Radtke: Marco Rubio or Christine O'Donnell

Jamie Radtke's senate campaign kicked off with an interview on FOX News. The reporter began by asking, "Will Jamie Radtke be the next Marco Rubio or Christine O'Donnell?"

It is interesting to think of what kind of Tea Party senate candidate she may be like. Rubio being one of the most inspiring, and O'Donnell being one of the more embarrassing. She is someone without a legislative record, or a record of fighting for things when the heat was on, and a decade experience as a political consultant to different degrees. When you look at her bio, at first glance it seems more like the unqualified, unvetted O'Donnell than the experienced proven record of Marco Rubio. Hopefully I am wrong in this comparison, but after some of the Tea Party candidates that were nominated last cycle we need to be cautious about the ones we nominate in the years to come.

Election Prediction: Tsunami, not a Wave

Very simply the rejection of liberalism, progressivism, and elitism that is occurring is so widespread that this will be a tsunami, not a wave. To quote one democrat consultant...

Everybody that is tied will lose, and everyone that is ahead by a few points will lose because of the GOP wave,” said one party media consultant who is involved in a wide array of House races. “There are going to be some surprises.

The early voting numbers show a strong shift towards the Republicans, and the generic ballot poll shows unprecedented support for Conservativism, and Republicans. Gallup noted just how strong what the generic ballot poll domination means in their last poll...

It should be noted, however, that this year’s 15-point gap in favor of the Republican candidates among likely voters is unprecedented in Gallup polling and could result in the largest Republican margin in House voting in several generations. This means that seat projections have moved into uncharted territory, in which past relationships between the national two-party vote and the number of seats won may not be maintained.

In light of this and other evidence let's make some predictions...

Republicans win at least 70 seats in the house.

Republicans also take back the senate with late wins in NV, Washington, and other places. While it is a stretch for Republicans to win the senate, history gives us some good direction.

Since 1930, every time voters have thrown one party out of control of the House, they've done the same thing in the Senate.

Surprising wins...

• Governor: Tom Tancredo wins Colorado
• Senate: Christine O'Donnell wins Deleware
• House: Patrick Murray wins the 8th district, and Democrats are left with one House seat in Virginia.

Other Important Races

• Rick Boyer, a long time homeschool dad, is running for Clerk of the Court in Campbell Co.
• Brenna Findley is running for Attorney General in Iowa. If she wins this would be a huge win for liberty in the Attorney General office.
• The Iowa Supreme Court Retention vote. If the judges on the ballot lose this would be a huge blow to judicial activism on the state level.
• Also it will be interesting to see the results of the VA Constitutional Amendments. They passed the general assembly, but it seems a lot of people are just finding out about them, and the blogosphere seems very unfriendly to the amendments. Few elected officials are really publicly supporting them.

None of these predictions, or the hard work that thousands have exerted will mean a thing, unless you vote. As you watch the returns, this is a very helpful guide.

Press Working Overtime to Destroy Tea Party Candidates

Starting with Sarah Palin, the first Tea Party candidate, it seems like Tea Party candidates are generally unintelligent extremely conservative candidates with major skeletons in their closets. The past couple days has made it crystal clear why this is the case. The media is working overtime to paint candidates who represent regular Americans as fringe.

Exhibit A: Deleware Christine O'Donnell is already the media's favorite candidate to mock and ridicule. Granted she hasn't made it too difficult, but not everyone spends every year of their life planning a run for office. This past week we saw an anonymous article released that tried to make Christine out as a slut. The only evidence to back out the anonymous claims of a wild story, were pictures of Christine in a ladybug suit having a good time. The photos were cropped in such a way as to try to preserve the anonymity of the accuser. The story was so outlandish liberals had to begrudgingly condemn it.

Exhibit B: Alaska After a reporter from the Achorage CBS affiliate left a voice mail with Joe Miller's spokesperson he forgot to disconnect the phone line. The rest of the voice mail message was a conversation between reporters planning how they would stage a story of child molestors supporting Joe Miller, and try to create an incident like the Rand Paul stomp fiasco.

You can read the transcript here.

Journalism is not pushing anonymous stories, and planning how to make candidates look bad. That is what people with a political axe to grind do, not unbiased journalists.

Anyone can be made to look bad whether by overplaying seemingly innocent situations, or digging deep enough. Many candidates do have some comment, situation, or action that they would prefer was not brought up. Sadly politics today is more interested in making someone look bad than debating issues. This fact is even more true when conservative candidates challenging the status quo are involved. We need to be aware of this and careful of what we believe about our own candidates from the media who wants them defeated.

Understanding that people seem to work overtime to make conservative candidates look bad, these candidates and campaigns need to be careful how they respond. It is a mistake to portray yourself as a victim, as Sarah Palin seemed to want to do. Others will point that fact out. It is also a mistake to avoid the media as Rand Paul and Sharon Angle have done throughout this cycle. Instead, engage the media and fight back against the charges (assuming they are false) while standing strong and not trying to play the victim card. This is something Nikki Haley did very well through the brutal primary campaign in her bid for Governor of South Carolina.

On election day, let's disappoint the media and elect all the candidates mentioned in this post as well as the others standing for the constitution and limited government.