The Midterm Elections

[Cartmann99]

Ted Cruz got ridiculed for his answer, so now he's complaining about the media:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

It was a great run 

 

Also, flip alert 

 

[TuringMachine]

According to Trump and Fox we should be upset about the California primary results. Granted it might have been nice to have 2 democrats running for governor (which might have lead to low republican voter turnout come the general election), it's hard to be too upset. It was looking dicey for a bit but it looks like we got 1 democrat advancing in all the districts we're trying to flip! 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/05/us/elections/results-california-new-jersey-iowa-primaries.html

[GreyhoundFan]

Stewart is a nutjob. He was the head of Dumpy's campaign in Va until he got fired for being too extreme. Scary, I know. Last year, he came within an inch of winning the Repug primary for governor.  Now, he's fighting to take on Tim Kaine for senator. The primary is next Tuesday. "Corey Stewart disavows ties to two white supremacists he once befriended"

Spoiler

As Corey A. Stewart has campaigned for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Virginia, he has sought help from nativist groups, complaining that his party’s establishment has tried to thwart his progress.

But that has led to a set of embarrassing episodes in which Stewart associated with white supremacists whom he later disavowed, saying he did not know about their beliefs at the time.

Most recently, Democrats and supporters of state Del. Nick Freitas (R-Culpeper) — Stewart’s chief opponent in Tuesday’s primary — have used social media to highlight a 17-month-old video of Stewart calling Paul Nehlen, an alt-right candidate for Congress in Wisconsin, his “personal hero,” while praising him for challenging House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

The video was shot on Jan 20, 2017 at the Virginia Women for Trump Ball and featured Stewart and Nehlen in tuxedos, exchanging compliments. It was the night Trump was inaugurated as president and before Nehlen posted a host of inflammatory comments on Twitter later in the year.

Those posts attacked Muslims and Jews, and one photoshopped the face of “Cheddar Man,” the dark-skinned man believed to be the first modern Briton, over a picture of Meghan Markle, England’s new Duchess of Sussex.

In the wake of those comments last December, Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, and other prominent conservatives cut ties with Nehlen, whose account Twitter permanently suspended in February.

Stewart, the chair of Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors, said he also cut ties with Nehlen and no longer considers him a hero.

“That was before he went nuts and started spewing a bunch of stupid stuff,” Stewart said earlier this week, about the video, adding that his campaign has removed any mention of Nehlen on its websites. “When he started saying all that crazy stuff, I wanted nothing to do with him after that.”

The blowback — coming in a week when the conservative America’s Liberty political action committee revealed in a federal filing that it plans to spend $225,000 on ads supporting Freitas before the election — shows the potential political price Stewart faces when flirting with the far-right fringes of his party.

It mirrors a problem Stewart had last year during his unsuccessful bid for the GOP nomination for governor. He said he regretted attending a news conference about Confederate monuments with alt-right activist Jason Kessler, who later organized a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville that erupted into violence and led to the death of a 32-year-old woman.

Stewart has said the news conference also occurred before he knew what Kessler was about.

Both connections have nonetheless haunted Stewart’s recent appearances — giving fuel to his political opponents who argue he has not rejected those ties forcefully enough and is damaging the party’s image in Virginia.

“I’m getting a little tired of the Republican Party getting slammed with these sort of accusations because someone like Corey Stewart can’t figure out who he should not be associating with,” Freitas said Wednesday. “This isn’t him getting caught in a picture with somebody. This is him proactively associating himself with these people.”

In response, Stewart’s campaign accused Freitas and other Republican critics of unfairly implying Stewart is guilty by association.

“It's sad to see establishment Republicans using leftists tactics of CNN — labeling rule-of-law conservatives racists and bigots — to advance the very same open-border, pro-amnesty agenda the left wants here in Virginia,” the campaign said.

Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political-science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, said Stewart has shown great political skill in wooing conservative voters through his call to protect Confederate monuments and, recently, an appearance in Richmond, where he called Republicans “flimsy” for giving in on the fight over Medicaid expansion while holding up a roll of toilet paper.

But, should he win Tuesday, those tacts would likely backfire in a general election, Farnsworth said.

“His ability to generate headlines over such things as waiving toilet paper in Richmond and the Confederate legacy movement are poison with those moderate suburban voters who decide statewide elections in Virginia,” Farnsworth said. “The strategy that wins a Republican nomination may doom a general election candidacy.”

