In another tangible sign of the upheaval in the GOP Senate primary in Georgia, national Democrats are beginning to focus their fire on businessman David Perdue, who has emerged as the frontrunner and perhaps the biggest threat to Democratic hopes of swiping a GOP Senate seat. Their latest attack line, targeted at GOP primary voters, is that Perdue wants to raise taxes — not the typical Democratic attack line.
On Friday the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) sent out a press release that read “David Perdue Under Attack For Endorsing Higher Taxes & Arrogantly Arguing Others Aren’t Smart Enough To Understand Why Georgians Should Pay More.”
The email statement was the latest attack Democrats have pointed at Perdue over suggesting support for increasing taxes. A member of the Macon Telegraph’s editorial board recently Perdue asked if the best way to improve the economy was through cutting spending or raising revenues. Perdue responded “both.”
On Thursday, Matt Canter, the deputy executive director of the DSCC, released a memo highlighting the vulnerabilities of Perdue as well as of Rep. Jack Kingston, and former Secretary of State Karen Handel, two of the other GOP Senate primary hopefuls. Handel and Kingston are two of the more establishment Republican candidates in the race.
“David Perdue, Karen Handel and Jack Kingston are fundamentally flawed candidates who all have weaknesses in their records that will be hard to defend in a general election,” Canter wrote.
The attention toward Perdue alongside Canter and Handel by the DSCC comes a few days before Tuesday’s Georgia primary. A recent InsiderAdvantage poll showed Perdue leading the primary with 27 percent followed by Kingston with 19 percent and Handel with 17 percent. Whoever wins the primary almost certainly face Democrat Michelle Nunn in the general election.
Democrats’ hopes in Georgia had largely been pinned on Nunn facing a known uber-conservative in the general election, like Republican Reps. Paul Broun or Phil Gingrey.
How embarrassingly hypocritical. Can’t wait to see how this is defended here.
Did you see who Canter didn’t mention – Phil Gingrey, the craziest of them all! His big flaw is he keeps flapping his piehole, and is almost sure to have an Akin/Mourdock moment if he’s the GOP nominee. That’s a Nunn win for sure. It won’t happen (if we believe the polls), but we’ll see what does happen on Tuesday.
DSCC going for the pyrrhic victory here. Our ideological position is that raising taxes is necessary, and here we’ve got a GOPer making the case that his side is wrong and we try to shoot him down.
And given his wide lead in the primary, all you’re doing is boxing yourself in for the future. Nunn has a decent shot in the general even against Perdue. DSCC’s position makes absolutely no sense. None whatsoever.
Sadly, neither Gingrey or Broun (another idiot suffering from foot in mouth disease) is going to make it to the run off…and there is going to be a run off,because nobody is even close to 50%.
Perdue has essentially bought his standing in the polls, outspending everyone else to increase his name recognition and staying away from the outlandish crazy talk that Gingrey and Broun embraced. The question is though, given that the primary will almost certainly be a low attendance event, does he have the organization to get voters to the polls. Right now, the thinking seems to be that Handel has the edge in that department.
Perdue is the candidate that Nunn wants to run against the least, however. Besides being well funded, he, like her, has never run for office before. So there is no record to point to. That sets up a dance between them, both daring the other to actually take a policy position. Such a campaign will fall back on voter’s party identification, which is not going to be good for Nunn.
Her entire campaign to date has been based upon “I am the sane candidate” with lots of “I love grandma” commercials (no exaggeration…that is one of her main commercials right now).
If Perdue wins the primary, he will be under very little pressure to go crazy. He plays much better in the Atlanta suburbs than rest of the pack, probably because he does shy away from the outright crazy statements. And if he doesn’t go for the crazy, Nunn’s campaign has big issues. Because in GA, white republican businessman who sounds sane > white non profit Dem lady that loves her grandma.
The DSCC doesn’t want Nunn running against Perdue. They want her running against one of the crazies. So anything the can do to hinder Perdue, they will.
That being said, an email at this point is going to make absolutely no difference. This is going to come down to which of the candidates has a better organization for turning out voters. The primary itself is going to be a very low voter turnout affair. The run off will probably be just as bad.