NYT/AP: Republicans Failed to Woo Top Candidates

[DeepModem Mom]

Republicans Fail to Woo Top Candidates
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 30, 2006

....A Web site 100 days out of date is hardly the worst of it for (Florida GOP Senate candidate) Katherine) Harris, whose political wounds, many of them self-inflicted, make her the poster woman for Senate Republican recruiting woes. Missed opportunities, stumbles and bad breaks in a half-dozen states or more in 2005 have tilted the map toward the Democrats in ways that are still unfolding.

''In every single state where they were challenging one of our incumbents they did not get their first choice and in many cases they did not get their second,'' said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, head of the Democratic campaign committee....

***

Apart from Florida, Republicans failed to get their preferred recruits in North Dakota, a heavily Republican state, as well as Washington, Nebraska, Michigan, West Virginia and Vermont. Several GOP officials concede the party's prospects are hampered as a result. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid open criticism of North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who chairs their campaign committee....

***

Overall, (Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Brian Nick) said, ''Recruiting for Republicans has been very successful,'' with strong challengers for Democratic-held seats in New Jersey, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska and Washington.

Public and private polls show Democrats winning in each, handily in some....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-GOP-Recruiting.html

[Warpy]

1. It turns out a lot of GOPs in the candidate pipeline have

consciences and don't want to be in the position of enabling the little emperor, how horribly inconvenient!

The real story is that the GOP has been losing governorships. Governors have the best chance of winning the presidency, so either they have to dig up an old crock who was defeated a decade ago, or they have to go with Jebbie.

[theanarch]

3. personally i doubt that "conscience"...

...has a damn thing to do with it; practical politics--as in, you ain't gettin' elected dog killer as a Repuke, is the more likely answer.

[MADem]

2. Ole Liddy done lost her touch (did she ever have one?)

Apart from Florida, Republicans failed to get their preferred recruits in North Dakota, a heavily Republican state, as well as Washington, Nebraska, Michigan, West Virginia and Vermont. Several GOP officials concede the party's prospects are hampered as a result. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid open criticism of North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who chairs their campaign committee.

And NYT has finally broached the suject of KittyKat, the flat-out, whackjob Nutso:

She's had four campaign managers, and some former aides describe a woman given to temper tantrums.

In a sign of organizational shortcomings, her office phone was answered by a professional answering service one recent Sunday, less than a month before the primary.

Former staff say she didn't tell them about receiving a subpoena from the Justice Department as part of a federal investigation.

...Recently she told Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, that separation of church and state is ''a lie'' and God and the Founding Fathers did not intend the country to be ''a nation of secular laws.''

In a state with millions of Jewish voters, the campaign backpedaled. Campaign manager Bryan Rudnick said that as a grandson of Holocaust survivors, he knew that Harris ''encourages people of all faiths to engage in government so that our country can continue to thrive.''

Despite numerous entreaties from Republicans, Harris has passed up numerous invitations to quit...