A tough week for the Murphy Camp

Since Sarah Palin’s endorsement, it does not seem that much in the way of good news has emanated from the Brian Murphy camp.

A recent poll shows that Murphy is only getting 13% of the GOP vote in his race against Bob Ehrlich in a poll taken after the Palin endorsement was made. The political discussion, including from those on the left, is whether Murphy is even a credible spoiler or can meet the 20% threshold of the anonymous grocery bagger who ran against Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in 2002.

Worse yet, the Murphy campaign’s finance report shows it has only about $40,000 cash on hand to try to close that 62 point gap with early voting starting next week. Meanwhile, Ehrlich is looking extremely competitive with O’Malley both in the polls and in his fundraising numbers.

And while Murphy continues his illegal immigration tour with Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, he keeps getting dogged with questions about his “evolving” position on the immigration issue. Local activists on the issue tell me that Mr. Murphy has opposed Del. Pat McDonough’s efforts to bring an Arizona type law to Maryland and are concerned by his close association with well known supporters of amnesty. These questions apparently came up at Mr. Murphy’s most recent event, causing the campaign to not allow any further audience participation and close the event.

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We have not seen a tour this bumpy since Spinal Tap played Cleveland.

These same activists are also quick to point out that it was Governor Ehrlich who said “Citizenship should mean something” and walked that walk by removing illegal immigrants from the welfare roles in this state, opposing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants and working with local law enforcement to detain illegal immigrants. This is in sharp contrast to Governor O’Malley who has made Maryland a sanctuary state and given illegal immigrants full access to the public treasury.

And while the Murphy campaign attempts to portray their candidate as the conservative champion ready to slay the faux Republican Bob Ehrlich, we find that Murphy himself has only been a Republican since 2005 and, as Brian points out, did not even vote in the GOP primary when he had the chance.

Now Brian Murphy has responded to the whole decades of being a democrat thing by saying that he changed parties like Ronald Reagan. Personally, as a lifelong conservative Republican who was inspired by the Reagan Revolution, I actually find this more offensive than the facts about his “johnny come lately” Republicanism. This is a guy who was a Democrat when Reagan was President and was a Democrat when Glendenning was Governor. In fact, while I and many of you were working to get Bob Ehrlich elected in 2002 as the first Republican Governor in 40 years, Brian Murphy was still a Democrat.

Now, he is the savior of the conservative cause in Maryland and the “true Republican” in the race!

The absurdity of this claim explains why 87% of Republicans do not support his candidacy and why his fundraising totals are a rounding error compared to what the Ehrlich team has amassed.

It is also why I say again what I said when Bob Ehrlich announced, conservatives need to rally behind Bob Ehrlich as the only alternative to another four years of Martin O’Malley.