You can never count on a Tea Party candidate. Just when I was thinking that Bevin might have a late surge in voter support and obtain above 40% of the vote, he fails to deliver. While it appears that McConnell will not get above 60% of the Republican vote, I was hoping for more of a political bruising for The Turtle.
Still, McConnell will have to do some fence mending with his fellow Republicans in order to win, or so conventional wisdom would dictate. It is difficult to estimate how many supporters McConnell actually has in Kentucky; this is because of the DINOS who have given McConnell his victories in the past. You can't just win with registered Republicans in Kentucky, but some of the so called Democrats here are not real Democrats. However, if you don't have solid Republican support, how do you sell yourself to DINOS?
In the past, McConnell could rely upon all the social conservative issues to attract the DINOS. But I am still convinced that on one of the biggest conservative issues - the defeat of President Obama in 2012 - McConnell failed. He promised that Obama would be defeated, and, obviously, McConnell did not deliver on this promise.
Let's think about this. For DINOS, the conservative issues Republicans such as McConnell campaigned on in the past were God, guns, gays, and whether explicitly stated or not, being the white people's party. Well, with Obama's victory DINOS got Allah, gun control, gay marriage, and a black man in the White House.
How is all of the above supposed to enthuse DINOS to vote for McConnell?