NY - 23: What Went Wrong And What Went Right?

The subject of NY - 23 came up during a chat with Representative Bob Latta R - OH today. Along with touching on that when I profile Latta, I'll pass a bit of it along here as I felt his primary insight important. For the record, Latta considers himself a Conservative, believes the GOP has strayed and needs to get back to it's core principles of less government, less spending and low taxes, as a rule. He was surprisingly candid. But it's important to note this is coming from one of them, as regards the GOP. He lives inside the machine.

My point is, our headline driven political views often lead us off on fiery narratives that get us engaged and fuel us as the base. It doesn't mean they are 100% accurate, or subject to the careful thought it takes to plot political strategy. The GOP needs to have a killer year in 2010 because it is our only way to stop the advance of the radical, Progressive agenda of the current Obama/Pelosi clan. Conservatives have a lot of friends in high places, including within the GOP today. We need to listen to them, as much as we need to compel the over all machine to start listening to us, again.

Latta is in his second term and came to office in a special election in Ohio. There were rushed primaries and a special election. That's what gave us a seemingly solid conservative in the House. The New York GOP, or whomever, picked its candidate, the GOP establishment backed them, as they were all but compelled to do under the circumstances. The problem is, the entire process was FUBER aka Effed Up By Establishment Republicans living inside the machine and not the people that make up the electorate.

This reminds me of the frustration we felt as we rolled through the primaries in 2008. We watched open primaries with cross-over voting yield results that we didn't much like in too many cases. So what is it we should be advocating reforming right now? Add to that, the GOP establishment in DC is already sticking its nose into places it simply doesn't belong. There is more than one primary I have in mind. If you follow politics as I do, you know precisely what I mean. Can you say Charlie Crist, Carly Fiorina, perhaps?

Do I want GOP Representatives who anoint candidates of any stripe? Frankly, no I don't. So, simply screaming at the GOP honchos to start making choices we like for us is, I'd argue, the wrong approach. What I want the GOP to do is take a serious look at its internal processes and start giving the party back to the people it relies upon to work for them, carry their message and show up at the voting booth. That's a far cry from potentially damaging fights over ideology that really don't belong inside the process, provided it's the correct one.

But this goes back to the problem with NY - 23 I first pointed out in my Pajamas Media piece.

The GOP is not and has never been the conservative movement. The current battle should not be about decimation; it should be about control. Reagan, in his too often unheralded and underappreciated wisdom, knew that the key to victory was not in trying to leave or otherwise destroy the GOP, but in coming to dominate it democratically and with a reasonable hand. The Gipper’s wisdom may have been best evidenced in his promoting the “Eleventh Commandment” from the earliest days of his political campaigning....

The fact is, whether it gives you a warm fuzzy, or the quick easy answer you want, top down driven politics is anethma to what conservatives are all about. But we don't even have to wait for the establishment GOP to give us our party back. We can take it back as it is the people on the ground, the ones who get involved in the GOP and go to meetings and such, who most determine what the GOP actually is all about at any given time. If you want to change the special election rules for the GOP in New York, or have more closed primaries, you have to show up and be part of that debate when it's taking place.

It might be more fun to stand at the gate simply yelling at alleged dictators for not dictating the processes or policies you want. But that still leaves you at the whim of an alleged dictator at end. And, yes, all this divisive bickering only gives the liberal media and Democrats more ammunition to hurl at us, keeping people distracted from what's really going on. That isn't to say that it doesn't feel real good. However, it's stilll often times a counter-productive method of genuinely solving anything.

So, ask yourselves, what is it you actually want to achieve? What solves the problem? And what only makes you feel good because you think you're so right? The answer to those questions might not be the same. Personally, I've always been about solving problems, not creating them. But if conservatives want to do that, they are going to have to start showing up inside the GOP where it counts, instead of simply standing at the gate screaming about tearing it down. Liberals do that as that's their preferred method of operation. They love having people tell others what to do. I've never seen that value as very conservative myself.

If you want to solve the problem, if you want to make a real difference and not just let your frustrations out - show up. Otherwise, shut-up and save your money, because as far as I can tell, you're part of the problem and not the solution that conservatives really need and should support.

NY - 23 has given us the energy to truly take this party back. Now let's put that energy into action, get involved within the GOP from where all genuine change has to occur, and make the real change and difference we want to see in 2010.

Conservatives owe NY-23 candidate Doug Hoffman immeasurable gratitude. He overcame impossible odds (single digits just a month ago) to come within two points of defeating Democrat Bill Owens. Hoffman had zero name recognition. National Republican Party officials dumped nearly $1 million into the race on behalf of radical leftist GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava, who then turned around, endorsed Owens and siphoned off 5 percent of the vote with her name still on the ballot after she dropped out.

Comments

[Captain Joe]

What killed Hoffman was the absentee vote which was cast before anyone knew he would rise and Scuzzafava would resign from the race.

[crosspatch]

Captain Joe, absentee ballots aren't being counted until today so they had nothing to do with last night's result.

