"He's what wrong with politics, people like him. And I stood up to these people. You know, they lie, they smear, they distort, and then they think everything's fine afterwards — and it's not fine."

Challenger Brian Ellis ran a "disgusting" smear campaign that included calling Amash (an Arab-American) "Al Qaeda's best friend in congress" for wanting to close Guantanamo Bay and curtail certain NSA mass-surveillance programs.

Ellis was backed by various establishment groups and special interest groups including the chamber of commerce and lobbyist Rep. Pete Hoekstra, and even loaned himself a million dollars to outspend Amash in the race.
Despite this challenge Amash destroyed Ellis on election night by a 14 point margin (57% to 43%)


Im pretty excited to see Amash back in congress for another term. He will be favored in the general election against movie theater owner and Democrat Bob Goodrich, who ran unopposed in his primary.
As some of you may know, Justin Amash has never missed a vote and he explains every vote on facebook.
He's a true small-government pro-liberty Republican that actually walks the walk.

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Aug 6 2014 10:18am

This was a necessary win for Amash because his career could have been over had he lost it, but he is going to have to find an easier way to get reelected every cycle because he's on an unsustainable path right now on account of his relationship with his party. Brian Ellis is a punchline, and the Republican establishment will eventually find an A-list candidate to run against Amash unless he can find some way to win them over to where they'll leave him the hell alone.

What makes you think the GOP has A-list candidates yet? After they put up Sharon Angle and the witch-lady pundit for the Senate (not House where they let anybody in) I don't think there is much untapped talent in the GOP. We will see.

I'm with Cam though and am glad these despicable tactics and massive spending didn't win the day. It sucks we have a system that encourages and demands outspending other candidates instead of a system that demands merit.

Through the answer to that problem is in the sentence itself...we have a system that mistakes and equivocates money for merit.

It looks like we're talking about two different things here. You're mentioning statewide candidates in different states, whereas I'm talking about a potential primarily challenger for Amash's House seat. The Republicans actually have a deep bench in Michigan, constantly being in a position to gerrymander will do that for you. It's true that they don't have a very strong bench to choose from when picking statewide candidates (see: Terri Lynn Land floundering in hilarious fashion) but they've got some options for the U.S. House seats. Things get even dicier for Amash if the GOP establishment continues to offer serious support to anyone who is willing to step forward to challenge him.

The GOP by in large doesn't have a deep bench for fielding statewide candidates in most places in the country, that's one of the reasons why they had so many disasters last year trying to recruit strong candidates into the U.S. Senate races. But they've got a lot of options for U.S. House races mainly because of the gerrymandering that they pulled off after 2010 where they were able to expand their benches in many states while shrinking the Democrats' benches.

BTFO

That's a good thing to point out, money has value because people en masse give it so much value through desire and demand. I think this case shows that the individual opinions towards money are slowly changing though, giving a merit system more independent of money. Really inspiring

I'm curious to see what he actually does in office too

Score one for the good guys. We're still taking a lot of hits though.

Guy seems awfully butthurt for someone who won.



It's about as lopsided as the Israel-Palestine conflict. Guess which side represents the good guys in this analogy?

Amash is my favorite Republican in congress.. incidentally, he has also voted in favor of the president more than any other Republican in congress

Seems like a nice guy - i liked what he had to say

And those two issues - guantanamo + NSA are pretty much non partisan issues.

Don't know what else he has to say though - what are his views on lets say hmm o idk..... Fraking?

This post was edited by card_sultan on Aug 6 2014 11:27pm