Thursday, November 5, 2015

Did Matt Bevin just write the new Republican play book?

I confess to having given up on Matt Bevin. I certainly didn't see this one coming and why should I have? Here is a guy who skips fund raisers, doesn't begin running campaign ads until late September, fights with his own party. He then loses the support of the Republican Governors Association which temporarily quit running ads in Kentucky. Besides that he does weird things. The Daily Kos wrote:
But Bevin is an unusually fucked-up piece of work: On Sept. 25, he personally stopped in at Democratic Party headquarters in Frankfort to complain about a nearby billboard that reads, "You still can't trust Matt Bevin"—and, Democrats say, he even yelled at the receptionist. This is not made up. This is Matt Bevin. And maybe, just maybe, Republicans have had enough.
Wrong, evidently the Republican voters, if not the national party, and independents loved it. It sounds like something Donald Trump would do!
Two polls taken just weeks prior to the election had Bevin losing to Conway by 5 points. A third poll called the race a tie but Wednesday morning showed Bevin winning by 9 percentage points. In retrospect Jack Conway did not run a typical Democratic campaign either. When Alison Lundergan Grimes took on Mitch McConnell both Bill and Hillary Clinton all but took up residence in the Bluegrass State but not this time. They are as toxic as Barrack Obama. And Obamacare?
Kentucky was one of the few states that actually ran a competent Obamacare exchange. Governor Steve Beshear expanded Medicaid to the glee of national, if not Kentucky, Democrats. The media assured the nation that Kentuckians were wild about Obamacare. Bevin ran on the promise to junk the exchange, Kynect, and roll back the Medicaid expansion. John Kasich could have told him that was a sure way to lose but, no, Bevin was too head strong to talk to.
Democrats could live with the loss of another governor, in fact they should be quite used to that by now, but what does this portend for 2016? Possible disaster. Kentucky voted for Bill Clinton twice but now he is too toxic for local television. Obama, who lost more than 40% of the primary vote to undeclared in the last presidential primary here is still probably more popular than his policies which the Democrats want to expand upon. If this Kentuckian orneriness catches on nationally it's going to be a bleak November for Hillary and the Democrats.

No comments:

Post a Comment