So, will the NH GOP blame the Liberty and Freedom wing of the Party if Havenbagger and Brown lose? - Granite Grok

So, will the NH GOP blame the Liberty and Freedom wing of the Party if Havenbagger and Brown lose?

Havenbagger – yeah, I chose it specifically for Walt Havenstein.  Can’t take credit for coming up with it but given his absolutely arrogant non-apology for his teabagger comment (for which MANY in the Liberty & Freedom wing of the Party have asked (some even very politely after pointing out the PR harm it will do to his campaign, but were refused), it seems appropriate.  And all it would have taken would have been a polite “I’m sorry” (even if, as he has claimed, he didn’t know what it meant).  Even after having explained to him that that many in the L&F movement have taken it to be the same as if he had called us all “the N word”; he hasn’t apologized

Subnote: IF he had used the N-word unknowingly instead,  would he have NOT apologized given how many consider that a slur of the highest degree as well simply because of what he has held about his teabagger comment, that he just didn’t know?

And during dinner, the new Scott Brown ad came on – full bore

PRO-CHOICE and full bore I WILL FUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD (Havenstein is half-bore on the same issue; publicly pro-choice but personally pro-live – a position that can be taken as being either pandering for votes or an absolutely a schizophrenic stance.  So, has Brown just infuriated a goodly (and perhaps, sufficiently large) number of the Conservative and religious base with this bold and public stances?  Sure, it has not been hidden – but a lot of folks have said it is a deal breaker for them.  Havenstein is the same way or do they not care? Why do I ask?  The latest polling data.

Andy Smith’s group has Maggie “The Red” up by 10% (4.2% MOE – Margin of Error) but that is down from a former 17% lead.  Three and a half weeks out, could that close?  Brown vs Shaheen is already that close – almost within the MOE: Shaheen with a 6% lead over Brown (with an MOE of 4.2%)

And add in Brown’s stance on guns and consider another group of voters ticked off.  Sure, the only poll that matter is Election Day and while there is lots of GOP happy talk about the NH House, I do remind people of the massive GOTV effort that made the Dems so successful in 2012 – 100,000 same day registrations that wiped out the NH GOP in the House.  Add to that, given how a couple of Republican Senators voted on the Democrat agenda items, effectively the NH GOP lost the Senate as well, reduced to “make it less worse” mode.  Sure, this is not 2012 but the NH GOP has done a lot to do the “Mitch McConnell Crush Them Shuffle” to the L&F wing here – I am sure that it makes more than a few folks upset that the Stark / Langdon movement has not died down.  Additionally, I’ve heard some stories and rumors about the Establishment using both the stick and the carrot to get the L&Fers to fall into line (e.g., threaten folks’ future political careers or bribe others with money).  Seen and heard it all before – how dare you not support us?

Mostly because we’re tired of the same old thing – and this time, the percentage of L&F Folks may, indeed, be sufficient to cause both Brown and Havenbagger to lose – it may come down to enough people that the NH GOP has ticked off to say “screw you – why support you when you keep double crossing us”?  That the only good that we seem to be is cannon fodder for votes. After all if the NH GOP, in an effort to protect both Brown and Havenstein, have deliberately failed in putting up the revised NH GOP Platform on the idea it would hurt these two.  They’ve made the calculus, I guess, that their base should be second best to their candidates.  And that base realizes it and among more than some, anger is building up.

So, the Establishment is playing the percentages – and playing the percentages that the L&F will fall for the same old lines of “But the Democrats will win”!  Gee, given that Republicans gave us Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion which DOES mean that they have also given us a broad based tax in 3 years to pay for it when the Feds stop, how much worse can it get? They’ve already set the table to be just another New England State – the NH Advantage has left the room.

So after Election Day, if the top of the ticket loses, will the NH GOP blame the L&F for the loss even as they are playing the percentages that they don’t matter?  Sure will, they will do.  And if they do, what will it be like in 2016 after they have alienated even more folks that used to be their base?

Well, these are deal breakers for me (and I have been public on this as well) – why vote for someone that slurs me, folks that have no problem in new lives torn apart in the womb, and why vote for the other one that probably would severely restrict my Second Amendment rights?  I don’t Trust either one of them.  The question is, have they turned off enough folks like me so they have killed their own chances?

Stark and Langdon

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