Operation Counterweight has started. We need people in the House and Senate who are not afraid to fight.
In many states and districts, it will be easy. In others it will be hard. We are going to have to win a couple of hard ones in order to have the Senate we want, where we are not held hostage by one or two or three defections.
Incumbent Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse is assumed to be an easy winner in my home state of Rhode Island. He has a couple million in the bank, and Rhode Island is the bluest of blue states. But don’t let that deceive you. Whitehouse is beatable.
A recent Brown University poll found that Whitehouse’s approval rating was just 33%, compared to a 46.4% favorability rating for Democratic Senator Jack Reed and 44.2% for Obama.
Whitehouse, one of the most polarizing Democrats in the Senate, just is not well-liked. There is lingering resentment from Whitehouse’s infamous speech on the floor of the Senate when he invoked Kristallnacht and Aryan supremacists in attacking the opponents of Obamacare.
Whitehouse also has received a lot of bad press because he coincidentally liquidated a sizable portion of his porfolio just in advance of the 2008 credit crunch; whether he traded on inside Senate information or was just the luckiest investor in America remains to be seen.
Under the radar Barry Hinckley, a businessman from Newport, has been building his campaign, raising money, putting a staff together, and meeting people. Hinckley is new to politics, and is likely to be the Republican nominee since former Governor Donald Carcieri announced he was not running.
I had breakfast the other day with Hinckley, and was very impressed. This is a guy who is completely unafraid of the Whitehouse money and the Democratic machine, and who is taking the fight to Whitehouse through numerous and frequent appearances on local talk radio (Rhode Island has a very strong conservative talk radio presence).
Hinckley, with a business background and untainted by politics, is in a perfect position to take the fight over job killing legislation and regulations to Whitehouse in a state which is losing population and hemorrhaging jobs.
And Rhode Island has a long history of electing Republicans to statewide office, including Governor and U.S. Senate, so don’t think this blue state cannot elect a Republican.
I strongly urge you to support Barry Hinckley with a donation. The Senate seat in Rhode Island could be the shocker of 2012.
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