Republican candidate Ed Lindsey did poorly in the U.S. Representative, District 11 race – finishing 4th place in Tuesday’s primary voting by garnering a mere 8,389 votes out of 56,584 cast. Or about 15% of the total votes cast for a District 11 Republican. He “got spanked,” as the kids would say.
So let’s break it down: a sizable TV ad budget from his campaign garnered just over 8K votes?! Talk about bad returns on one’s investment. Some money obviously went for an email campaign, as my Inbox filled with plenty of those. However, as of today, Lindsey managed only 700+ Twitter followers, and barely 7K Facebook followers. And a paltry under 2K views to the one video (a duplicate of a TV ad) on the campaign’s YouTube channel. The campaign was a huge failure-to-launch in social.
This is why I’m not a political consultant, as I really did believe Lindsey could attract a better, moderate Republican turnout. I should have known it was all over from the get-go, for a moderate Republican candidate such as Lindsey, when a seasoned, and occasionally astute, political observer blurted out at the Gold Dome during the past legislative session, “Poor Ed Lindsey. Such a smart man, reduced to abject pandering.”
That’s the thing about hiding one’s smarts and light under a canopy of political pandering with ideological sloganeering about hating on “Obamacare.”
Smart voters know a repeal of the ACA is never going to happen (and I suspect they don’t really want it repealed, if they were waterboarded on the matter), and the dumber ones are attracted to politicians who don’t have to pander, such as former state Sen. Barry Loudermilk, as those candidates can preach from their manufactured pulpits with a genuine zeal and conviction, making them far more appetizing ideologues for voters who need a dash of ideological Purell before touching their ballot screens.
Heck, Loudermilk may even genuinely believe he can march up to Washington and personally overthrow the ACA! I couldn’t see Lindsey ever leading that particular charge, so I wish he’d never even brought the ridiculous matter up at all.
Perhaps I should just surrender my old fashion notion of moderate, reasonable Republicans still roaming around in Georgia. Clearly, as the District 11 race data show, they’ve gone extinct.
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