In a new interview with the New Jersey Star Ledger, losing senatorial candidate Steve Lonegan says the government shutdown cost him the election.
“There is no doubt in my mind or in the minds of any of my campaign staff that the shutdown cost me the election,” Lonegan told the Star Ledger. “If I had known it was going to happen and that it was going to be handled so badly in Washington, I wouldn’t have run for senate.”
Lonegan said he would support a government shutdown on MSNBC’s Up with Steve Kornacki in August. Some of his other comments probably contributed to his defeat.
Maybe it was this comment about health care:
“I’ll be as callous and uncaring as you can imagine. I have no interest in paying for your health care. I’d hate to see you get cancer, but that’s your problem, not mine.”
Or this remark about taxes:
“If anyone wants to read Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, that little book The Communist Manifesto, the the first tenet of Marx’s plan is a heavily progressive tax…Now people are going to say, ‘Doesn’t this [flat tax] mean a tax increase on the poor?’ Yes it does.”
Here’s Lonegan on gun control, after Sandy Hook:
“I don’t think it’s an appropriate time [for Congress to consider stricter gun control measures]. It’s an appropriate time to respect those who died so tragicallly, and those poor mommies and daddies more than anybody. And to sit back and to think this thing out carefully. In my mind, I can only wish that that school principal was armed…She may have at least slowed him down.”
“I think they are destined for destruction for the next generation. I think they should be redone away with and privatized. That’s what I think.”
On Mitt Romney’s 47% remarks:
“I think it’s the boldest thing he said in the campaign. The problem is he didn’t back it up. Now 47% I don’t think is the real number. I think it’s a much smaller number than that.”
“I have a handicap, you know. I am a white guy running in the state of New Jersey. That is my handicap.”
Evan Puschak