The saddest part about the negative turn Billy Long and his handlers took at the end of the Seventh Distriict Congressional campaign is that it wasn't necessary
Billy Long had the election won the minute he first uttered those three magical words- "I'm fed up."
The phrase was ridiculed in many of the comments on this blog and elsewhere, but like any catchy slogan, it grows on you, and in this case, it resonated with people who are fed up with the status quo in government. It was an agreeable set of circumstances that brought BIlly Long to the winner's circle tonight.
First was Kit Bond's decision to retire and not seek the Seventh District nomination.
Second, no big name candidate (early rumors had placed Matt Blunt and Sarah Steelman in the race) surfaced. While Jack Goodman and Gary Nodler are known, they were by no means household names when this campaign started.
Third- How can anyone explain the distant, removed campaign Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore ran? Moore was the only candidate who could have damaged Long in his home area, but he never sought funding. He made the circuit of all of the forums and that was about it. An early poll showed that Moore had the best name recognition among the Seventh District candidates. I questioned that poll, but it does show what an advnntage Moore squandered.
Fourth- Can anyone doubt that what is happening in Washington, D. C. and across this country played a big role in Billy Long's victory? The ongoing battle over health care and the emergence of the tea party movement showed a strong resentment toward politics as usual. When Billy Long said he was fed up, everyone knew what he was talking about. And when his strongest opponents were both men who were currently serving in office (and Goodman, who has two more years to go in his Senate term will continue to do so), Long was able to hit hard on career politicians and the resentment resonated with the voters.
I have already heard some say that things would have been different had it been a two-man battle between Long and Goodman or Long and Nodler.
Sorry to disillusion those who want to imagine a world of what ifs but in this year of the tea parties, the year of so-called Obamacare, rising deficits, war in Afghanistan, and a gulf filled with oil, it was the perfect time for someone who did not look or sound like a regular candidate to rise to the top.
Whether Billy Long can ride the Fed Up Express all the way to Washington is less certain, but give credit where credit was due. He took the best Jack Goodman and Gary Nodler could throw at him and it is those two who will be on the sidelines while Billy Long represents the Republican Party in the general election.
11 comments:
Being in Springfield, I have no idea what happened to Moore. Had he sought funding, he could have been competitive, especially in the Springfield area, where most of the votes are. He can come off a bit condescending, but he is a smart guy who is sharp. He is in his last days as prosecutor here. No idea what his plans are past then...he was probably the best candidate out of them all and got my vote.
Moore entered the race before Long. He lost his base when Long entered. He probably knew it was best to keep a low profile, protect his good name and try to serve the public again in the future. Moore and Wisdom are also winners in this campaign. Crybaby Goodman and his Lawrence County Brahmins join Nodler as the biggest losers.
Being fed up is good, having good ideas and creative answers to real challenges is better. Hopefully Republicans who recognize how retarded Long is will rally behind Eckersley and correct this mistake before it plops in Washington.
Let's not pretend Billy Long is the mastermind here. The guy has a few catch phrases, a cool hat, a butt-load of money, and some sleaze behind him pulling the strings and feeding him lines.
I'm a citizen. I'm fed up. And I have never written a legislative bill.
In the world of Billy Long and his un-thinking supporters, that makes me qualified to be in Congress. Granted, I don't ahve a big hat, I know the Constitution cover-to-cover and I don't talk like a hillbilly, so my appeal in the 7th might be lacking compared to Billy, but it's exactly BECAUSE Washington is the way it is that we needed to send someone who would know what the hell he was doing. We took the precious right to send one person, just one, to represent US -- THIS district and not a senator who has to represent the entire State, and we squandered it on a slogan-spewing clown.
To every Billy voter: if you ran a business and a guy intereviewed for an open position and told you he had no experience doing the job, but he was a citizen and had the I-9 to prove it, and he thought your business had enough experience to choke a horse, would you, in your wildest dreams, hire him because he looked and talked like you? What if he also spent some of his interview time telling lies about the other interviewees in the lobby and dismissed tham as being "career ________" (whatever you business does)? And what if you caught him sneaking peeks at his phone for the answers to your questions hoping his handlers knew the answer?
That's just what you did. Good job.
It doesn't matter now. Long will probably lose to the Democrat in November. The important thing here at Southern was the crashing defeat of Mr. know-it-all Gary Nodler.
We'll never forget what the conspiring trio (Nodler, Douglas, Bruce) did to our college.
Enjoy it, Gary!
Turner and the chattering masses of asses are exactly why we are in the mess we are today. We listened to them tell us how we needed to be tolerant and so we were and the end result is what Billy Long ran against -- these buffoons with their degrees and compulsive liberalism which got us to where we are today.
The vote for Billy Long was anti-intellectual, anti-you-fools-know-best, and anti-business-as-usual. It was a referendum against you -- and everyone knows it. Which is why you are all whining about how we will be sorry that we jumped off the train to nowhere good.
Now you fools might well have screwed up the works to where there is no recovery. But not to worry. We still will blame you nevertheless. If Billy Long don't cut it, then we will replace the fat clown with a corn-pone hitler who is smart and ruthless enough to make you disgorge what you stole, make you pay for your crimes in which you dared make yourselves our masters and then did nothing but evil and render you all down to feed what remains for the rest of us. Billy Long is merely a caretaker for a coming grim time, a herald that your kind are no longer in power, and that we are 'fed up' and wanting to assign the blame on your parasitic and worthless evil kind. Billy Long is merely a way point between a decaying democracy and a dictatorship.
We need a strong man.
I'm not for sure but it appears Billy Long won because he got more votes than any of the other candidates.
Heil Billy!!!:
You could well be right. "Liberal"/Progressive governance of the US has had a long run, since at least Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and it has abjectly failed, for as Margret Thatcher put it, sooner or later you run out of other people's money.
Most of the people in the country do not feel they are represented by our ruling class:
When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences "undecided," "none of the above," or "tea party," these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate -- most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class's prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans -- a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents -- lack a vehicle in electoral politics.
This is and will continue to have all sorts of consequences, of which Billy's primary victory is just one example.
But will the new people in government like him be able to pull us back from the brink in time? We'd best hope so, or your worse case fears are likely to come true when America's chickens come home to roost.
Cotton
I find it mildly amusing that people blame everything on the liberals. It seems as though both parties are responsible for the mess that we are. In all fairness, the majority of the past 30 years the country has had a republican at the helm. As a conservative republican, I'm fed up with the displacement of blame! Throw'em all out. Red and Blue.
Cotton
It's really sad how voters flock to meaningless catch phrases like hope and change and fed up to choose their candidates. Without any look at the record, character, and leadership abilities, we continue to learn the average American voter is a simpleton, a consumer addicted to a catch phrase, whether it be the King of Beers for watered down crappy lager or fed up for another poker politician already bought by the establishment.
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