| Paladino is doing an Erie Canal cruise, on his campaign manager's 40-foot boat, and the Albany event was part of that.
Paladino has said he's willing to self-fund to the tune of $10 million. He's been running radio ads around here for more than a week, and another part of his fortune was spent on offering free food and drinks for all Wednesday on the Barge.
A leading teabagger was there, and bemoaned that so few of his fellow teabaggers showed up:
Last night Donna and I attended a Paladino event at the Corning Preserve.
I was very disappointed that we had so few of our capital district brothers and sisters in liberty in attendance. Steven V, Spyder, Gino M, Deborah B, John Wallace and ourselves, I believe, were the only ones there from our movement. Forgive me if I missed mentioning you and you were there w/ us.
If that's the best numbers we can do, do you expect candidates to take us seriously as a force in this year's elections? I doubt it!! Changing elected officials will help us fulfill our goals. Rallies and meetings are fun and productive, but they will have little effect compared to candidates and elections. That is where the rubber meets the road.
Indeed, how much of a factor will teabaggers be if only a handful or so show up to see their favorite governor candidate, who's paying for dinner and drinks?
Most local teabaggers are far more excited about Chris Gibson's challenge of Scott Murphy in NY-20 (where a teabagger abandoned his candidacy and took a campaign job with Gibson), and many may recognize that Paladino is unlikely to win the GOP nomination, and even less likely to beat Andrew Cuomo in November.
The teabagger blockquoted above also has some semi-seditious thoughts about what might happen if teabagger candidates are not successful this year:
We are all busy, and perhaps tired, but remember the troops at Valley Forge waging a shooting war in the face of huge odds. If we fail to change the direction of this nation and state through the ballot box, we will eventually find ourselves in the type of war that those valliant patriots had to fight - w/ guns and bullets. Is that what you want? I don't think so. Look at this week's news from Bangkok,Thailand.
FWIW, this guy is a retired mid-level state worker, who NOW hates government and fantasizes about violent revolution while living off his substantial state pension that he pays no state income taxes on.
Another teabagger who attended the event liked Paladino a lot, with more typical over-the-top teabagger rhetoric:
Carl Paladino is a primal force in Albany, I am very impressed.
And if your talking to Carl one on one, he's the best of the three hands down.
I just spent an hour talking to this brilliant and divinely inspired man of great faith.
Carl Paladino is on a mission and hes very motivated to finish the job.
Having talked turkey with this dedicated and accomplished man of action, I truly pity the people who stand in his way.
Well, that confirms that few people were there, if this one guy got an hour to chat with the "brilliant and divinely inspired man of great faith."
New York is no different from most non-slave states -- teabagger candidates will not win GOP primaries, or even come close.
And the few that do get the Republican nomination will mostly lose big-time in the general.
Paladino is a rare teabagger candidate with an extra $10 million, but he will probably lose, too.
In part because of a mini-scandal about Paladino forwarding racist, sexist and pornographic e-mails.
But mostly because teabaggers in non-slave states are even more of a minority of Republicans than they are nationally.
Teabagger Rand Paul won a Senate primary in a slave state, which has gotten a lot of media attention this week, with little mention that it's given the Dems a solid chance to win a Senate seat now held by a Republican.
But here in New York, as in most of the country, teabagger candidates are unlikely to even win GOP primaries, given their thin base of far-right Beck/Paul/Bircher voters. |
