All the Hooplah Over Senate Candidate Forum

Almost half of the platoon of men running for the Republican nomination to unseat Senator Blanche Lincoln were on hand for a candidate forum sponsored by Mountain Talk 97 Radio and "The Blessings of Liberty" program. One of the moderators was a young man named Richard Caster, who is known as a Curtis Coleman supporter but who I thought did an even-handed job of moderating the event.

Me, I favor Jim Holt. I admit it, and it is going to show. Jason Tolbert from the superlative political blog the Tolbert Report, favors Gilbert Baker. I am not sure he has come around to admitting it, but it also shows.

At any rate, the two big dust-ups of the event seem to involve these two guys, who most observers would say are the two leading candidates in the race.

For the record, I thought Holt rambled too much and it was not a good performance for him. On the other hand, you have to compare him to the other guys, not how good he was compared to when he peaked in previous campaign cycles. He has always refused to memorize talking points, preferring to talk from the heart from whole cloth each time. Voters love that, but it occasionally leads to unfocused answers, getting off message, and even slips of the tongue. He basically just started campaigning a few days before, where as the other candidates have been doing this for months.

He has practically been a lumber jack for much of the last three years, running his own arbor service. His business timing was good, the area has been devastated by ice storms during this period and such services were in high demand. Still, that hardly prepares someone for total immersion in a political campaign.

Jim Holt's slip up was that he used the term "Dixiecrat" as a shorthand for southern democrat when it had a darker meaning from a time before Holt was born. Dixiecrats were racial segregationists who wanted to split from the Democratic party starting around 1948. I though he recovered and answered well, but here is the audio. I will let you be the judge....



I guess he is going to get a bunch of "prove you're NOT a racist" demands (as if anybody could prove a negative). No one will ever be able to prove it to a crowd whose definition of a "racist" is someone who disagrees with liberals. Anyway, the main point here is that I want you to be the judge and compare Holt's answer to his big dust up to the one below where Gilbert Baker has his issue. You tell me who you think handled it best....

Baker was asked by Conrad Reynolds if it was true that he told a panel on the Washington County Republican Committee that he (Baker) had a plan to run for Senate, then run for Governor in four years when Beebe is term limited out, and appoint a Republican Senator to replace him. Reports of such a plan had gotten around, and might explain some of the support Baker has among the more ambitious members of the Arkanasas Republican legislators. One of them you see, would likely have that plum on their plate.

Instead of directly answering the question, Baker spent most of the time talking about why he can't run for Governor NOW. A sitting state senator can't run for Constitutional State Office. OK, so we know why you won't be the one making the suicide run against Gov. Beebe now, but what about answering the question? You tell me how he did.....