NY-23

If you get your news and opinion from the standard left-wing gaggle, you “know” that the special election in New York State’s 23rd Congressional District proves that the Republican Party has become a narrow, reactionary clique. The proof is that a liberal Republican running in a three-way race fell to 20% in the polls and backed out. That showing was despite a furious effort on her behalf by the national GOP, which put something like four times as much money into the race as she had been able to raise herself.

Now, I can think of scenarios that would amount to a right-wing purge. Suppose, for instance, that a candidate were a mainstream member of the party except for a single issue, that the party’s ideological zealots funded a campaign against him centered on that issue, and the national party showed complete indifference. In other words, if Dede Scozzafava were the Republican counterpart to Joe Lieberman, it would make sense to say that her opponents were trying to purify the party and punish anyone who strayed from the approved line.

Unlike Senator Lieberman, though, candidate Scozzafava wasn’t a one-dogma heretic. The senator disagreed with the majority of his party only on the war in Iraq; he had, after all, been an orthodox enough Democrat to be awarded the Vice Presidential nomination. Dede Scozzafava, by contrast, is well to the left of the most liberal Republicans in Congress. Left-wing commentators have focused on her pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage positions, but she also supported the Obama pseudo-stimulus and card check legislation and had worked with ACORN fronts, while displaying no enthusiasm for any part of the conservative economic program.

The proof that Doug Hoffman’s campaign wasn’t orchestrated by narrow-minded social conservatives is that libertarians like Instapundit and Gay Patriot endorsed him. And what sank the Scozzafava effort wasn’t cliquish machinations but her inability to win over rank-and-file voters in the district. In the last pre-withdrawal poll, she was running 15 points behind the other two candidates. How did that happen if she was a “moderate who fits the district” and Hoffman a “right-wing extremist”?

Most of the high-profile conservative Republicans backing Hoffman stressed how unusual the NY-23 situation is. Not only was the official candidate an unambiguous liberal, but she had gained the nomination without a primary and had been involved in a highly embarrassing run-in with the press (when her husband sicced the police on an overly inquisitive reporter). There are no visible signs of a concerted effort to rid the party of genuine moderates. For instance, if Rep. Mark Kirk, one of the least conservative House Republicans, draws any challenge from the Right to his Illinois Senate bid, it’s a 99% certainty that his opponent won’t get nods from Fred Thompson or Sarah Palin or Tom Pawlenty or Rush Limbaugh.

Liberal talk of a “Republican civil war” is no more than a projection of their own dogmatism onto their opponents. Under Howard Dean, the Democratic Party was well on its way to scraping off its blue dog barnacles and becoming a fundamentalist Left faction. Rahm Emanuel was clever enough to halt that drift and recruit relative moderates for a large number of House seats in 2006 and 2008. Speaker Pelosi’s hard Left course, ignoring both the ideas and the electoral needs of the blue dogs, suggests that Mr. Emanuel’s tactical finesse didn’t survive his departure from the House. The real “ideological war” is and remains the drive by the leftmost fringe of the Democratic Party to impose and entrench undiluted liberalism, the philosophy of less than a quarter of the electorate, before the rest of the country wakes up and throws them out.

Comments

[Paul Zrimsek]

And there you have it. Even though Hoffman didn't fit the district, the locals were misled by their boundless faith in Sarah Palin into thinking he did.

[pbh51]

"In the last pre-withdrawal poll, she was running 15 points behind the other two candidates. How did that happen if she was a “moderate who fits the district” and Hoffman a “right-wing extremist”?"

Hmmmm, let me guess: Outside Agitators undermined a campaign that as recently as October 21 was running a close second in a three way race in which the Conservative was trailing badly. Imagine if those same Agitators had stood up for the Republican Candidate instead of targeting her.

The latest polls forecast a victory for the Conservative. It would be very interesting to see what would happen if he remained a Conservative, as opposed to accepting invitation to the Republican Party.

pbh