That bizarre Senate race in South Carolina
A couple of polls have shown up which have the previously completely off the radar screen South Carolina Senate race between McCain syncoprant Lindsey Graham and obscure pilot Bob Conley within single digits. When these things show up, I tend to dismiss poll number one as aberation, and take credence of two polls showing the same 8 or 9 percent result. In this case, I did regard that first poll as plausible, only because the American Conservative magazine wrote up Conley and has reiterated how much they would really like to see him win, which in and of itself isn’t anything (a rather small political magazine with neither a particularly large readership and not impactful on the inner political scene of the political cognitsia) but was indicative of some amount of activity and you could gather a right-wing populist revolt brewing, demanding the ouster of Senator Graham.
Bob Conley is sort of the Bizarro Bob Kelleher — except Kelleher is down by, like 40 points in Montana, and Conley is down by 8. I don’t quite know what one is supposed to do with Conley. He was a “Ron Paul Republican” who won a Democratic Primary in a race that was supposed to decide who would be the sacrifical lamb. Indeed, I gather the problem with these poll numbers are they are made up of combustable parts, for all that talk of some weird “Left / Right Coalition against the Entrenched Establishment” talk. The formula for a Bob Conley victory is some unholy combination of gelling the Democrats with them gathering together for a straight down the ballot vote, and of winning over that large mass of Republicans who think Lindsey Graham is a traitor for, in particular, Immigration Reform — less so but still potent a re-entrenchment of Isolationist sentiment. Can these things hold together?
The disparity of money at hand for the two candidates, at the end of the primaries? Graham: $3.6 million. Conley: $938. And with that, Conley trails by 8. Bob Conley would probably be worthless in the Democratic Caucus, but may be entertaining — I suppose. Donate $25 and it would be a significant haul for Bob Conley. It’s all moot — I suspect at the end of the day Graham will win by no less than fifteen points — next time South Carolina Democrats will just have to find somebody with the last name of “Hollings” to piggy-back off of the last Democratic Senator for the state. In the meantime we have a snap-shot of just how bad things are for the Republican Party that a Lindsey Graham is sweating a against an opponent with less than a thousand dollars.
I am looking forward to the Meet the Press debate. Meet the Press has, since 2002, hosted Senate race debates for some of the most competitive races, and I must note that they have hosted ones for races more lop-sided than this one.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Bob Conley is the real deal! He will represent South Carolinians, uslike GrahamNESTY! We all need to vote and support the Patriot Bob Conley for US Senate, not only for SC but for the rest of the United States!
goto http://www.BobConleyforSenate.com and donate $25 or what you can afford!
THE COUNTRY NEEDS HIM!
September 27th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I agree!
Bob Conley is for us to stop policing the world–something liberals and conservatives alike agree on. Of course, that will require an orderly, phased-in redeployment of troops from Iraq and eventually Afghanistan as areas are turned over to the government troops but it has to happen eventually anyway or we’ll be over there for 60+ years like in Germany and Japan. THEN maybe we can pull out of those countries and others and let them take care of themselves as sovereign countries are expected to do.
Bob Conley is against corporate welfare–especially the idiotic and unconstitutional bail-out of rich people and their corporations that corporate whore Lindsey Graham is pushing like drugs for taxpayer money addicts. Something like 85% of SC is against it.
Bob Conley is against the “free trade” agreements that, for some reason, take hundreds of pages to describe meaning, of course, they’re just more loophole ridden giveaways to corporations. The fascism has to stop! Lindsey Graham apparently thinks Adolf Hitler won WWII from the way he’s acting.
I’ve seen unexpected things happen before and remember, this is the state that kicked out Governors Beasley and Hodges both for stabbing folks in the back on a number of issues.