McCain trounces JD Hayworth in GOP primary; who's to blame (tea parties, Palin, Scott Brown...)

In last night's GOP Senate primary in Arizona, John McCain trounced JD Hayworth with 59% versus 29% for Hayworth (and 11% for Jim Deakin). To a certain extent, McCain's win was due to him spending around $20 million on advertising and him pretending to be tough on immigration matters. Defeating McCain would have sent a strong message to the Beltway establishment, the mainstream media, and other amnesty supporters. Instead, those who should have opposed him either didn't oppose him, didn't take a position, or engaged in useless or counter-productive activities.

Who shares the blame?

1. Hayworth isn't exactly a prize catch, no matter ones political affiliation. So, he bears part of the blame.

2. The four major Arizona tea parties groups that decided not to endorse McCain, Hayworth, or Deakin also shares some of the blame. [1] The "Arizona Tea Party" - which might be an umbrella group including some of those listed at [1] did support Hayworth, at least in twitter dot com/azteaparty. However, the Tucson Tea Party has a post explaining that they don't endorse candidates; the reason given differs from that in their press release.

3. The one other teaparty group that decided to hold a border event - instead of doing things in smarter ways - shares part of the blame.

4. Sarah Palin, Grover Norquist, Scott Brown and perhaps tea parties chief leader Dick Armey all supported McCain, thus sharing part of the blame.

5. And, starting over four and a half years ago, I've been trying to get people to go to McCain's events and ask him tough questions. Video of McCain being put on the spot could get hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube and might have prevented him from being the GOP's 2008 nominee and might have prevented him winning yesterday's primary.

There are plenty of videos of people asking McCain questions, the problem is that the questions and the questioners are invariably weak. McCain is able to bowl them over and launch into stock speeches; some members of the mainstream media have asked him tougher questions than regular citizens at his public events. See the question authority page for an action plan and more information.

Those sites that get more traffic than me and that have (except in one or two brief cases) completely refused to encourage their readers to follow that plan bear a good share of the blame.

One lesson to learn from the above is not to put trust in those who don't know how to do things in the right way, or who can't figure out the best outcome, or who are only interested in feathering their own nests.

[1] From a press release (link):

The organizers of the four largest Arizona Tea Party organizations – including the Tucson Tea Party, Greater Phoenix Tea Party, Flagstaff Tea Party, and Mohave County Tea Party – issued a joint press release regarding their unified decision to decline endorsing a candidate in the Arizona Senate primary race between John McCain, J.D. Hayworth, and Jim Deakin.

“The Tea Party is a non-partisan, grassroots movement that stands for limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility. Both McCain and Hayworth’s records during their many years in Washington leave much to be desired on these issues,” said Robert Mayer, co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party. “It is their job to hold themselves up to these values and fight for our votes.”

[2] tucsonteaparty.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93&catid=35&Itemid=55

The reason that the Tucson Tea Party (TTP) does not endorse any one candidate in the primaries is because we are made up of a diverse group, which include constitutional, fiscal, and social conservatives, we also have many that are simply free market thinkers... So, if the Tucson Tea Party were to pick one candidate over another, or over many others, we would simply be creating a situation of conservative bloodletting and infighting that would serve no purpose for conservatives in general or the Tea Party specifically.