Jon Scott Who?
This one is a little bit off the wall.
In Nevada, where Harry Reid is overdue to take a swan dive into the concrete walkway of voter reality, two candidates have emerged on the GOP side: Sue Lowden (front runner) and Danny Tarkanian. Oh, and one more—Tea Party candidate Jon Scott Ashijan, who recently jumped into the fray.
Except both Lowden and Tarkanian have no idea who Ashijan is.
When questioned on basic tea party principles, Ashijan evidently does not know them. He has no known political background.
Lowden suspects he’s not a Tea Party candidate at all. Tarkanian goes even further, and says Ashijan isn’t even a Republican, but is a plant by Harry Reid to steal votes away from Lowden and Tarkanian. Ashijan is even an Armenian, like Tarkanian, because—Tarkanian says—Reid knows “the Armenians are very close; they’ll vote for each other.”
Imagine: Senator Harry Reid, facing no chance of re-election, backs a fake candidate to disrupt the Republican vote in order for a Democrat candidate to win.
Reid denies all this, and the Czar agrees. Running a candidate, either legitimate or fake, is extremely expensive, and requires funds that would be sorely needed by a legitimate Democratic candidate. Further, even if Ashijan equally divided the Republican vote, the Republicans would still probably win, given how Nevadans are done with voting for the Democrats. The CNN story relates (or rather hopes for) a hypotheical Reid 36%, Lowden + Tarkanian 32%, and Ashijan 18% split, enough for Reid to win.
That’s a load of crap. The Tea Party candidate would need to run as a Republican (as they have been doing) to have a hope of getting votes: CNN still fails to get that the Tea Party movement is not a political party. And a political party is not going to run if the best they can get is 18% of the vote.
But let us assume that Ashijan runs as a Tea Party candidate to avoid defeat in the GOP primary. History repeatedly and clearly shows that this strategy is a proven loser. In the CNN hypothetical three-way election, the Tea Party candidate would enjoy an 18% vote months before the election, but have a 12% vote weeks before the election, 8% a week before, and probably 2% the day of. Which means the GOP would win, because Tea Party votes go to Republicans.
We can look at the Green Party and Perot’s Party as examples: they both enjoyed major-party-damaging percentages, but their support eroded rapidly by the time of the actual election, when voters tend to change their minds and go mainstream. It is basic human psychology: a person hates to waste a vote, and no matter how popular a third-party candidate is, unless that third-party candidate enjoys more than 50% of the vote (which is virtually never in the modern age) voters will switch back to a party with a chance of winning. Yes, Nader kneed Gore and Perot tanked Bush: but their percentages were so low that their impact on the elections was a matter of luck more than division. Remember that Perot and Nader actually thought, based on early polls, that they had a real shot of beating the other parties. In Perot’s second run, he managed to find enough sense to drop out when he realized his numbers were even weaker.
As a better example, Illinois fielded two gubernatorial candidates in a recent primary who were both Tea Partiers. Guess what? Despite huge numbers in the polls, they wound up almost dead last in the returns. This is precisely what would happen in Nevada.
Lowden and Tarkanian would be wise to shut down the mysterious Ashijan before he gains any possible momentum: only because it is easier to run against one candidate than two, and either Lowden or Tarkanian could lose voters to Ashijan—but not enough to remotely give Reid or any other Democratic candidate a chance.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.