In addition to Freitas, Stewart is also competing with E.W. Jackson, a Chesapeake minister who is making his third bid for statewide office. All three men are Trump admirers.

But Stewart has portrayed himself as an anti-establishment candidate and the only person who can turn out Trump voters in November in a general election race against Sen. Tim Kaine (D), who is seeking reelection to a second term.

Stewart is a big confederate supporter, frequently waxing nostalgic about "our" southern history. He's from Minnesota.

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[Destiny]

On 6/6/2018 at 1:22 PM, TuringMachine said:

According to Trump and Fox we should be upset about the California primary results. Granted it might have been nice to have 2 democrats running for governor (which might have lead to low republican voter turnout come the general election), it's hard to be too upset. It was looking dicey for a bit but it looks like we got 1 democrat advancing in all the districts we're trying to flip! 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/05/us/elections/results-california-new-jersey-iowa-primaries.html

#teamnewsom #thatsmyguy 

I was hoping for an all D governor ticket, but the republican has practically no shot, so that's good. Sadly, my district has no chance of electing a Democrat, but a girl has to have her dreams. 

 

[VixenToast]

Our primary was a month ago, but I just have to share how excited I am at the results.

kinda. It is Nebraska. Lol.

Alrighty, FJers, as you probably don't remember I took one for the team two months ago and switched to Republican in the hopes of ousting the current Governor. Eff you, Nebraska GOP for not opening primaries to anyone but R's. Eff you. My candidate lost by many points, as I had expected, but she got more votes than we had expected as well! The Democratic Party of Nebraska wouldn't let her run as a democrat. But Nebraska is a red state, so anyone can run as a Republican, even a progressive, socially-liberal, fiscally-moderate nobody who dislikes Trump can run as a Republican in my state. Sigh.

She also ran totally grassroots. No big donors, not even any commercials or ads. Just door knocking, yard signs, and Facebook. She got 31,000 votes. That's a lot for someone who did her campaign from the ground up. Mind you, Ricketts got 137,000. 

I want you to remember that number, 31,000, and know that many were like me, we switched from one party to another just to vote for Krystal in the primary. Which comes in handy trying to figure out the November outcome. Around 90,000 Democrats voted in the D governor primary, plus 31,000 means we need 20,000 more votes for the D candidate. Also, R Senator Deb Fischer got around 127,000 votes herself, so adding the 31,000 to the Dems 90,000 gets us closer. Not inspiring, but it gives some hope. Some.

Im happy to say I am a resident of Nebraska Congressional District 2 (hereafter known as NE-02) who saw a progressive democratic WOMAN beat a moderate democratic man. Kara Eastman v Don Bacon now. I wish her luck and I've signed up to knock on doors for her.

She is so gutsy too. She challenged Don Bacon, a former (and decorated?) Airman, to run his reelection campaign against her with the Ar Force Core Values in mind. If you don't know what they are, I recommend you look them up! Oh, I adore her. She challenged him to not run a mudslinging, dirty campaign. Hahahaha. She is kickass!

[AmazonGrace]

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[47of74]

Is he trying to lose on purpose?

Quote

Seth Grossman, who surprisingly won the Republican primary in New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District last week, is already drawing some unwanted attention in a race widely viewed as a Democratic pickup opportunity in November.

In a video captured by American Bridge Political Action Committee, a liberal group, Grossman said: “The whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap and un-American."

The video, first provided to The Inquirer, was reportedly recorded at a campaign forum event in April.

“Now what diversity has become, it's been an excuse by Democrats, communists, and socialists, basically, to say that we’re not all created equal; that some people, if somebody is lesser qualified, they will get a job anyway or they’ll get into college anyway because of the tribe that they’re with, what group, what box they fit into,” Grossman continued in the footage.

 

[AmazonGrace]

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[Cartmann99]

On 6/7/2018 at 2:01 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Stewart is a big confederate supporter, frequently waxing nostalgic about "our" southern history. He's from Minnesota.

 I'm still expecting you to post an article one day about Stewart buying an old plantation house, dressing up like Colonel Sanders, and inviting people over for drinks on the veranda while he talks about how his people suffered during the War of Northern Aggression .

I'm sure the majority of the folks in Minnesota are glad to be rid of him.

[GreyhoundFan]

Stewart won (barely) the Repug primary for senate in Va.  This means we are in for a nasty summer and fall, because he loves toxic ads and crap. I sincerely hope Tim Kaine beats the crap out of him in the general election in November.

