Yesterday, I noted that Tim Pawlenty was a big loser on caucus night because he was only able to convince 1 in 5 of his fellow Republicans to vote for his preferred candidate, John McCain (in fact, Pawlenty is McCain’s national Co-Chair and a frequent surrogate). A few commenters noted that Norm Coleman also is a McCain backer, and thus also a loser.
Today we find out that our assessment of the situation is shared by none other than Andy Apilkowski, a MN GOP Party Officer and Republican blogger. Andy writes:
Senator Norm Coleman may be the biggest loser from Caucus night. The conservative base was motivated and showed up in record numbers. They showed up to express their discontent with the Republican establishment and media for anointing a candidate who the base opposes. For years McCain has been at war with the movement conservatives and we remember that fact, but now we’re being told he’s our candidate, and well, we didn’t take it lying down. I’ve been opposed to him being the Republican candidate for 4 years.
We said that McCain’s 20% showing reflected a lack of influence, but Andy suggests that it was actually a personal repudiation of Coleman and Pawlenty:
Coleman is in serious trouble folks. I know it is not something the party leadership wants to talk about or even acknowledge, but it is true. I have personally tried to explain this to Coleman’s top campaign staff to no avail. The base is not happy with the Senator, and “you don’t want a Senator Franken do you?” is not enough for us. Why should we vote FOR you Senator Coleman, especially when you have been voting against us at times?
Harsh rhetoric coming from inside the MN GOP.
Loading ...
Yeah, but it is Andy Apilowski, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. I think MNPublius and MDE can agree on that.
You have to love this reasoning:
“They showed up to express their discontent with the Republican establishment and media for anointing a candidate who the base opposes.”
Can any non-insane observer really believe that McCain is the Republican establishment candidate? Or maybe “establishment and media” are code-words for “voters”.
With Mitt Romney now out ofm the race, it will be McCain’s nomination hands down. Mike Huckabee is the only other GOP candidate left standing. He will be out by next week.
So perhaps TPaw and Coleman do have the last laugh afterall.
The local GOPers will do the:
“We gotta be ‘Minnesota Nice’; the whole world will be watchin’ us in St. Paul! Can’t ya just pretend we’re all friends? Come over here and sing ‘Kum Ba Yah’, won’t ya?”
Well, Andy picks another one that goes down in the dust.
Fred’s Dead, Mitts on the Fritz, don’t ‘like Mike’ and Johnny’s their nominee.
I know, I know, it’s only Triple A but, he is an elected officer of their party and two candidates he bashed all along are the last two standing.
Maybe we can get him to cast a vote for Obama.
Andy Aplikowski is off the wall sometimes. However he’s on the mark sometimes. That post gels with what I’ve been hearing and also gels with what I’ve read on some other conservative blogs. The NARN radio people won’t say this sort of thing publicly because they want access.
Jason Lewis says very similar things, though I hear him rip on Pawlenty much more than he rips on Coleman.
Andy needs to resign from any and all leadership posts in the party or local units. If he is not going to support party candidates and just throw stones then he should be relegated to being nothing at all. No one likes him anyways, get the hell out of the party where you are making it pretty clear that you will not be supporting the senate candidate or the presidential candidate.
gopgal,
How about Ron Carey endorsing the Huckster while serving as Party Chair? Has he issued a statement of support for your presumptive nominee, or is he more interested in appealing to the Evangelical power base of MN party, no matter what the cost? Conservatives booing and hissing at the the Republican standard bearer yesterday can’t be good for your side.
After Aplikowski gave the racist interview “punking” the Minnesota Monitor, I called Brad Biers and Pam Wolf - both in his district to get comment, and to see whether they still wanted him representing their district. I also called Aplikowski for comment. At that time, they still wanted him representing the district.