LANSING, Mich. (WJBK) -
Could Pete Hoekstra win this thing?
Of course.
Could you-know-what
freeze over?
Same answer.
In politics anything is
possible, but if the polls are correct it's more than an uphill climb for the
affable GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate.
It's a sprint up Mt. Everest and even if he uses his trusty bike, the
summit is a long way off.
So if it doesn't turn
out the way he wanted, que pasa?
Two things: Resources,
or lack of same, and Ms. Stabenow.
When it comes to winning, you need the
moola and you need a campaigner who does all the grunt work you need to
win. On that front,
Mr. Hoekstra can match the incumbent Democrat but when you peek in the coffers,
the Hoekstra cupboard was not bare, but it was pretty lean.
You
don't have to be a CPA to discover that all those well-heeled Clark
Durant supporters who promised to help Mr. Hoekstra, after he defeated Mr.
Durant in the primary, most of them talked the talk but never walked to their
check books.
Where were the DeVos
folks and others?
Sure some kicked in, but
most did not. And even though Mr. Durant
staged an 11th hour fund raiser for his "friend Pete", it was way
too little and way too late. The money
raised won't help the GOP candidate win, but it will help tidy up the red ink
leftover next Wednesday.
For his part Mr. Hoekstra remains the
trooper that he is. He observes that his
opponent waged a "stealth campaign" on the telly. And he recalls 1992 when he
defeated an entrenched Congressman Guy Vanderjagt
"Nobody in the media asked where my
election night campaign would be," he optimistically
recalls. After he pulled off the upset, the shocked media gave him lots
of attention.
Of course Ms. Stabenow is not the lazy Mr.
Vanderjagt but Mr. H. retells the story to prove lightening can
strike and upsets do happen.
His bumpy path to
victory includes a strong showing at the top of the ticket. A Mitt Romney win
in Michigan around 52-53% is a must.
That might be a stretch even thought Mr. Hoekstra argues the "intensity
for Mitt is better than what it was."
The path also requires a
great ground game from the state GOP; the GOTV, get out the vote, and last
minute phone calls, etc, are critical.
The exhausted candidate
offers one more reason he might win. Citizens need to ask themselves, "When I'm
voting for Mitt, why would I vote for her because she will fight his agenda
every step of the way?"
It's not a bad line, but without the resources
to promote it…well, you get the point. Yet as Yogi Berra always opined,
"It ain't over, til it's over."
