{"id":6691,"date":"2010-08-21T14:32:24","date_gmt":"2010-08-21T18:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=6691"},"modified":"2010-08-21T14:32:25","modified_gmt":"2010-08-21T18:32:25","slug":"third-place-tea-party-candidate-making-life-difficult-for-republican-nominee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/6691\/third-place-tea-party-candidate-making-life-difficult-for-republican-nominee\/","title":{"rendered":"Third Place Tea Party Candidate Making Life Difficult for Republican Nominee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former NFL player and third place U.S. Senate candidate <a href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/communities\/onpolitics\/post\/2010\/08\/clint-didier-at-this-moment-i-cannot-endorse\/1\" target=\"_blank\">Clint Didier isn\u2019t ready to ask his fellow Tea Party members to back Republican nominee Dino Rossi<\/a>.\u00a0 After a closed door session with Rossi, Didier emerged unconvinced that Rossi \u2013 a two-time Washington gubernatorial runner-up \u2013 is committed to any specific policy positions.<\/p>\n<p>One could make the argument that Didier\u2019s explicit positions on spending, taxes and abortion contributed to his distant third place finish in the recently concluded primary.\u00a0 It\u2019s also conventional wisdom that Tea Party members are more likely to vote for a Republican than a Democrat if given the choice.<\/p>\n<p>But that assumes that Tea Party members think that that <em>must <\/em>vote for either of the two remaining candidates; in this case Rossi or incumbent Senator Patty Murray (D-WA).\u00a0 That\u2019s a false assumption.\u00a0 Many Tea Party members are active in the movement precisely because they think conventional Republicans like Rossi can\u2019t be trusted.\u00a0 If Rossi fails to woo a majority of Didier\u2019s supporters, this November will be his third \u2013 and likely last \u2013 statewide defeat.\u00a0 The Tea Party will just stay home.<\/p>\n<p>As Didier points out, he\u2019s not trying to back Rossi into a corner, but rather deliver him votes.\u00a0 It\u2019s time establishment Republicans realized that the Tea Party isn\u2019t a slice of the electorate that can be ignored in favor of the ephemeral \u201cmiddle\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s the conservative base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former NFL player and third place U.S. Senate candidate Clint Didier isn\u2019t ready to ask his fellow Tea Party members to back Republican nominee Dino Rossi.\u00a0 After a closed door session with Rossi, Didier emerged unconvinced that Rossi \u2013 a two-time Washington gubernatorial runner-up \u2013 is committed to any specific policy positions. One could make [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[782,1740,1742,38,1741],"class_list":["post-6691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2010-midterm-elections","tag-clint-didier","tag-dino-rossi","tag-senate","tag-washington-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6691"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6694,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691\/revisions\/6694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}