It’s a slow day. So I’ll pass along a memo from Alice Stewart, Sen. Gilbert Baker’s campaign manager in his Republican race for the U.S. Senate nomination, on Baker’s strategy to win.

The memo doesn’t mention by name a certain candidate, the presumptive front-runner,  though it does mention several times why Baker is a much better pick than Jim Holt, beaten by Sen. Blanche Lincoln in 2004. The document does make a reference to the front-runner, John Boozman, in the counterintuitive pitch that the best candidate is not from Yellow Dog Republicanland, the 3rd District, but a candidate with crossover appeal elsewhere (that would be Baker). The emphasis on the ills of Washington and bailout voters is also aimed at Boozman.

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Baker has decided, it seems to me, that the angry and irrational are the swing votes in this Republican primary and he has resolved to get them.

He ought to mention more directly something I believe he could argue believably: Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s best hope for re-election (if she defeats Bill Halter in the primary) is the Republican nomination of U.S. Rep. John Boozman. He was a willing accomplice in George W. Bush’s out-of-control, red ink-splattered fiscal policy. He bailed out the Wall Street billionaires. He’s addicted to pork. He’s a corporate lackey. Baker is no less unreasonable than Boozman on the usual social issues, but he SEEMS more reasonable and warmer in general. Lincoln matches up better against Boozman than just about any other candidate.

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