Friday, March 14, 2014

Sink Sunk In FL 13 By Libertarian Spoiler In Low Turnout Special Election Where Fixing ObamaCare Got No Traction

Flashback to November 2010 when Eric Cantor already said he wanted to keep the good parts of ObamaCare and not repeal the thing outright. Eric Cantor never saw the Republican blowout in 2010 as a resounding verdict against ObamaCare, even though the Republican sweep of the House was history making. Newsmax reported Cantor's remarks here.

Today, repeal of ObamaCare is much more appealing than keeping it as is, by almost 2:1 in December polling by Gallup, here. Those who want to scale it back or expand it somehow to fix it are evenly divided in the polling data and together represent 40% of those polled. The polling overall, however, is negative on ObamaCare by 52% to 37%.

The narrowly won Florida 13 District seat this week by a Republican was a test of the Democrat strategy of running on a platform of fixing ObamaCare. It didn't work.

Politico reports here:

Democrats had hoped that defeating Jolly would show that they could beat the GOP’s anti-Obamacare offensive. Sink had embraced the national Democratic Party’s “fix it, don’t repeal it” mantra, which candidates across the country are expected to adopt this year.

Election results at 10 News WTSP here show that a libertarian spoiled the race for the Democrat Alex Sink. Usually libertarians ruin elections for Republicans, not Democrats. The libertarian strongly supported marriage equality and liberalization of marijuana laws.

Turnout was low in the narrowly Republican majority district where older voters weren't particularly engaged by ObamaCare, as reported separately, here.