Conservative revolt good news for Republicans
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
November 2, 2009
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| File photo |
A liberal Republican was driven out of the race for a vacant House seat in upstate New York by a surge in support for the Conservative Party candidate.
As a result, a political neophyte CPA running as a third-party candidate stands a good chance of getting elected to Congress on Tuesday.
Democrats say they’re thrilled.
The talking points already in heavy rotation say that a win by Conservative Doug Hoffman over Democrat Bill Owens will only encourage tea party populists to take on the Republican establishment. More primaries. Weaker general election candidates. Fewer Democratic losses in 2010.
That’s the way Obama political operatives are spinning the withdrawal of Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd District. They ought to know: It’s the same mantra that Democratic grandees used against Obama’s presidential candidacy.
Hillary Clinton’s surrogates said that Obama shouldn’t have even run because a primary challenge would divide the party and weaken Clinton for the general election showdown with inevitable Republican nominee Rudy Giuliani.
Obama correctly rejected that notion, saying that a contested primary would energize, not demoralize, the Democratic base.
Then, after Obama surged to the lead in the Democratic primaries, the Clinton team argued that Obama didn’t have the chops to take on the resurrected John McCain. An anti-war, community organizing liberal Democrat versus a war hero and moderate Republican? C’mon.
Many Republicans welcomed Obama’s nomination. What Clinton’s pollster Mark Penn called Obama’s “lack of American roots” and reputation as an arugula-munching, big-city intellectual would take states like Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina off the table, right?
Obama adopted a rope-a-dope strategy in the primaries as Clinton battled on into the summer of 2008 (Remember “Puertorriquenos con Hillary”?), but he never stopped being the liberal choice.
Obama beat Clinton for the same reason that Hoffman may win in upstate New York. He offered an authentic, passionate vision of his party’s core principles and did it in a way that didn’t make moderates uncomfortable.
The president may be something of a disappointment to liberals since taking office, but as a candidate he excited their ardor as Howard Dean once did. And it was the hard work and money of the Left that propelled Obama into the White House.
Hoffman, a successful accountant from White Plains, N.Y., sought the GOP nomination to run for the seat left vacant when Obama tapped eight-term Republican John McHugh to be secretary of the Army. But because it was a short-notice special election, the nomination was made by the solons of the dying Republican Party of the 11 counties in the district.
It rebuffed Hoffman in favor of Scozzafava, whose liberal voting record and high name recognition (she served as a mayor and in the state assembly) must have seemed like a good match for a district Obama had won narrowly the year before.
Super-square Hoffman had no political track record, and his positions are quite conservative: low taxes, less spending, opposition to global warming regulations, restricted access to abortion, etc.
It was as if the superdelegates had picked Clinton instead of Obama on the grounds of electability.
But Scozzafava was not electable, especially once the conservative movement got on to her scent. Leaders of the ACORN-affiliated Working Families Party may have thought they were helping Scozzafava by endorsing her, but voters were not impressed.
Soon conservatives across the country were pouring money into Hoffman’s race and scorn onto Scozzafava. Newt Gingrich and others who are Republicans before they are conservatives tried to prop her up, warning that the party must be respected and that liberal Republicans were still better than Democrats.
Complaining about the pressure from conservatives, James Ellis, one of the party chairmen who picked Scozzafava, told the New York Times, “It’s a detriment to democracy.” Since when did democracy consist of 11 party hacks meeting at Sergi’s Italian Restaurant in Potsdam?
Republicans such as Ellis and Gingrich think the Obama team is right that Hoffman’s success spells trouble for next year. They think conservatives will take over the party and drive out moderates.
But the lesson of the Obama ascendancy is that an enthusiastic base coupled with a reasonable-sounding candidate can win elections.
The GOP remains unpopular, and the movement against career politicians is real. If the party wants to maximize its gains in 2010, it will need to look more like Doug Hoffman than Dede Scozzafava.
