the successful Progressive effort to replace a healthy respect for wisdom from all sources, with the blind worship of its mere appearances: credentials, position, erudition, popularity.
NC US Senate candidate Thom Tillis (former NC House Speaker) had to be saved by the GOP Washington gang from a primary defeat by a Tea Party usurper and is now struggling to stay with Kay-Freakin’-Hagan in a state that voted big time for Romney and recently went all GOP – House, Senate, and Governor – for the first time in a century. Kay Hagan votes with Obama something like 96% of the time. Kay Hagan wrote much of Obamacare.
But no. The GOP elite-backed Tillis is beginning to look like a loser here in NC.
If the best the GOP has to offer cannot beat the Obama of 2012 and cannot take the US Senate this November, then they need to tear it all down and rebuild ASAP because neither will they win in 2016. The wrong people are running the party.
I have found it useful to think that the Republican party’s only constituent is K-street. I am just a nuisance to be spun, coddled and spurned.
Or, in their eyes, a sheep to be herded by politics, then sheared to line the chairs in the cushy offices they have built for themselves.
One more point. Many wonder why the GOPe will not fight for their principles–naively assuming the GOPe principles are conservative principles.
The GOPe is very capable at fighting their idealogical enemies; they fight Reaganites–i.e. the Teaparty.
So turd blossom says only moderate establishment republicans can get elected. Tell that to President Dole, President McCain, and President Romney. He is only in it for the money, to bad he can’t buy respect and integrity.
Everyone responds to the way they are “graded”.
Rove is graded by how he gets people elected … not by the quality of governance of those he gets elected … and not by the quality of governance of those he allows to win, because he is more focused on three precincts in Cincinnati than he is in supporting consistently-principled candidates.
So far Orman’s entire campaign is “I’m not Pat” which is a hollow shell of a position to take. If Orman wins, he’ll be the least qualified Senator since Franken, and if Pat doesn’t start hammering on him soon, he actually stands a chance of winning. (brrr)
Questions that need asked:
Mr. Orman, are there any bills that have come up in the US Senate over the last few years that you would have voted differently than Mr. Roberts?
What experience do you have in Foreign Policy? Agriculture? Law?
Would you have voted to allow President Obama to use military force against Syria? Iraq?
Do you think Federal taxes are too high? Would you be willing to sign a pledge not to raise them?
You’re asking the wrong questions of course, Republican tilted questions. Orman’s not a Republican, or a Democrat — he’s an an Independent, whose goal is to bring together the Republican and Democratic idiots now running the country. It’s the dunderheads at the left and the right who have screwed up the nation. We want more Ormans to work for bipartisan cooperation, to get things accomplished.
I hope this guy wins, and sets the stage for other independent-minded politicians to run and win. The system is flawed now, with dingbats from both parties doing their usual dances of obstruction. A pox on both their houses.
Wrong. Orman’s a lib. What’s gone on is collusion with the Dems. They waited to the last possible moment to pull the ballot shenanigans. That said, Roberts is totally disconnected with voters here. Add to the fact he lives in D.C. fulltime doesn’t help him.
Anyone who believes Orman will not caucus with Democrats and vote for Reid if his vote is the key one to make 50 is just deluded. Democrats don’t clear the decks like that on speculation – it’s bad for the down-ticket.
Orman may have reserved the right to caucus with the GOP if his vote won’t at least make a tie – but in that case, you can bet he will pull a Jeffords in ’16 or ’18 if the same situation arises then.
~
Everyone has the right to hate the GOP if they wish, and to root for us to lose. There’s a whole big party of such people already.
But if you hate the GOP and would rather see Obama and Reid win so McCain, Romney, and McConnell lose, why do you keep interfering with our primaries? Start your own party – God knows you threaten to almost daily – or just join the Democrats and be done with it.
So, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy? A novel concept.
What if you hate both parties and want to give both the middle finger?
Thank you for your candor.
Please urge the Republican leadership–Boehner, Rove, McConnel etc to just tell the truth and echo what you just said.
It is obvious that is what they believe and the dancing around the truth doesn’t do anybody any favors.
“Wikipedia says abortions account for about 3% of their total services — the lowly contraceptive accounts for over ten times that much”
OMG. Wikipedia? Are you stupid?