Quote

WASHINGTON — Prince William County Board Chair Corey Stewart, a bombastic supporter of President Donald Trump, has won the Virginia GOP primary in the U.S. Senate race in a narrow victory over Virginia Del. Nick Freitas.

Stewart faces Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democrats’ 2016 vice presidential nominee and former Virginia governor, who is seeking a second term.

Speaking to his supporters gathered Tuesday night  in Warrenton, Virginia, Freitas conceded the race and pledged to support Stewart in the general election.

The race between Stewart and Freitas remained close throughout the night as ballots were counted. The unofficial results listed on the Virginia Department of Elections website reported Stewart took 44.78 percent of the vote compared to 43.15 percent for Freitas.

Conservative minister E.W. Jackson, of Chesapeake, garnered about 12 percent of the vote.

Long considered a bellwether swing state, Virginia has become more reliably Democratic in statewide contests. Hillary Clinton carried the state in 2016, and Gov. Ralph Northam defeated Republican Ed Gillespie last fall by 9 percentage points.See live results for all the U.S. House and Senate primary races in Virginia.

The extent to which the GOP Senate candidates have tied themselves to President Donald Trump has played a key role during a campaign that has turned viciously personal at times.

Stewart, an early Trump supporter, had pledged to be “the biggest supporter of President Trump in the United States Senate” and has criticized Freitas for being insufficiently supportive of the president.

He called Freitas “Never Trump Nick” in a radio ad released last week.

Freitas, who has served in Virginia’s House of Delegates for two terms, was seen as more of an establishment Republican with a noted libertarian streak.

In an email to supporters last week Freitas blasted Stewart for what he called lapses in judgment and for engaging in the “dog-whistling of White supremacists, anti-Semites, and racists.”

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Flip Alert: 

 

[Cartmann99]

I keep imagining someone asking Pence and Mother how they feel about sharing their party with Mr. Hof. 

Dennis Hof, Nevada's most famous pimp, wins GOP primary

Quote

Pimp Dennis Hof, the owner of half a dozen legal brothels in Nevada and star of the HBO adult reality series "Cathouse," won a Republican primary for the state Legislature on Tuesday, ousting a three-term lawmaker.

Hof defeated hospital executive James Oscarson. He'll face Democrat Lesia Romanov in November, and will be the favored candidate in the Republican-leaning Assembly district.

Hof celebrated his win at a party in Pahrump with Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss at his side. 

"It's all because Donald Trump was the Christopher Columbus for me," Hof told the Associated Press in a phone call. "He found the way and I jumped on it." 

Hof, who wrote a book titled "The Art of the Pimp," has dubbed himself "The Trump of Pahrump," and held a rally with longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Hof was in the limelight in 2015, when former NBA player Lamar Odom was found unconscious at Hof's Love Ranch brothel in Crystal, Nevada, after a four-day, $75,000 stay.

If Hof wins in November, he wouldn't be the only brothel owner in elected office — Lance Gilman, the owner of the famous Mustang Ranch in northern Nevada, is a Storey County Commissioner.

Voters in November will be voting on closing down brothels at least one of the seven Nevada counties where they're legally operating. The question will be on the ballot in Lyon County, where Hof owns four brothels. Activists are also gathering signatures to try to get to get measure on the ballot in Nye County, where Hof owns two more brothels in the desert outside the city of Pahrump.

He painted the anti-brothel efforts as political retribution that's tied to his opponent, but Oscarson and the referendum backers deny any connection.

Most brothels operate in rural areas of Nevada. They're banned in the counties that contain Las Vegas and Reno.

Hof said Tuesday he's downsizing his business by selling off some brothels to focus more on politics.

Oscarson and Hof previously faced off in 2016 when Hof ran for the seat as a Libertarian. Oscarson won with 60 percent of the vote.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope it kills the Repug party: "Trump just endorsed an apologist for white supremacy. That could hurt the GOP this fall."

Spoiler

President Trump appeared awfully eager to throw his support to Corey Stewart, the new GOP nominee for Senate in Virginia, despite the fact that he is an apologist for white supremacy who has been condemned by other Republicans. Trump, arriving back from abroad, tweeted his support for Stewart at 5:55 a.m., wishing him “Congratulations” for his “great victory,” and declaring that he has “a major chance of winning” against Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.

