In a poll done last week by SurveyUSA, a top polling firm, which was authorized and paid for by FireDogLake, a liberal blog, the results were Chabot 56% Driehaus 39%. Not surprisingly, most Republicans support us (86%) and most Democrats support Driehaus (79%), but most encouraging was that Independents overwhelmingly support us 69% to only 27% for Driehaus.
So does this mean we win? Of course not. There’s a lot of hard work yet to be done and we need everybody’s help, especially volunteers. We also need to continue to fundraise so we can get our message out, especially since we know that the left-wing groups will spend a huge amount of money trying to distort my record and point of view on just about everything.
And a poll is only a snapshot of a particular point in time. The election is still 10 months away. And that’s a long time in politics. But it sure is encouraging. And I’d rather be in our shoes than in Driehaus’s. He’s got to try to defend his liberal track record on a whole range of issues, from the so-called economic stimulus package, to Cap and Trade, to the healthcare debacle, to card check (unionization by intimidation) just to name a few. People know that I am a true fiscal conservative who’s always voted for restraint in government spending, opposed government takeovers, always voted to cut taxes, etc.
And the reasons Independents are flocking to us over Driehaus is they know I always put the people I represented over the party leadership. Driehaus on the other hand was described in Politico, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, as a “reliable backer of party leadership.” That says it all.
In Massachusetts last night we saw another reliable backer of party leadership, Democrat Martha Coakley, in the bluest of blue states, fall to an independent-minded Republican candidate, Scott Brown. The last time a Republican held that particular Senate seat was 1953 (coincidently the year I was born). The Washington Democrat spin is that she was just a bad candidate (and she probably was). But I think it’s much bigger than that. It was a dramatic rejection of the mindset which runs Washington nowadays. It was a rejection of the out-of-control spending, the corrupt practice of buying votes for a very flawed healthcare plan, the broken promise of letting the public see what’s going on on C-SPAN, and the arrogance and contempt for the public shown by Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid.
The public is fed up. They are demanding, and they deserve, far better leadership in Washington than they are receiving now. And Cincinnati will be part of that change this year, just like Massachusetts was last night.