Once upon a time nearly a decade ago in a New England State where Republicans never won national office and whose senior member of congress was considered the liberal Lion of the Senate even though he had run away and left a young lady to die (but nobody talked about that until years after his death because to do so might hurt Democrats) there was a state senator in a Republican district. He was a nice guy a soldier who had a beautiful wife and two lovely daughters. His seat was pretty secure and while he would have liked to have advanced further, the nature of the state made it unlikely he would ever be more than a state senator.
One day the Senator died and there was a special election to fill that seat and the Democrat managed to get into internal squabbles and nominated a candidate even worse than Hillary Clinton. At the same time Democrats were trying to push through Obamacare and that Senate Seat turned out to be the 60th seat which would allow Democrats to break a filibuster and get any bill that the Democrats in the house and senate could agree on passed.
Well to everybody’s surprise thanks to the special election, the bad democrat nominee and the unpopularity of Obamacare the GOP candidate a state senator nobody had heard of by the name of Scott Brown won the special election and became a US Senator.
While he was a good US Senator and had time even for those who disagreed with him during his re-election campaign his consultant told him that the only way to win re-election, even though he was one of the most popular pols in the state was to run away from the activists who had showed up to vote for him. So he did so doing his best to compromise on issues dear to those tea party activists and when election day came he lost to a Harvard Senator who pretended to be an Indian.
After narrowly losing re-election and getting his pick for GOP chair rammed though the state convention he decided not to run in a 2nd special election made open by the new Senior Senator replacing Hillary Clinton in the Obama Cabinet even though his pick for state chair was picked specifically to help him win.
Instead he began considering running for Senate in New Hampshire. He thought that his combination of being a “moderate” on social issues would be a good fit for election in the granite state but in addition to his positions on abortion that troubled many activists he took a soft line on Guns being open to gun control measures.
Gun rights activists in the state took notice and even before he announced his candidacy protested his appearances in the state and a blogger who covered the protester (who outnumbered those viewing the speech) in the freezing cold noted:
If you are drawing 300 people standing out in the cold on Dec 19th to protest Scott Brown how many are going to show up when the weather is warmer and they don’t have to stomp down the snow to make room for people to stand.
And that very year when a gun control measure came up for a vote in the state the overwhelmingly Democrat legislature voted against it and the blogger in question noted:
I’m confused:
Didn’t Democrats take the NH in an incredible landslide in 2012 winning over 110 seats from the majority republicans?
Didn’t everyone tell us the state was turning blue permanently and Senators like Kelly Ayotte were doomed unless they changed their tune on guns?
Didn’t Scott Brown himself come to NH and ignore a pro-gun rally of 300 people in the ice and snow emphasizing his support for gun restrictions.
I mean it’s one thing for Wendy Davis to flip on guns but Texas is about as far from NH as you can get, how do you get a totally lopsided victory for the pro 2A forces drawing over 60 democrats to their cause in a state in NE that we are told is turning blue.
The explanation will sound familiar to anyone who read the blog yesterday and saw the votes switch at the last minute.
A source in the state tells me NH Democrats wanted to pass this bill but with an election year that is looking poor they needed members of the house willing to bite the bullet & risk their seats.
And later on when covering Brown at the NLRC event notedNLRC event noted:
Nominating Brown takes the gun issue off the table that the GOP should be able to beat the Democrats over the head with and will put Kelly Ayotte who voted on the right side of the bill on the spot two years before her re-election campaign.
Well the NH party apparatus didn’t listen to those voter and that advice and nominated Scott Brown as their candidate in the US Senate and in a year where GOP senators won all across the country Scott Brown was the exception losing his election and ironically giving the Democrats the extra vote they needed to save Obamacare and Planned Parenthood funding during the early days of the Trump presidency and the former state senator from Massachusetts never held public office again.
Why am I telling the GOP this tale, because of this headline at Drudge:
REPUBLICANS COALESCE AROUND GUN CONTROL
Which links to a NYT story saying that the GOP is considering supporting new gun control laws:
Gun violence has been one of the most divisive and intractable issues in Washington, and even gun control advocates conceded that getting the House bill through the Senate would be a heavy lift. Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Monday that he was reviving his background checks bill, which fell to a filibuster in 2013, and that he intended to press Mr. McConnell to bring it up if Republicans were convinced they had the votes.
“I think we need Manchin-Toomey,” Mr. Toomey said, referring to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, his co-sponsor. “I think it’s overdue. This is a common-sense, very broadly supported measure that would fully respect the rights of law-abiding citizens, fully respect the Second Amendment.”
This has been the siren song of Democrats anxious to disarm their political foes for 40 years and every time the GOP members fall for this nonsense pushed by the left and the MSM it costs them elections, which is exactly why the left is so anxious for the GOP to go along with it.
I urge the GOP not to fall for this nonsense and leave them with this tweet…:
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
and this warning. If you manage to win a primary when you run on gun control don’t expect 2nd amendment voters to turn up for you in the general election.
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