Trump, you may recall, took weeks before finally endorsing Roy Moore’s Senate candidacy in Alabama. Stewart, of course, is not Moore, who was an accused pedophile as well as an open bigot. But Stewart is himself so problematic that it’s not even clear the GOP establishment will back him: Last night, the National Republican Senatorial Committee said nothing. Yet Trump was very eager to declare his endorsement of Stewart. Perhaps this is not despite Stewart’s dalliances with white supremacists, but because of them.

Stewart prevailed last night in the Virginia GOP Senate primary by a slim margin over a former Green Beret who had the backing of the party establishment. Some Republicans immediately expressed dismay. Bill Bolling, the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, tweeted: “This is clearly not the Republican Party I once knew, loved and proudly served. Every time I think things can’t get worse they do, and there is no end in sight.”

Stewart is indeed a very bad actor. In the wake of the white supremacist rallies and the murder of a young woman in Charlottesville, Stewart blamed “half the violence” on the left and condemned fellow Republicans who apologized for the outcome as “weak,” claiming they had helped liberals associate neo-Nazis with the GOP and adding: “There was no reason to apologize.”

Stewart also flatly declared this about the violence: “I don’t believe that this is caused by white supremacy. I believe this is caused by two groups duking it out on the streets.”

Now Democrats are planning to try to tag the Republican Party with Stewart, much as they tried to do with Moore.

“This latest recruitment failure immediately becomes a massive headache for the NRSC and the national Republican Party,” David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, emailed me this morning. “They’ll have to decide the extent to which they will back him, even symbolically, and elevate him even further as a part of the Republican Party brand.”

It’s possible Stewart may become an issue in other Senate races as well, such as in Pennsylvania, a state where Trump narrowly won but the GOP nominee, Rep. Lou Barletta, is a die-hard Trump acolyte. “Every Republican candidate, including in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri, will be asked whether they stand with someone like Corey Stewart and want to serve with him,” a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania told me. “This will be an example of the Republican Party’s descent into Trumpism in its most vile form.”

Democratic operatives will likely try to force GOP candidates to take a position on Stewart. Of course, Republicans have a way out: They can simply ignore Stewart, as Brian Walsh, a former operative at the NRSC, told me today. “No other Republican candidate outside Virginia should feel any obligation to acknowledge his candidacy,” Walsh said. “He’s not going to be elected to the Senate. He should be a non-issue for them.”

But Republicans probably cannot avoid a renewed national discussion of what it means for their party that an apologist for white supremacy will now be their standard-bearer in a state that is already trending blue faster than it otherwise might because of demographic changes causing it to recoil violently from Trumpism, and what it means that the Republican president so enthusiastically endorsed him.

The GOP is Trump’s party

On this score, it’s worth looking back at an important but overlooked interview that Stephen K. Bannon, the keeper of the flame of Trumpism, gave to The Post. Bannon described Stewart as the “titular head of the Trump movement” in the commonwealth. Stewart lost the Virginia gubernatorial primary to Ed Gillespie, and Gillespie embraced a more careful version of Trumpist race-baiting, one rooted in a defense of Confederate statues and fearmongering about immigrant gang members.

But Bannon was very candid about the actual intention of Gillespie’s messaging. Bannon claimed (wrongly) that Gillespie would win and credited Gillespie’s use of “Trump-Stewart talking points,” in effect admitting that Gillespie was playing a disguised version of the same game Stewart plays, i.e., using racial provocations to stir up the Trumpist base.

In a way, Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of Stewart is itself a form of deliberate racial provocation. After all, Stewart’s claim that white supremacy didn’t cause the Charlottesville violence, and that “half” of it was caused by the left, shades heavily into Trump’s refusal to unambiguously condemn white supremacy by insisting that Charlottesville showcased hate and bigotry “on many sides.” On this matter, Trump and Stewart basically agree, and Trump is making that clear.

So the fact that GOP voters who overwhelmingly love Trump now picked Stewart is hardly a surprise. As another Republican candidate who won a primary last night by tying herself to Trump put it: “We are the party of President Donald J. Trump.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yup, it's Dumpy's party. Stewart is just the latest symptom of the disease.

[JMarie]

On 6/13/2018 at 6:10 AM, Cartmann99 said:

I keep imagining someone asking Pence and Mother how they feel about sharing their party with Mr. Hof. 

