GOP Radicals Help Democrat Take NY House Seat
Related subjects: In the Loop, J.E. Robertson, The Vote, U.S. Elections, U.S. Politics, U.S. news, Vote 2009 Comments (1)
For the first time in the district’s history, going back to the 19th century, a Democrat has won New York’s 23rd Congressional district, thanks in part to Sarah Palin and other Republican radicals. A move by Palin, Rick Santorum, Fred Thompson and other extremist conservatives to impose their will on the local Republican party, forcing their own party’s candidate out of the race, has resulted in a win for the Democrats.
The win is actually relevant to Pres. Obama, unlike the more high profile governor’s races, because Obama carried the district, and after he named Republican Rep. John McHugh to be secretary of the Army, political analysis suggested a populist pro-Obama sentiment might help the Democrats win. The Democratic victory is also a repudiation of the hardline ideological conservatives who have been criticized in their own party for having disdain for the will of the voter and ignoring public sentiment trending away from their views.
Former House Speaker, and staunch movement conservative, Newt Gingrich denounced the rogue operation as bad for the party and fundamntally undemocratic, with national figures dictating to the local party what their views and who their representative should be. The election will now stand as a stark reminder of the consequences of unthought rhetorical adventurism and party disunity. It may also push some moderate Republicans toward the idea that learning to cooperate with Barack Obama might be a better, wiser strategy than banking on blanket obstructionism or trusting the apparently disloyal arch-conservative wing of the party.
The Republican party’s worsening split is now more evident than ever, and the backbiting and recriminations that are likely to follow may once again have the effect of thinning the herd considered credible for the 2012 Republican primary contest. The Republicans have been seeking “Obama’s Waterloo”, but they’ve now suffered their own Watertown defeat. The moment could loom large as the struggle for the party’s soul intensifies.
The Watertown moment reminds hardliners that 1) American voters don’t like outsiders dictating their rights, principles or choices to them, and 2) the Republican party cannot be reduced to conservative bullet points. Their “or else” tactics, abandoning their own party and backing a spoiler from another party as the party’s banner candidate, have illustrated only that they are capable of undermining their own party, disdaining local voters —while the rogues ridiculed local concerns as “parochial”, their candidate of choice showed virtually no working knowledge of local issues in a key interview and laughed when Rush Limbaugh accused the Republican candidate of “bestiality”— and losing elections.
Of the hardliners who turnedon their own party, Palin, Santorum, Thompson and Steve Forbes, are all best known for losing spectacularly despite cult followings and a media environment that won them lots of free publicity. The Watertown, NY, special election of 2009 now confirms what many had suggested about the push to radicalize the Republican party under a uniformly conservative ideological agenda: it is a losing strategy that voters will reject.
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This is by far the funniest article on this ever. The only thing proven here is that the Republiczn needs to get back to Conservative and none of this RINO stuff. Hey isn’t the Dem that won against the public option?