{"id":5977,"date":"2009-12-13T15:35:44","date_gmt":"2009-12-13T20:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=5977"},"modified":"2009-12-13T15:35:44","modified_gmt":"2009-12-13T20:35:44","slug":"so-the-5th-district-is-going-to-have-a-republican-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/12\/13\/so-the-5th-district-is-going-to-have-a-republican-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"So the 5th District is going to have a Republican primary…"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s WAR! WAR, I tell you! They’re ignoring the grassroots! Outrage! Despair! … ah jeez, just shut up!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Primary to determine GOP\u2019s 2010 5th District candidate<\/a><\/p>\n

So that happened… Anyway. Everybody knows that Tom Perriello is going to be vulnerable in his first bid for re-election. The veritable Clown Car of Candidates (love that name that Waldo Jaquith came up with) emerged to fight for the chance to oppose Perriello in the 2010 election. You’ve got Mike McPadden, Ken Boyd, Feda Morton, Lawrence Verga, Ron Ferrin, Jim McKelvey and maybe somebody else that I’ve forgotten that have declared their candidacy. Nobody really knows who in the hell these people are besides their inner circle of fervent supporters. You’ve also got a (very) wild card of Bradley Rees from Bedford. He was the first person to declare his candidacy but then decided to quit the game because he was dissatisfied with the process being used to select the candidate (whatever the hell that meant). Rees declared that he’d run as a third-party candidate if he didn’t like who was picked… but we’ll have more on that later.<\/p>\n

Everybody knew that state senator Robert Hurt was going to throw his hat into the ring, and he did just that. He became the front-runner in the race because of his name recognition and popularity. Almost immediately, the howls of the fringe combined with the howls of the assorted other candidates because they knew they were doomed against a Hurt juggernaut. “But Hurt voted for a tax increase once!” became the rallying cry of the group, and a lot of people realized that if that’s all that they had against Hurt, they had nothing.<\/p>\n

Let’s now look into the fringe elements of the Republican Party. They called Hurt a RINO (that stupid-ass invented acronym for Republican In Name Only). Yep, you had a bunch of WHINE-O’s calling Hurt a RINO and trying to get one of their ELLAFINO’s into the spotlight. They didn’t seem to understand that any of the other Clown Car Candidates had no district-wide support and would have almost no chance against Perriello in the general election. Hurt is the only declared candidate that would start the general election campaign at a 50\/50 tossup against Perriello. However, facts like that didn’t seem to be important to the shouters and the candidates realized that the only chance they’d have to defeat Hurt would be to have a convention to select the nominee. In that venue, they could make deals and cannibalize each other and maybe get a majority of the votes in a closed atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Let’s FastForward to this weekend’s activities. The unit representatives of the various party groups got together to select the method of nomination. The candidates and the so-called “grassroots” supporters of the other candidates started yelling and holding signs saying that a convention was the way to go. The committee smartly picked the primary, and the howls of outrage started again. These “grassroots” people and the various tea-party organizations failed yet again in getting anything accomplished. As Waldo Jaquith said in his blog<\/a>… <\/p>\n

They know how to stand around in a parking lot, wave signs, and shout, but actually getting shit done<\/em>, they get an F.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, let’s get back to Bradley Rees. He quit the Republican game a month or so and said that he just might run against a Republican nominee if he didn’t like their stances. Well, Rees shows up at this committee meeting and joins the WHINE-O’s in saying that this was a horrible decision. In fact, in the spirit of grand hyperbole, he even said something like this was the start of a new civil war. Bradley Rees, please shut up. You quit the game, so you have no say-so in how they set the rules. If you had stayed in the race, perhaps your opinions on this would have some relevance.<\/p>\n

Let’s break this decision down into terms that we all can relate to: Remember back when you were a semi-rebellious teenager? Remember when you wanted to do something that you felt was right but your parents made a ruling that denied what you wanted? Remember how you whined and pouted about it? Remember how your parents said that they were doing the right thing for you and you’d understand why they did it later in your life? Remember later in life when you realized that your parents were wise after all and that they had made the right decision?<\/p>\n

The semi-rebellious teenagers are the Clown Car Candidates. The parents who made the right decision are played by the committee who ruled for the primary. The candidates can pout all they want and even lock themselves in their room, but the decision was the right one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s WAR! WAR, I tell you! They’re ignoring the grassroots! Outrage! Despair! … ah jeez, just shut up!<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,22,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newscentral","category-opinioncentral","category-politicscentral","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-1yp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7570,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/24\/where-are-they-now-people-from-the-5th-district-house-race\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":0},"title":"UPDATED: Where Are They Now?: People from the 5th District House Race","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Update #1: Adding a name that was suggested by email. Thanks! When Tom Perriello returned to Southside VA earlier this week (note that he didn't make it to Danville), I was asked what happened to the major & minor players that participated in the 2010 election. That's a good question\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "OpinionCentral"","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7038,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/20\/5th-district-happenings-update-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":1},"title":"5th District Happenings (Update #1)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Conventional wisdom says that the few weeks after a hard-fought primary should be downtime for the candidates as they rest up for a long general election run. That hasn't happened in Virginia's 5th District. Let's kick off a series of updates on what's going on... The first blunder of this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "OpinionCentral"","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7001,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/09\/5th-district-republican-primary-final-thoughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":2},"title":"5th District Republican Primary – Final Thoughts.","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So that happened. It's over, yet we've only just begun. Final (?) thoughts coming up... BAM! I was right on pretty much every prediction. With the exception of one local race (looking at you, Mike Newman!), SouthsideCentral is the place to come for your best political commentary. We attempt to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "OpinionCentral"","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5441,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/01\/so-whos-going-to-run-against-tom-perriello-in-2010\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":3},"title":"So who’s going to run against Tom Perriello in 2010?","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"October 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We've got five people that have already declared their candidacy for the Republican nomination. Will there be more? Quick history lesson: Tom Perriello pulled off a giant upset victory over Virgil Goode in 2008 in a 50-50 election. Goode's campaign imploded over the final six weeks and Perriello used a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "OpinionCentral"","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6217,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/18\/virgils-starting-to-get-that-itch\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":4},"title":"Virgil’s starting to get that itch?","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"And in this case, Tom Perriello has to be pleased. Goode won\u2019t rule out possible Perriello challenge Words cannot describe the hilarity that would ensue if Virgil Goode decided to make a third-party run for the 5th District House seat. If he actually believes these \"Tea Party Leaders\", he's deluding\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "NewsCentral"","block_context":{"text":"NewsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7272,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/30\/guest-opinioncentral-dave-cline\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":5},"title":"Guest OpinionCentral: Dave Cline","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"October 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At SouthsideCentral, we welcome article submissions from our readers. In this OpinionCentral, Dave Cline weighs in on the 5th District election. (Editor's Note: This article is solely the viewpoint of the author and not necessarily the opinion of SouthsideCentral.) I find it greatly interesting, yet tremendously sad that a sitting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "OpinionCentral"","block_context":{"text":"OpinionCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/opinioncentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}