PPP needs to figure out how their polling could have been so wrong.

[davis,br]

...agree.

Sigh.

[Ran / Si Vis Pacem]

Dan,
I'll be scanning here and at Stacy's for post-mortems on NY23. There are a lot of lessons here - I'll be looking forward to your thoughts.

http://tinyurl.com/yzm2oju

[BD57]

Bottom line:

Republican candidates for Congress & Senate should be selected by closed primaries in which the Republican Party machinery is a de facto & de jure "neutral".

I don't know what imperative there was that made a primary for NY-23 impossible. If Scuzzy had won a primary, as opposed to simply being anointed by the 'good old boy/girl' network, there would've been very little for conservatives to work with.

[Tully]

There's not just absentee ballots, but advance voting. Don't know if AV was used in the NY 23rd, but it's a number that has gotten more substantial over the last few cycles. When you see the first flash that shows 0% of precincts reporting but X number of votes cast, that's usually the AV (and sometimes pre-counted absentees as well, depending on area).

[David R. Graham]

Concur. After 1968, the base of the Democratic Party -- Leftists, Socialists, Communists, Mohammedans -- worked assiduously to control by leading the party machinery nationwide. Successful. After 2008, the base of the Republican Party -- Conservatives, Libertarians, Free Marketers ("Libertarian Conservatives," whose profile includes Democrats) -- are advised to work assiduously to control by leading the party machinery nationwide. Can be successful.

Regrettably, this is the second vector down which Americans are obliged to play catchup to Communists and Mohammedans, the first being internet organizing, which will grow more difficult now for traffic to/from domains not tributary to those affiliated structures.

Not Riehl World View, but a large number of Conservative blogs are given to fear-mongering, sarcasm, gloating and edginess for the sake of self-promotion. Those qualities are not suited to leadership or control of political or any other cultural creativity. Cry freedom and do it for others and that will be sufficient.

[montee]

Well said. This top-down culture has infected too many people. Anger, disappointment & rage can provide only so much momentum. If it is not converted to something more productive and sustainable it doesn't have the maximum effect. I spoke to a few people after yesterday result and most just wanted to rail against the GOP establishment, deny them contribution and oppose every RINO across the nation. Okay a lot of that is understandable. But what I wasn't hearing were people who were determined to become more active at local GOP level to institute bottom-up change. Instead people seem to be looking for a top-down solution. The surge that should have carried Hoffman to a victory shows that the power to reform the party exists. But it needs to channeled more effectively & efficiently some as not to do more harm than good. Let me put it this way the house that is built on the sand no matter how big or beautiful does not withstand the storm, but the house built on a rock will withstand. People fed up and desirous of the reforming the GOP needs to realize that starting from the foundation is the best way to achieve meaningful & and lasting results.

[Center Right]

What worked was ... for you, nothing.

What didn't work for you was that you forced out a GOP candidate who could have won in Upstate NY in a district that has belonged to the GOP since reconstruction, by imposing a Teabagger lunatic. In short, you lost because Republican upstate NY hates your rancid ideology. Just like you'll lose in FL. Just like you'll lose in ME when it's Snowe's turn.

Oh, and you lost in CA #10 to a Democrat more liberal than the one he replaced. Can't wait for your 2 new governors to opt out of the public option.

[gary gulrud]

"in coming to dominate it democratically and with a reasonable hand"

Agree completely. The NRCC in attempting to dominate the local process, and in the end the eventual contestant, Hoffman, screwed this one from start to finish.

NY-23 is a lesson for locals, accept national money only if strings don't come with it. Scozzafava should have been black-flagged when her former constituents favored another, regardless of ideology.

The GOP soiled itself and would likely have lost to Owens even without a third contestant.

[Tennwriter]

1. I'd like to believe conservatives have friends high in the GOP. I'd like some evidence, tho', and not just people who claim to be friends who want conservatives to be liberals.

2. You again tell people who are angry to shut up. Why don't you shut up? Don't like that do you? Naturally not. You should not like it. There are better things to do, yes, but telling the angry mob to shut up is a bad idea, and very rude.

3. I'm pragmatic. I'll take conservatives how I can get them. Its probably better to work it up through the process, but if need be, I'll have a top down enforcement of one.

[Jack Okie]

Dan,

It's too late. We've seen that electing Republicans just because they've got an R by their name (like Lindsey Graham) only slows the slide to perdition. From now on the only Republicans I vote for will be conservative. If that means we get more of the Left's chaos for a while, so be it. Better to get all the pain up front (like Anbar Province) than drag it out for more decades. It is truly a pay-me-now or pay-me-later situation.

Until the states regain the powers intended by the Founders, and the feds are restricted to their enumerated powers, it doesn't matter which party is in power in Washington DC. The GOP controlled Congress from 2000-2006 and refused to rein in Fanny and Freddy, and spread pork like Democrats. There is too much money flowing to Imperial Washington; if that's not changed nothing is really solved.