The Political Season

Political realignments are hard to come by; the Obami thought they had it in 2008, but it appears they have another think coming. Purple Virginia goes heavily for a true conservative who ran on the basics of Republicanism: common sense governance with concrete policy proposals to better the State. Royal Blue New Jersey went Peasant Red with a convincing victory by Chris Christie who, again, ran on Republican basics of lower taxes and cleaned up, downsized, effective government.

And then there is NY-23, that obscure northern New York District race that became a national sensation. At first blush, this appeared to be the mini political metaphor Conservatives were looking for: a Tea Party type backlash against the imposition by the Republican Establishment of a classic Molted (More Liberal Than Democrats) Republican, wherein a surprising Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, leaps from single digits in the polls to force the withdrawal of Republican Dede Scozzafava from the race. All this metaphor needed was a win by Hoffman; instead, Democrat Bill Owens took the prize.

The spin-meisters, especially the Democrat ones, but also the Rinos and Molteds, will crow that the lesson of NY-23 is what happens when the radical fringe of the Republican Party takes over. But they miss the real point: NY-23 was another instance of the historic confrontation between two factions of the Republican Party going back more than 60 years. To name just a few of the contests: Goldwater v. Rockefeller in 1963, Reagan v. Ford in 1975, and then Reagan v. Bush (the Elder) in 1979.

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The lesson for the Republican Party is the same lesson after NY-23 that it should have learned from those races: the Rino/Molted faction of the Republican Party are bitter, petty, losers, who will not hesitate to savage their own party when election day comes. Rockefeller did it to Goldwater; Ford did it to Reagan when he refused to make Reagan his Vice President; and George Bush (the Elder) would have done it to Reagan if not for Reagan's statesmanlike reach across the Republican divide to tap Bush for Vice President.

Dede Scozzafava did it to Hoffman, when she withdraw (exclaiming her devotion to the Republican Party) from the race and then threw her support to the Democrat. Her 6 percent of the vote (although she withdrew, she remained on the ballot) would have been enough by itself to carry Hoffman to a narrow victory; the additional votes that would have gone to Hoffman but for her endorsement of the Democrat might very well have made Hoffman's victory a convincing one, helping to set the stage for a true Republican resurgence in 2010.

History shows, and NY-23 confirmed, that Rinos and Molteds not only lose consistently against Democrats, but are a net negative for the Party's other candidates. Republicans are either the opposition Party to Democrats, and define themselves so by their policies and principles, or they will be the minority Party in American politics for many years to come.