Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who is in a tough re-election race, signaled that she would “support” Mr. Trump but not “endorse” him, as a spokeswoman put it, a rhetorical contortion that other Republicans repeated privately.
Spoken like a lawyer, but hardly a profile in courage. Will lining up with a misogynist help her campaign against popular Governor Maggie Hassan?
Please share widely!
I’m just trying wrap my head around the pretzel of her “logic”.
Is this how she hopes to gain votes that might otherwise go to Ms. Hassan? Is she thinking that Trump voters who think Ms. Hassan is “too liberal” (or whatever it is that Trump supporters do instead of think) will be swayed by this?
If I’m one of those “angry white working-class men” that we’ve argued about so much here, is this sophistry going to make Ms. Ayotte more appealing to me?
I’m thinking that she’s already got the vote of NH Republicans who turn out to vote. I thinking that I doubt that many of those “angry white working-class men” are very drawn towards Ms. Hassan.
So can someone explain why Ms. Ayotte thinks this does anything? Perhaps it’s the best of the various choices facing her. I can see that she might have a price to pay in the Senate for saying that she does NOT support Mr. Trump.
I can’t help but conclude that the audience of this move is fellow sausage-makers rather than actual NH voters.
She wants to avoid losing votes from Trump supporters without being tied to Trump.
It’s a long shot but what choices does she have?
And it could work. She’s hardly exhausted this line either.
Here’s a question for you: How many Granite State voters are there who would have voted for her had she been more forthrightly against McTrumpface?
It might not be a whole lot, actually.
But it’ll be interesting to see how Ayotte fares. She’s done a lot to alienate swing voters and conservatives alike these last few years. She’s in a better spot than Mark Kirk and a worse spot than Rob Portman.
Polling suggests Clinton crushes Trump in New Hampshire. Most of that polling is old, but an April WMUR/UNH poll has Clinton 50, Trump 31.
But it is certainly possible that a lot of bubble/purple state GOP senate incumbents are in for rough sledding this cycle. Interesting times…
…it will be with the other party on the losing end this time.
NH has been trending blue lately. My proverbial money is on Clinton.
Beating his rival by a range of 4 to 9 points each time.
If the Democratic plan is to put all their chips on women and minorities while giving flip flop lip service to the rest, well, this election will be a cake walk for The Donald.
If Hillary is smart, she’ll agree to many of the demands of Bernie and maybe his independent supporters will vote for her (all of his Democratic supporters – including yours truly will). Independents are the key.
If the Democrats are smart, they will simply run with the real deal, the genuine article, and win the election with Sanders.
In any case, my prediction is that if we are left with a Clinton or Trump in the White House, this is guaranteed to be a one term candidate unless something really weird happens.
You think Ted Cruz is any better than Trump on women’s issues or any more appealing to women? I don’t think you can really draw any conclusions from that.
Well to do women in Massachusetts and elsewhere will no doubt vote Hillary and be offended by Trump’s frequent gaffes. No surprise there. But for those women who can not afford the status quo of stagnant wages and other economic misery that neither party has been able to address honestly, they may give the guy a pass and vote for him.
Perhaps there’s polling data to inform our various speculations about this.
He’ll be 78 in four years.
When is gaining with independent woman a greater amount than losing some of your male Republican base? In NH that’s probably a pretty close number, and I’m sure the Ayotte campaign has worked them (with Garland as well). That was an easy one for Baker, and we’re talking two years from now for him.
Latest polls have her +1% compared to a few months of +5%, so a tie.
There’s going to be tens of millions of negative ads in this campaign, so she was going to get double barrel blasts on every issue, not just Trump.
…though they probably will just keep getting badgered by the press if they do. There is a distinction I think between support and endorse. The former is what you do as a private citizen – cast your own vote for a candidate and possible donate money from your personal funds. Endorse is what you do as a politician – allow that candidate access to your lists, appear with the candidate at events, and send out fundraising missives on behalf of the candidate.
Most folks don’t think too carefully about the difference between “support” and “endorse” because, well, they’re both suggestive of making some effort to achieve the same outcome.
When a politician insists that she is doing one and not the other, she comes off as representing the worst attribute we assign a politician — suggesting two opposite actions with the same set of words. Folks tend to think of this as a typical politician lie, and they usually ain’t wrong.
she should be prepared during the campaign to be asked whether she “supports” each and every one of Trump’s various racist, misogynistic, and other bewildering statements previously made and sure to be made from now until November.
“Please enumerate the five most important policy statements made by Mr. Trump that differentiate him from Ms. Clinton and make you support him”.
I’d like NH voters to know what, aside from his party affiliation, it takes to gain the support of Ms. Ayotte.
Than an outrage-a-thon
is far superior to an outrage-a-thon in terms of it being an actual, rational question we might ask candidates during a rational campaign.
As a practical matter, though, In the upcoming campaign I want every Republican everywhere — up and down the ballot — to have to answer for every ridiculous statement Trump makes. The Republican Party is vulnerable right now; they have to make some choices about what sort of party they want to be moving forward out of 2016. Either embracing or disavowing Trumpism — something Republican officer-holders need to go on record as doing one or the other — will go a long way to determining what the next iteration of the Republican Party looks like. That has implications for all of us on both sides of the aisle.
I am just concerned that once the outrage and high dudgeon is dialed up to 11, then there isn’t really anywhere to go from that, and the effect of it will diminish over time. Especially if the candidate is the one who is outraged all the time, she risks seeming like a humorless scold.
Of course, every time he says or does something, whatever the offended group of the day will come calling: “why haven’t you denounced Trump on XYZ?” which means there will be constant pressure for various Dem candidates to issue denunciations-of-the-day, or risk pissing of parts of their base, who love love love to be outraged and offended at stuff.
HRC and other high-profile (Senate) Dem candidates have a bit of a dilemma there, and it will be interesting to see how they handle it. Hopefully, with a bit of humor. The HRC tweet about the taco bowls yesterday is encouraging.
Someone with credibility as a critic of the status quo, whose denunciations of Trump won’t seem defensive or opportunistic. Someone who is genuinely passionate.
If only there were someone like that.
They’ll have a couple debates and the rest of the action will be media.
Is that every time the media tells me that Trump does not have a chance and will go away soon, his support grows and that every time a party insider attacks him, his support grows It’s almost as if the electorate is fed up with a media that just cares about the corporations that own them and the party insiders who are also owned by the corporations and Wall Street gangs.
How does Hillary manage to appeal to either of the aforementioned scenarios? She is adored by the media and is as corporate as one can get, at least that’s the perception from a large section of the electorate.
Is it time for yet another Hillary re-boot?
You think GOP primary voters went Trump because they are opposed to media corporations? That doesn’t even make sense.
Sure do. They are opposed to the status quo, Rachel Maddow and her MSNBC, the “Liberal Media” and all that….just ask them.