Dennis Hof, Nevada's most famous pimp, wins GOP primary

 

I came here to post about this.  I can't wait to see what kind of commercials his opponent comes up with.

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, JMarie said:

I came here to post about this.  I can't wait to see what kind of commercials his opponent comes up with.

It's totally cool. Mr. Hof is just Making America Great Again, and that's all that matters, no other values. If Mr. Hof were a Democrat, Pence would be the loudest voice calling for his arrest for immoral behavior or calling to prevent "his kind" from running for office.

[formergothardite]

The family value party supporting brothels. They have certainly gotten themselves into a pickle when it comes to acting like their morals are all high and mighty. 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, formergothardite said:

The family value party supporting brothels. They have certainly gotten themselves into a pickle when it comes to acting like their morals are all high and mighty. 

I'm imagining the Family Values Brothel where the workers and clients can't remove any of their clothes and only their hands can touch. Lots and lots of frenzied hand sex on a sofa while watching Jim Bakker try to sell you doom buckets.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

So you thought you could vote: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an excellent op-ed about what Stewart's primary win in VA means: "Corey Stewart is a walking train wreck"

Spoiler

This week, in our Washington, D.C., backyard, Corey Stewart, defender of the Confederacy and a Donald Trump on steroids, won the Republican Senate nomination in Virginia.

The neo-Nazi, white-supremacist commentary website the Daily St***er had this to say on the day after Stewart’s victory: “We are in charge now. The jig is up. This is the party of TRUMP the SAVIOR OF KOREA and DESTROYER OF CANADA. We’re also not tearing down anymore statues.”

Continuing: “You rushed that, Jews. You rushed it way too hard. Everyone knows that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves, and everyone saw your next move as you try to pull apart America piece by piece. No dice. We are picking up the remaining pieces and rebuilding America as a WHITE FREEDOM COUNTRY.”

Noting that Stewart probably won’t win against Democratic Sen . Tim Kaine, the Daily St***er concluded that Stewart’s GOP primary victory “is still very important as it shows that the conservatives in Virginia would prefer a RIDE OR DIE candidate supporting our great Confederate heroes rather than some Paul Ryanesque scumsucking [expletive].”

Fresh from his trip to Canada, where he ripped his britches at the Group of Seven summit, and Singapore, where he got snookered by Kim Jong Un, President Trump added his voice to the Daily St***er’s, tweeting congratulations to Stewart while taking a shot at Kaine — “a total stiff . . . who is weak on crime and borders, and wants to raise your taxes through the roof.”

However, unlike the Daily St***er, Trump said Stewart has “a major chance of winning.”

Let’s hope the Daily St***er is right and Trump is wrong. Stewart is a mean, nasty man and a walking train wreck.

Championing the Confederacy is the centerpiece of his campaign, along with demagoguing immigrants.

His fawning over Confederate monuments is nauseating.

My family — great-grandparents and their families in Culpeper, Va. — lived under the Confederate flag that Stewart honors. I found their names enshrined in records of the Culpeper County courthouse. They are listed among the property owned by white plantation owners with the surnames Colbert and Rixey. My family members were individually appraised and assigned monetary value along with the plows and land and animals that belonged to the slaveholders.

 People of my bloodline were not free to come and go in Stewart’s Confederacy. The monuments that he and his patron Donald Trump revere are dedicated to those white men in Ol’ Dixie who fought and died to preserve the system that kept my folks in bondage.

So, no, I don’t value what could come with a Stewart victory. The thought of him in the U.S. Senate — doing Trump’s bidding, lionizing generals who led a bloody war against the Union, fear- mongering (“Stop our great nation from being overrun by illegal aliens and the crime, drugs, human trafficking, poverty and misery they bring with them,” says a Stewart news release) — is galling.

I’m sickened by the prospect of Stewart crossing the Potomac to join forces with the party of Trump on Capitol Hill to Make America White Again.

We shouldn’t stand by and let it happen. Some of us sat on our hands, and butts, in 2016 because the Democratic presidential nominee wasn’t pure as the driven snow or stainless as a steel pipe. She had backbone and a better mind than her opponent, but that wasn’t good enough for the true believers. Didn’t work out so well, did it?

This time around, there should be a better outcome. Corey Stewart foreshadows what’s to come if Virginians don’t keep him out of Washington. Corey Stewart is only a river away.

 

[AmazonGrace]

So you thought you could vote