Sen. Smith too smart by half?

NWR in the news

The big AP story is beginning to drill down in to what could be more problems for Sen. Gordon Smith. We have talked about some of them here.

Now you have Rob Kremer admitting that he is not voting for Sen. Smith because of Smith's support of the huge tax increase called "Cap and Trade."

As for Kremer, he says Smith lost him when he sided with Democrats last month in support of a cap-and-trade system, which would cap greenhouse gas emissions. The bill ultimately failed, but Smith said at the time that the climate change legislation would have helped reduce reliance on oil from overseas, while stimulating renewable energy industry.
Kremer, though, said the bill would increase energy prices at a time when Oregon's gas prices are among the highest in the nation. It was, for him, the last straw.
"That is a complete betrayal of what any reasonable conservative should expect," Kremer said. "He's always been a reliable vote on taxes, but the cap and trade system is a monumental tax increase. So for him to betray that long-standing principle is enough to lose my vote."

It should be no surprise that I tend to agree with Kremer. Unfortunately I think that the Smith campaign is trying to be too smart by half and one lesson that should have been learned by the 2006 elections is that many many Republican voters just plain stayed home and did not vote.

Yet now Smith wants to stick more beans in the noses of those Republicans?

And some are just fed up, said Ted Piccolo, who runs nwrepublican.com, a widely read GOP blog.
"People understand it is a campaign year, there might be some positions or votes that will frustrate you, but man, he has gone way, way out of his way to cozy up to the Democrats," Piccolo said. "I think the Smith people are going to take all Republicans for granted and just assume they will show up, and you can't assume that. Politics isn't a spreadsheet."

I have always said that I think that politics is more art than science. In fact I think it is probably more like 70% art and 30% science. But the "certified smart" folks who make a pretty good living advising candidates need to find quantitative ways to show some legitimacy to their high priced consultancy and so they spend an inordinate amount of time rummaging through spreadsheets to crunch numbers.

And then when they lose they can find their own "facts" built in to their spreadsheets. Instead of taking a close look at the qualitative aspects of their candidates and the kinds of campaigns they run.

Smith could be in real trouble if a higher profile conservative were to consider jumping into this race. Of course the thought of a higher profile conservative doesn't quite fit in to the spread sheet.

Smith has been in favor of drilling in ANWR in the past. He could be running on the message of Democrats being in favor of high gas prices. Unfortunately he is not and that issue is left out there for someone to take hold of.

Smith could be running in opposition to "card check" unionizing. That is the Union Thug method of eliminating private ballots so that the Union Thugs can openly intimidate those who may not want to vote with them. Unfortunately Smith is not saying a word about that, even though polling shows that the issue is a winner EVEN AMONGST UNION HOUSEHOLDS.

Again... The Smith campaign skipping the art in favor of the science.

Will it work? According to Tim Nashif Smith's game is just right:

"He is in a re-election campaign," said Tim Nashif, who heads the Oregon Family Council, a group that spearheaded the state's ban on gay marriage. "It makes perfectly good sense to me that he needs to say what he has done to appeal to Oregonians as a whole."

As I mentioned to the AP reporter I think that Smith is dangerously running the risk of being "too smart by half."