Originally at Blue Hampshire, but I wanted to put it here so that the insanely smart people who come to SSP can give us some insight into the CFG.
I’ve said all along that Johnny is a free market radical extremist, and the Club for Growth’s ringing endorsement, their first of the season, cements that position. After all, he scored a solid 100% on their “no one should pay taxes for anything ever” 2005 Scorecard.
As the Hill reports, this is “unusual” for the group, since they typically target incumbents, not support them. I take this to mean that they are wise to the fact that Sununu is in deep doo-doo for ’08, and they will try to play up his libertarian side in a state friendly to that. Personally, though, I don’t see how that will help him against either announced candidate Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand (who is pro-business) and possible contender Stonyfield Farm Yogurt Baron Gary Hirshberg (who is business).
Been awhile since you last heard of the “Club”? Well, here’s a refresher. The CFG spent a million dollars trying to replace Arlen Specter with Pat Toomey, who ultimately lost and is now the head of the Club. They’ve also run ads against Snowe and Voinovich and Chafee.
In other words, they are the definition of an anti-RINO group.
Ergo, through their very endorsement, they utterly destroy any semblance of Sununu’s “moderate” persona.
And who can forget this:
But CFG does not simply target moderate Republicans; they also attack Democrats, including the party’s presidential candidates who CFG refers to as “liberal losers.” They have been particularly obsessed with former Vermont governor Howard Dean. CFG has run a series of negative ads about him in several primary states, including one in which an elderly couple angrily tells Dean to “take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading . . .body piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.”
Expect more of the same well-funded pap to be heading our way from this malign entity.
Thoughts?
(Oh, and if you are interested in more on Sununu, please feel free to visit our Sununu tag at Blue Hampshire.)