Quote:
Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND
Cantor lost and Grahmn won in GOP primaries... huh....  |
what is confusing?
CNN- "Graham had some advantages heading into the contest: He had a massive war chest --
around $8 million cash on hand, which gave him a huge campaign cash advantage over his primary opponents -- and outside groups have steered clear of the race, unlike in Mississippi where establishment and tea party groups fought.
South Carolina Republican consultant Joel Sawyer told CNN that Graham
was facing off "against an incredibly weak field of competitors, and of course he benefited by having the 'not Lindsey' vote split among several folks."
"Second, to Lindsey's credit,
he ran a great campaign. I think the assumption among a lot of people was that he'd solely wage an air war, but I've been impressed with the way he also ran a traditional, grassroots-focused campaign in addition to a compelling broadcast message. And Lindsey himself spent a lot of time on the ground here holding events and interacting one-on-one with voters," Sawyer added.
Graham debated his opponents for the first and only time this past weekend."
John Fund- "Eric Cantor’s loss is historic. No sitting House majority leader has lost an election since the office was created in 1899. While Cantor’s loss was a stunning surprise, the warning signals were around for a while:
1.
Cantor managed to muddle his message on immigration. His direct-mail pieces claimed he was foursquare against amnesty. But the newspapers covering Washington, D.C., quoted him as saying he was seeking a compromise with President Obama on immigration. Voters resolved the seeming contradiction by deciding to vote out their establishment congressman.
2. The majority leader outspent his opponent, David Brat, by $2.5 million to $40,000. Much of that money went to
negative ads against Brat that turned off voters and were so vitriolic as not to be credible.
3. Cantor was also hurt by a subterranean campaign by Democrats to convince their supporters to vote in the Republican primary against Cantor. Apparently, some of them did.
4.
Many constituents of Eric Cantor felt he had ignored them for years, rarely returning home and often ignoring them on key issues ranging from expanding Medicare prescription-drug benefits to TARP bank bailouts. The frustration boiled over at a May party meeting in his district, where Cantor was booed and his ally was ousted from his post as local party chair by a tea-party insurgent. “He did one thing in Washington and then tried to confuse us as to what he did when he came back to his district,” one Republican primary voter told me."
wouldn't mind seeing them both go...tough to get an entrenched Senator to move along though....term limits
