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Can Vitter Heal the GOP for the Win?

npr.org

Having garnered just 23-percent of the vote in the primary election, David Vitter has the bigger numerical hill to climb in order to win the November 21st runoff. Yet all together, Republican candidates took home 57-percent of the vote.

“He’s got to pull all that together, and he’s got to get them united,” pollster Bernie Pinsonat says, adding this time, that’s easier said than done.

“Because of the attack ads, his challenge is greater.”

Vitter’s Super PAC, the Fund for Louisiana’s Future, ran pre-primary ads savaging fellow Republicans Scott Angelle and Jay Dardenne, calling Dardenne a “liberal”, pointing to “Scott’s Sinkhole”, and calling the pair of them “used car salesmen trying to sell Louisiana a clunker.”

Vitter is not known for being conciliatory. In fact, he’s continuing to attack the Louisiana legislature, which is predominately Republican.

“It’s too many of the Baton Rouge politicians who’ve failed us; failed to employ our solid, conservative Louisiana principles,” Vitter declared during his victory speech last Saturday night.

That makes healing the GOP rift created during the primary an even bigger hurdle.

“That’s Vitter’s challenge, to put all this back together after he’s broken it all up,” Pinsonat says. “He had to do that to get to the runoff.”

Pinsonat says at the same time Vitter is hoping to coalesce former Angelle and Dardenne supporters under his banner, the campaign will be trying to tar John Bel Edwards by linking him to President Obama. And Vitter will be trying to deflect any questions involving prostitutes, private investigators or even fender benders.

“Vitter and his problems versus the attachment of Barack Obama to John Bel Edwards: it’s been easy selling for the Republicans in the last four or five elections. The question is, can they continue that, and all the other issues don’t matter?”