Pure Common Sense

Erick Erickson, the guy who started the blog RedState.com is inserting himself into the heart of the 2010 Congressional elections, where he hopes to bring some more Common Sense to Washington.  In the nature of following the Tea Party protesters and others who believe in Personal Responsibility and more accountability in Washington, he has promised to help elect not just new Republicans, but better ones.  He has cited three points as his main goals as a new soldier for the movement:

• Beating Gov. Charlie Crist and electing Marco Rubio as Florida’s junior senator.

• “Taking out” Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah because he’s a centrist.

• Ensuring the Republican establishment receives no credit for whatever success the GOP has in November.

If I were him I would be careful to emphasize that last point a little more.  Ensuring that the establishment does not get credit is the only way that the insurgents can continue to have success in the future.  Getting the right spin put on the message is more important than any one or two victories.  I would myself like to see Rand Paul, Peter Schiff and Pat Toomey elected to the Senate.  But without the right spin than all that could be for naught.  Spin can be a powerful tool.  In the 1968 Democratic New Hampshire Primary Lyndon Johnson beat Eugene McCarthy.  Johnson was the incumbent president and would be expected to win, so the media spun the story that the “real winner” was Eugene McCarthy because he garnered 40% of the vote and brought down Johnson’s reelection campaign that way.  Of course, the media could just as easily have spun the story in the other direction.  Johnson had not qualfied for the ballot, so the fact that he won the New Hampshire Primary as a write-in was nothing short of remarkable.  But that wasn’t talked about as much and that’s not the story people heard.  So the moral of the story is that it does not always matter who wins for what reason if the spin is able to take the result in a whole new direction.  That’s why I would stand by Erickson’s third point the most of all.