By Charlie Meyer:
I have "home court" advantage over my pal on the Right on this one. I’m from New York. This reminds me of those psychedelic flashbacks we were warned about in school, back when “Tricky Dick” Nixon left the Presidency under a cloud to Gerald "Golf Course Hazard" Ford, and followed by Vice President (and former New York Governor) Nelson Rockefeller giving that infamous "finger" to speech hecklers. (All Republicans, just to remind you.)
There’s a lot of New York north of the Tappan Zee Bridge on the Hudson. Most of it, in fact. A good number of them hunt deer, fish, watch NASCAR, drive 4WD pickup trucks and SUVs, and do so many other not-stereotypically-New-Yawk-kinda-things up there.
My mind races as if it were in Grand Central Station in Manhattan at rush hour on the NY-23 topic....with the late Frank Zappa singing about “Nanook” and "the deadly yellow snow from down there where the Huskies go" for the accompanying soundtrack. This district has been gerrymandered, (politically redistricted, if you forgot Fred Wilson’s American History lessons), so many times over the years that I'm surprised the Adirondack Mountains haven't been erased from the map in what would appear here as a frenzy of mountain-top removal coal mining. “Almost level, West Virginia...” It snows so much there, I think the last school "snow day" off in the 23rd was during the previous Ice Age. Go any further north from the 23rd Congressional District. and (1) I hope you remembered your high school French, and brought your $90 passport, or, (2) one would worry that such persistent cold weather could give you enough 7-Eleven Slurpee brain freeze to think like that Wacky ! Woman from Wasilla, but without the five-figure speech fee. With a neighbor named "Nanook," bring snow shoes. I shivered just thinking of the 23rd, even before a couple of years in Honolulu taught me snow and cold weren't necessarily a fact of life. Brrrrrrrr!
This is a part of Upstate that probably took exception to former New York Governor Eliot "It takes $1,500 to make me holler, I PAID to do the wild thing” Spitzer's infamous gaffe comparing Upstate to "Appalachia”, even if part of Western New York is at the northern end of that mountain range. New York politics isn’t for the faint-hearted, unlike here, where we politely send folks to Charleston under the guise of “representing” us, even if it was just an easy way of running them out of town for a while. Don't forget to send a postcard.
Most of the Right has long thought "New York Republican" is a contradiction in terms, anyway. As in the old joke that the taxicabs in Toronto resembled police cars, and vice versa, there is more than occasional cross-dressing among the two large New York political parties north of the Borscht Belt in the Catskills. In Empire State politics, the newer separation between "Republican" and "Conservative" parties reminds me how Queen Victoria built and kept the British Empire: "Divide and Conquer."
That said, all the millions in out-of-state campaign dollars couldn’t buy an arch-conservative CPA, running as an afterthought, this seat in the House of Representatives. Nor should Democrats, with their own share of reverse carpetbagging campaign loot in their first win of this seat in decades, gloat and forget that Mr. Hoffman accumulated forty percent of the popular vote in a very short time after the not-very-Republican GOP candidate, Dede Scozzafava, conveniently committed a very public act of political hari-kari on the six o’clock news. Rolling over and playing dead is supposed to be a dog trick, Dede.
Newt Gingrich supported her, while the quitter ex-Governor of Seward's Folly and the Far Right “usual (Fox) suspects” supported Hoffman. Keep in mind that this was a special election, one of a few in a year with very few contests. The Super Bowl isn’t decided in a pre-season game, but for candidates across the spectrum, you still have to convince most voters, who sit somewhere in the middle, to get your ticket to the show. Most voters aren’t just checking the dipped orthodoxy-sensitive litmus paper against a purist political color chart. We have bigger worries, such as jobs, the economy, health care, and wars on the other side of the globe. Both major parties need to focus on addressing the wants, needs, and aspirations of John and Jane Q, Public, including how they would do things differently than the other guy or gal, lest they be reduced in relevancy to tilting at windmills. Don Quixote never was elected to Congress. Give us choices other than the extremes.
Let's not forget that this campaign was for the one-year remainder of former GOP Congressman McHugh's term, having accepted the role as Secretary of the Army with the (GASP!) Obama Administration. We'll be watching next November's rematch to see if the GOP elephant responds to resuscitation. They can't do much worse, else Ms. Scozzafava will have to change her nickname from “Dede” to “Dodo.” As I recall, the Dodo bird has been extinct since 1936. It could bode ill for Dede's future chances on the GOP slate, as in “Fat Chance.” As for reviving the comatose elephant, before they call the vet, an elementary marketing course might be in order to help the GOP differentiate their offering from the mainstream competition. For the local politicians who feel picked on in my columns, you have it pretty easy here. I don’t recall seeing many wiffle balls in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Politics is hardball. Everywhere. There’s too much at! stake, and it's on our nickel.
