The Gordon Howie Potemkin blogroll is talking history today... because most of Howie's candidates are history!
Gordon Howie invited everyone to a "Conservative Celebration" at Life and Liberty National Syndicate Headquarters in Rapid City. Howie said the party would run from 6 p.m. until victory! It must still be going on, because Howie's still waiting for victory!
I've could do stand-up on Howie all day. But let's check the numbers.
Gordon Howie claimed to be leading a revolution of Conservative Christians who would take back Pierre from those nefarious Republicans in Name Only. He issued candidate evaluations (including an updated sheet for District 10 to acknowledge that Jenna Haggar's dad Don wasn't an evil liberal just because he wouldn't answer Gordon's survey right away) for most South Dakota Legislative GOP primaries.
In those evaluations, Howie deemed 27 candidates sufficiently conservative for the God-fearing voter's approval. 12 of them won.
The mathematical correlation between Howie's scorecard ratings and candidates' percentage of the actual vote is &ndash0.1271. In English, if a Howie endorsement has any connection to a candidate's performance at the polls, it's a connection you as a candidate don't want.
For evidence of the irrelevance of Howie's stamp of Jesus-approval, take District 19 (please! ba-dum-ching! ...and can anyone else see a resemblance between Stace Nelson and Henny Youngman? No, wait: I'm thinking of Nelson and Rodney Dangerfield). Here are Howie's ratings of the District 19 GOP House candidates and the final vote tally:
| Candidate | Howie Score | Votes | Vote % |
| Kyle Schoenfish | 0 | 1299 | 29.6% |
| Stace Nelson | 100 | 1494 | 34.0% |
| Jim Putnam | 33.3 | 1129 | 25.7% |
| Roger Hofer | 87.5 | 469 | 10.7% |
In the very fun and exciting District 19, the Republican leadership's worst nightmare, incumbent Stace Nelson, showed his ability to beat his own party's effort to redistrict him out of a job and come out on top of a four-man primary. Rep. Nelson is also a Howie favorite, scoring 100% on the Howie piety-purity scale. But political climber Kyle Schoenfish zeroed out on Howie's list and placed second, beating two men, including the longest serving legislator currently in Pierre, Jim Putnam, who had higher Howie scores. If anyone epitomizes the charge of Republican in Name Only, it is Schoenfish, who converted from Democrat to Republican just this year, and who still gets his biggest donations from Democratic Sioux Falls mayor Mike Heuther.
Gordon Howie has his fake blog roll, his scammer pundits, and his useless scorecards. Jeff Barth had a YouTube stroke of genius. Neither had a ground game. Neither had Get Out the Vote drives. Neither had an impact on the 2012 primary.
I think if the Gordon Howie Group had any real sway in the Republican party in South Dakota it would have shown up in a large protest vote for Santorum.They are always bashing Romney.The blogosphere bubble is real for them as well , any "wins" that they think they can be credited for would have happened without them and as your math shows the wing nut wins actually happened in spite of Howie's endorsement.
Cory, your are right...elections are not won or lost on the issues and principles. It is about money and personalities.
Didn't realize the national headquarters for the Life & Liberty National Syndicate was located in South Dakota!
Sibby, you having a band aid with your kool aid this morning.
Money is such a factor in elections, that a wife of one of my friends said, "We don't have elections anymore, we have sales."
Speaking of endorsements, brother-in-law Burt Elliott (former Dist. 2 Representative) always said that being endorsed by the Aberdeen American News was akin to "the kiss of death." The AAN never once endorsed him or my sister, Elaine Elliott (former Dist. 2 Representative), and they always won. Puts the snicker factor right up there where the AAN is.
Douglas, your wife is correct. Since the price of elections and influence always trends upward instead of down, I'd submit the proper word is auction rather than sale. Your wife is quoting Edmund Burke. But then, even Corey knew that much, I'm sure.
find the cost of freedom:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgu777Kwn9k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGFD-rqqQhI&feature=related
Well there is certainly someone at the Aberdeen American News who thinks Gordie's gang is the true Republicans. (I don't think Mercer writes his own headlines)
Their headline today blared: "Republicans score big in South Dakota battles"
Then the lede for Mercer's article said this: "Conservatives exerted greater rule over the roost Tuesday in Republican primary elections for seats in the Legislature, overcoming the endorsements made in some cases by Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard."
So at least now we know who is ruling the roost...doesn't sound like it's the Governor anymore.
"Republicans Score Big"? What the heck kind of headline is that for a story about a primary? That's like saying, "Football Players Score Big in Playoffs." Mercer's story misportrays the extent of conservative gains. There is no organized conservative resistance; just some lucky cranks fueled by a pathological obsession with abortion.
[sniff, sniff...pheewww, what—ah, Shad. I thought I smelled sanctimonious condescension. Welcome to the show.]
I bet if Sibby went door to door and didn't try to educate the public ans simply ran as a nice guy he would win. Once he made it to Pierre he could do whatever he wanted and very few people would notice or care.
whould Howie allow someone with a his ideals and is as conservative but a different religion (Muslim) into his little group?
That's what I've been trying to tell him, Mike. You go door to door telling people there's a global conspiracy of Masonic New Age Theologians, and 90% of people will shut the door in under 30 seconds. The remaining 10% are nutcases who may or may not vote but will keep you there talking for over an hour.
I'm curious: did Gordon Howie organize any door-to-door? Any phone banking?
Shad Olson, was not my wife, but wife of a friend that said it. I did not know if it was original or not.
Some enterprising journalists might start comparing money spent on elections with results. My guess is that would be scary to those of us unrich.
I don't think Mercer wrote the headline republicans scored big, generally the newspapers do that. I think Mercer was saying Conservatives score big. Whether or not that is true I don't know. I'd say new candidates or outsiders did well.
True, Joe: reporters usually don't write the headlines. The headline is silly. Mercer doesn't exaggerate the conservative "gains" as much as Howie does, but he's still off.