For what it’s worth, I like this ad from Scott Brown, the Republican running in Massachusetts’ special election for U.S. Senate.
And the Curt Schilling endorsement can’t hurt. And I see why people argue that Coakley is pretty underwhelming, even by Massachusetts Democrat standards:
A bunch of ingredients are coming together for Scott Brown. Republicans are angry and fired up, a surprising number of Democrats alternate between unenthusiastic or animosity towards the nominee, and if the independents in Massachusetts are like the ones in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, they’ll shift heavily to Republicans compared to 2008. The bad news is that Brown needs almost a perfect storm — unbelievably fired-up Republicans, immensely depressed Democrats, and a heavy skew among independents — to make up the traditional 30 percentage point deficit and win this race.
Meanwhile, a reader writes in, pointing me to his post on Ace:
I don’t like the “meh” attitude about this race I’m getting from Ace and Jim Geraghty. I certainly understand it: You don’t want to pull out all the stops and get everyone’s expectations up for a race that our candidate could very well lose by 20 points.
That being said, I say: [to hell with it]! If we lose by double digits, so… what? It’s MASSACHUSETTS, for [four letter word]’s sake. No one will be [giving us grief] about a GOP loss in Massachusetts for more than a couple days. It will be almost completely forgotten by Groundhog Day.
Do we want to kill the 0bamaCare bill? Yes. Is winning this race one way to do it? Yes. SO WHY AREN’T WE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN TO WIN THIS RACE???
Does anyone here doubt that the left-wingers on the blogosphere would be doing everything in their power to get a Democrat elected in a similar situation? Of course they would. So why aren’t we? Are the leftists simply tougher than us? More committed?
Should we just shrug and cede a potentially winnable race simply because we are concerned about losing???
What I would like to see is a post (or two!) every day between now and January 19th about how Brown is closing the gap, Brown has the momentum, Coakley committed another gaffe, Coakley’s supporters are lacking enthusiasm for their candidate, etc. etc. etc.
And not just on this blog. On all the big-name conservative blogs.
There is the news that is out there, and the news that we would like to see. Obviously, this reader would prefer more of what he wants to hear instead of what is actually out there, where the news for Brown is generally good but the overall electoral environment remains significantly challenging. Would you prefer I lied to you, and told you Brown’s got a great chance of winning?