A message was sent to both the Republican and Democrat parties yesterday at polling stations across America, especially on the east coast. The perennially blue New Jersey now has a Republican Governor-elect. In Virginia, Republicans swept the top three spots in state office with Bob McDonnell winning that state’s gubernatorial race. Virginia was the coveted swing state last time around, a state that Keith Olberman cited as an example of permanent change. Interestingly enough, in exit poll questions asking voters why they chose the folks they chose were answered with one word: “change.”
New York’s hotly contested 23rd district was of epic soap opera proportions, a problem which is the direct result of party loyalists inability to see past their own navels. On October 16th I launched DumpDede.com and together with Bill Hennessy, held a last-minute presser (drive-bys and party hacks ignored that it was given on six hours’ notice and tried to use the crowd size as a way to neutralize the scope and power of the movement) and called on the GOP to dump the RINOs and support conservative Doug Hoffman. I heard “politics is local.” Absolutely – and when it is a federal congressional seat, a seat with a vote that could be the tiebreaker on legislation that could affect us all, the boundaries that separate districts and states fade away.
If you insert “conservatism” whenever you hear Doug Hoffman’s name, you get the point.
That’s not what the race was about.
It was about wrenching the reigns away from the GOP, a party that the tea party movement pulled out of the muck post-2008 elections, a party that literally turned about-face to walk right back into the crap pile. People were active locally in NY23 – they were sidestepped by the NRCC who, in a backroom meeting with a handful of folks, chose a ridiculous liberal as their nominee. There was NO primary. The RNC spent $1 million dollars campaigning against conservatism in New York’s 23rd. They spent that money on an ACORN candidate that forced them to turn and grab their ankles when she endorsed Democrat Bill Owens. Beltway Republicans like Newt Gingrich praised Scozzafava as being the new face of the party … which says a lot when that face does robocalls for a high-taxes, big labor Democrat.
The tea party was never about becoming a third party, an idea which I am vehemently opposed to, as I said in the final post at Dump Dede; rather, it’s a check and balance for the GOP and the vehicle in which to drag the party back to its foundation:
We didn’t do this to create some peashooter third party. We did it to help take over the GOP, to move this brick house back to its foundation. I am vehemently opposed to this movement being cop-opted into a third party and marginalized in the same manner that third parties are usually marginalized.
The GOP is a conservative party and that’s what this fight is to me, just as much as it’s about opposing the big government schemes oozing out of Washington.
A message was sent to the Democrats, too, a startling revelation about the length, or lack thereof, of Obama’s coattails. The President made many trips to both Virginia and New Jersey and despite slathering on the support, the Democrats lost – in Virginia by a landslide – 17 point gubernatorial spread (and all top three state elected offices went to the GOP). Their only big victory was Bill Owens, a moderate Democrat that had to borrow his liberal cred from the ACORNite former Republican candidate married, literally, to big labor. For all the talk the left espouses about the “fringe” right – looks like moderation in the DNC was the ticket last night, not the Chicago-style far left.
Another thing, too: independents, the same ones which carried Obama to victory in 08, flocked, FLOCKED to Republican and conservative candidates. The disparity was so great in New Jersey it’s almost laughable: 58 – 33% in favor of Governor-Elect Chris Christie. The independents sent the DNC a message: time for change.
I also think a third, more subtle group received a message last night. On my show, I often discuss all the ways one can get involved politically on a local level, precincts, et al. We can avoid liberal candidates by filtering them out at the local level, nipping their ascension to power in the proverbial bud by assuring they don’t get nominated in the first place – and we can’t do that until we infiltrate the party, beginning at the most basic levels. It takes about as much time a year, if not less, than standing on a street corner with a placard.
Yesterday was a victory for the tea party movement, who, in its first test of power, showed that it can and will knock out the most liberal candidate off the ticket, regardless of party affiliation. In that respect, conservatism won yesterday. It’s about time.
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