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Originally Posted by hoyacoug
The 2008 presidential election just got a bit more interesting, IMO. Senator Allen from Virginia is a strong candidate for the presidency. He is now facing some very strong opposition in his Senate race, however.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/....ap/index.html
I didn't expect Webb to win the primary. Now that he has, I think he has a strong chance of beating Allen. Webb, for those of you who don't know, was the Secretary of the Navy under Reagan. He left the party over the Iraq war, but still holds on to several conservative issues. This may be exactly the kind of candidate that could beat Allen. A moderate with ties to Reagan opposed to the war in Iraq.
If Allen loses the Senate election, I don't expect him to be a serious player in the presidential contest in 2008. I would imagine Romney is strongly pulling for Webb.
By the way, I most certainly am not sold on Webb. His strong former conservative ties make me nervous. His religous comments and depictions during the race also concern me. As the article notes, he had an advertisement depicting Miller (a Jew) with a hooked nose and money coming out of his pockets. Perhaps it wasn't meant to be anti-Semitic, but it sure doesn't look good to me.
Then he calls Miller the "anti-Christ of outsourcing." I don't even know what that means, but I get the feeling that the reference to opposition to Christ was somewhat calculated given his opponent's religious background. |
Webb is not remotely a liberal. The only thing that really ties him to the demoract party is his stance on the war, which has consistently been that we should not have gone.
Mark Warner is not a liberal either, though I suspect Tim Kaine is.
This will boil down to being a single issue campaign for Webb, on everything else he is really just Allen-lite. Recall that he campaigned for Allen and is on record recently as saying that he would support John Warner against a democrat challenger.
My sense is that Allen is an icon in Virginia and that things will need to have taken a dramatic turn for the worse for Webb to win on what will amount to and anti-war conservative platform. I don't personally think it will be close but I hope is it as state elections are always more fun to follow when they are.