The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports Republican Sen. Norm Coleman is calling for four debates between himself, Democrat Al Franken, and the Independence Party nominee in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race. The Independence Party will select its candidate in a primary this Tuesday.
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Barkley will be on Miller Politics tonight at 8:30 PM (ET). http://www.blogtalkradio.com/millerpolitics
Frm what I understand, Democrats always tend to act as if any third party candidate is trying to take their precious votes away.
And Republicans, for the most part, buy into this too.
The Independence Party, to the best of my knowledge, is what they call “radical centrist”. To the “far” Left on some issues, to the “far” Right on others, but not in a way that really make them libertarian. It’s more of a Perot sort of ideology.
But Ross tells the truth. Coleman may be pulling a “Clinton ’96”. As George Stephanopoulos admitted in George Farah’s book “No Debate”, the Clinton campaign didn’t want Perot inclusion in the 1996 CPD debates, even though they proclaimed they did publicly.
They used it to force Dole into a corner and use his fear of Perot to get all of the debate rules he wanted.
In this case, Coleman is likely doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Franken will look like an ass if he takes a public “don’t let Barkley debate” stance. Coleman knows that.
Ross,
Actually–remember when Jesse Ventura was in the polling? He was taking alot more of the Right of Center votes than the liberal votes–and polling showed that without Ventura, Coleman would win. But with Ventura, Coleman would get smushed.
I expect Dean Barkley to win this primary easily–with only Jack Uldrich scoring a decent percentage behind him.
Is the Independence party generally more liberal? From a neocon, it seems like that would be the only explanation – that voters who want Coleman out of office would be split between Franken and Coleman, and he would win. Then, if Franken didn’t want them in the debates, it would be used to make Franken look bad, even though Coleman is just as “bad” for having disingenuous motives.