Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Lessons learned from Arizona's GOP primary: why did some RINOs win?

Only a small handful of RINOs won in yesterday's primary. Why? It was pretty easy to figure out after the fact - the ones that won did three things: 1) massively outspent their opponents, 2) aggressively smeared their opponents, and 3) masqueraded as conservatives. John McCain was the most notable of these, outspending JD Hayworth more than $24 million to $2.4 million. Much of that money unfairly came from his prior McCain-Palin presidential campaign.

Another race where a RINO may win is still too close to call, the Attorney General's race. There, RINO Tom Horne outspent Andrew Thomas $550,000 to $292,000. Thomas, who was running through Clean Elections, was hampered when the courts struck down the matching funds provision of Clean Elections a few months ago. Horne blasted his smear message everywhere that Thomas was under criminal investigation by the FBI (not true) and pretended to be a conservative.

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