The Conservative Commentariat Discovers Rob Simmons.
This election year keeps springing surprises. The fellas at Media Matters will be so pleased. That scamp, popular conservative columnist Ann Coulter, has found her candidate for the United States Senate, and he supports card check, cap and trade, and partial birth abortion. Two weeks after former Connecticut congressman Rob Simmons suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate, Coulter unveiled a plan to revive the three term congressman’s dormant campaign: send in Sarah Palin.
Coulter’s draft notice to the former Alaska governor comes a week after syndicated columnist and National Review editor Rich Lowry delivered a public shudder at professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon’s defeat of Simmons for the party’s Senate endorsement.
While Coulter’s call to arms fills the column inches, it’s unlikely to move Palin. She’d have some explaining to do. It’s only a hunch, but her big slice of Republican supporters probably features a lot of wrestling fans who would be perplexed at their champion supporting the liberal, big government Simmons, who as a congressman took great pleasure in delivering dough to his district. McMahon, who’s enjoyed the advantage of never casting a roll call vote, spent the first 4 months of the year drawing vivid distinctions between her beliefs and Simmons’ record, as she ran in the vast land to his right. It paid off with a win at the Republican nominating convention on May 21st.
Simmons, who’d been the frontrunner for the nomination for a year, forced a primary with McMahon and then immediately shut down his campaign operation. He cited McMahon’s lavish use of her fortune as his reason for withdrawing. His own fundraising was in extremis after embattled incumbent Christopher Dodd withdrew from the field of battle in January.
Palin might not want to test in New England the power of the spell she casts on Republicans in other parts of the country. The 2008 vice presidential nominee has shown a shrewd eye for picking where to wield her endorsements. She stayed away from Massachusetts during Scott Brown’s winning campaign for the Senate. This week Palin claimed three high profile primary winners, Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, and Terry Branstad.
5 comments
Jeez Rennie, so he dropped out, and you’re still attacking him? Really? Linda McMahon has spent $16 million+ and has a negative image and a 20 point deficit against Blumenthal. What a great choice. But keep attacking Simmons, as that’s exactly what Dickey wants. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Mr. Simmons represented a liberal Congressional district in CT and he represented it well. The current mood of voters is both anti-incumbent and anti-liberal. That doesn’t give Mr. Simmons much room to work.
I’m not sure why, in what has become The Year of the Conservative Woman, Ms. Coulter wants CT to revert to a male wannabe conservative. But CT’s most ardent R voters have already shown they prefer Linda McMahon. The fact that Mr. Simmons performs better in the polls when he is not campaigning should not a source of encouragement to him.
You are right that the changing mood of voters, particularly Republican ones, forced Rob Simmons into a dilemma. He sustained himself and frustrated Democrats by running as a moderate-to-liberal Republican in his 3 congressional victories–and nearly won a fourth with that formula. Four years after his last campaign, he couldn’t translate that recipe into a palatable dish for the party’s rank and file, who were predisposed to supporting him when he began his Senate campaign.
Coulter and Palin are Boneheads… the obvious real Conservative (small government, fiscal sanity, and Constitutional restoration) choice is Peter Schiff.
I think that Coulter was placed with a gun to her head to even consider the RINO [ simmons ] could have any hope. Isent her an e-mail and left my phone number/and a PRAYER CARD. schiff is a shiii–sterrrrr.
astrology perditions. EDWARD JACHIMOWSKI indep. conservative