By Stephen Smoot:
Last week three states held off-year elections with the full attention of the national media. Virginia returned Republicans to all of its statewide offices by landslide margins only one year after giving Obama a double digit victory. Heavily Democratic New Jersey shocked the nation by ousting a Democratic incumbent governor. Many interpreted this as a sign of Republican resurgence going into 2010. The third race produced the most interesting results. New York’s 23rd congressional district saw the GOP nominate a candidate so liberal that most of that party turned to support the nominee of the almost unknown Conservative Party. David Hoffman nearly pulled off the upset, coming within four percentage points of beating the Democrat. The Republican, Dede Scozzofava, got 5.5% despite dropping out. Does the emergence of this third party candidate mean trouble for the Republican Party’s efforts to take back Congress next year? Likely, no.
A political party perpetually in the minority constantly searches to broaden its base of support. Republicans have that problem within West Virginia and, to a somewhat lesser extent, across the nation. West Virginia State Senator Clark Barnes (R-14th) describes the role of a party organization as having “one responsibility and one responsibility only-to get Republicans elected.” Doing so means using a “big umbrella” approach. Barnes describes how that can also get the GOP into trouble. He explains that “Everyone remembers (and cherishes) the so called ‘First one hundred days’ under the
leadership of Newt Gingrich. Following those first 100, the Republican majority lost their ‘fidelity to principle’ and opted for power through the use of the Treasury, just like their predecessors.” Reckless spending and skyrocketing debt leads to voter concern about “lack of responsible leadership.”
Should the Republican Party be concerned? It certainly depends upon the Republican Party itself. In both the New Jersey governor’s race and the New York 23rd, a third party “conservative first” candidate ran. Despite a lot of attention, the conservative candidate took few votes from the eventual Republican winner. In New Jersey the gubernatorial candidate proved conservative enough to attract the right spectrum of voters and prevent a spoiling move from farther to the libertarian side of the spectrum.
In some ways the results of the New York 23rd look as disastrous as a win can look. West Virginia GOP Executive Committee member Gary Howell likened the close win over a third party to an NFL squad barely prevailing over a high school. More troubling for the Democrats, according to National Republican Congressional Committee official Joe Sciarrino is the reality that 52% of the voters in an election that gave the Democratic nominee every advantage possible still “voted against the Pelosi-Obama of higher taxes and government mandates.” Conservative principles carried most of the voters. By most accounts, Scozzafava was an abnormally bad choice. She had credentials as a liberal Republican designed to draw a broad mass of voters, but her lack of commitment to free market values helped lead to her ultimate failure as a candidate.
What drives the anti-Republican libertarian fringe? Some of it comes from a traditional antipathy against organized political parties that takes its cue from George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address. They tolerate the GOP so long as it reflects their value system but have no patience for Republican attempts to broaden its base. The wider the net Republicans try to cast, the more libertarians they alienate. The party has to think strategically about the benefit of attracting moderate, but uninspired voters, to the next election against the cost of losing a fired up base. Even more difficult is the fact that the GOP can motivate social conservatives or libertarians, but usually not both. Concentrating on economic issues causes the anti gay marriage crowd to cry “sell out” while attacking homosexual unions provokes irritation amongst libertarian Republicans.
That all being said, if you are a Republican don’t worry too much about this. First of all the Democrats have the same problems, only worse. The main West Virginia Democratic Party blog, "West Virginia Blue," slammed its own party leadership for trying to defend union mining jobs against Obama’s War on Coal. They seem shocked that some Democrats might want to protect American jobs and resist the march to Obamunism (or is it Pelosism at this point? Which one is more Mussoliniesque?) Compared to the debate between their traditional American liberals and Eurosocialist inspired left wingers, Republicans have relatively minor divisions.
The New York 23rd congressional district race was a colossal and embarrassing screw up for the Republican Party. They nominated a person with a label lacking the principles and then tried to back her as a loyal party generally does. Public support for the conservative in the race taught the GOP a lesson. You cannot just nominate anyone who calls themselves Republican, they have to at least have some of the party’s principles. Scozzafava had the ACORN endorsement for goodness sakes! I’m not sure about New York, but in West Virginia an ACORN endorsement for any candidate is about as welcome as one from the Mafia. The GOP quickly realized its error (which I still believe came from a lack of research) and backed the Conservative Party nominee in the end.
So long as the GOP nominates and backs candidates with strong free market principles of some sort they will have little to worry about from the principled libertarian movement.
