Redstate

By Thomas Posted in Elections — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Let me start out by saying that I now suspect I'll be referring to "Senator Castor" this time next year. She's a lousy campaigner, with what I call a "Sami problem," but helped by the fact that her opponents in the Donkey primaries were total morons. As I've said before, all but Leon County in the Panhandle would commit seppuku before voting for her, and her support along the vital I-4 corridor is incredible in her base (Hillsborough County) and miserable outside of that area.




So far, though, her Republican challenger is no better at this statewide run thing than his primary opponent was. Indeed, I rather suspect he's actually worse.




Read on.

It's actually mildly infuriating. Castor has run a lackluster, keep-the-ball-away campaign all year, deliberately obfuscating the trickier issues at all costs.




Below is the response to an email a lady friend of mine sent to Castor's campaign on the issue of "choice." The response was telling:

From: "Shauna Daly" (shauna@bettycastor2004.com)




To: [Redacted]




Subject: RE: Response Contact Us




Betty wants to minimize the number of abortions that occur in this country.




She is pro-choice, but supports a ban on late term abortion so long as it includes an exception for the life and health of the woman, and supports parental notification so long as it includes judicial bypass in cases of rape, incest or abuse.

(Parsed, of course, this is code for Abortion is dirty, and we'd love to sound moderate on this, so I'm totally in favor of restrictions on a small number of abortions that would never be effective because I've left the large wiggle-space of "health," which is to say, no restrictions at all.)




Go to Ms. Castor's webpage and find a single discussion of "choice." Go for it. (The only sites I found where her politics on the matter, and her status as "highest rated EMILY's List candidate" could be found, was while searching for info on the Al-Arian link. Make of that what you will.) She's running as a fairly anodyne Democrat, carefully avoiding the harder issues for fear of further alienating what little support she has in the Panhandle, and making the I-4 Corridor worse.




Don't misunderstand. This is brilliant politics, especially when Catholics are regaining their footing on abortion and "choice" isn't a winning issue for Donkeys any more. (A brighter man than I has some cogent thoughts on the matter.) And if Mel Martinez had an iota of sense, he'd make this a full-on war.




But, he doesn't. He's running virtually no ads in the Tampa Market (Mel, there are a few Catholics here). And he has so far seemed incapable of even forcing Castor to answer the following questions:

Betty:




What is your stance on abortion?




Do you have a position on Terri Schaivo?




What is your stance on gay marriage?




Do you feel the President "lied" about Iraq, and "misled" us into war?




When you say that you want to restore our alliances in the world, is that code for giving France and Germany a veto over our military actions?

And so on.




But, I suspect he won't. Mel went negative in the primaries, and probably now fears raising his negatives in the general. And, I suspect, though I have no proof, that he's an idiot.




So, unless Bush carries Florida by eight or more (an increasing possibility, admittedly), then expect to have the Democrats hold this seat.




Next time, perhaps, we won't just grab whatever candidate Team Bush paratroops into the State. I note that Katherine Harris is making statewide ad buys, and Nelson will be running for re-election in 2006...