Pushing People Back To the Middle
By digby
Amid reports that Rand Paul teabaggers are intimidating voters in Kentucky (surprise!), this makes pretty good sense:
The likely Rand Paul victory in the Kentucky Republican primary today should give Democrats a very good chance of winning in the fall because supporters of Trey Grayson, Paul’s main opponent, really don’t like him.
Some primaries play out in such a way that party loyalists view several of the candidates favorably and just choose the one they like best. That was very much the case with the recent Democratic contest in North Carolina. But in Kentucky we find that Paul’s supporters hate Grayson, and that even more Grayson’s supporters hate Paul.
53% of likely Grayson voters for today have an unfavorable opinion of Paul to only 23% with a positive opinion of him. More importantly though just 40% of Grayson voters say they’ll support Paul in the general election if he wins the Republican nomination with 43% explicitly saying they will not.
There’s another Kentucky primary today in the Democratic Party between a Blue Dog reactionary and a good candidate named Jack Conway who, if he wins, could be the beneficiary of this Paulite teabagger overreach. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Kentucky could be a pick-up in November.
Update: there’s also this crazy crap. I guess they figure ACORN’s working for Mitch McConnell.