Republican Monica Wehby
Republicans initially held out some hope that physician Monica Wehby could give Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley a real race. There were just two problems: Oregon is a blue state and Wehby is ...
not a good candidate. Merkley has led in
poll after poll, and the Koch-funded Freedom Partners has
canceled its planned ad buy for October. If you're a Republican, you know things are dire when even the Koch brothers have decided that your campaign is a waste of money.
At least some Republicans are still arguing that Wehby can win, and they've released a new survey from The Polling Company/Womantrend. And the survey is in fact great news for John McCain Monica Wehby: She ... trails 42-34. The memo tries its best to argue that Wehby has a real shot here. They note that Merkley is far below 50 percent and that Wehby isn't well known and can grow. Still, it's not a pretty picture for Wehby. After voters are read descriptions of both candidates (essentially "Merkley is a career politician while Wehby is a physician"), the best Wehby can muster is a 42-42 tie.
We took a look at the Polling Company's pre-election record, but they don't have much of one. They released a few polls in 2010, but none within a month of the election. In 2012 they conducted an October survey of the Indiana gubernatorial race showing Republican Mike Pence leading 46-37; Pence won 50-47, a six-point error in the GOP's direction. The group took a look at the Mississippi Senate Republican primary a little while before each round of voting. Two weeks before the first round they found Chris McDaniel leading Sen. Thad Cochran 43-39; the margin between the two was less than 0.50 percent, so this wasn't too bad. However, about a week before the runoff they found McDaniel up 52-40: Cochran narrowly won the day.
In any case even if the Polling Company is right and Wehby has a shot, her campaign doesn't exactly seem to be firing on all cylinders. Weirdly, her campaign website has prominently displayed a fake quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson for months. Much more seriously, BuzzFeed reported on Tuesday that Wehby's healthcare plan is plagiarized from a survey from Karl Rove's American Crossroads group. Wehby's spokesman didn't issue the most convincing denial, saying, "The suggestion that a pediatric neurosurgeon needs to copy a healthcare plan from American Crossroads is absurd. Dr. Wehby is too busy performing brain surgery on sick children to respond, sorry." Uh huh. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "If you want to convince rich people you can win, don't copy off of Karl Rove."
2:00 PM PT: But wait... there's more! On Wednesday, BuzzFeed reported that Wehby's economic plan is also plagiarized from several different Republican sources. Wehby's plan nearly word-for-word from Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, another Crossroads Survey, and of all people, 2012 CA-47 GOP nominee Gary DeLong.