What Can Be Learned From The NY-23 Election

Here's the background:

Last year, President Obama selected Republican Congressman John McHugh to be Secretary of the Army. McHugh represented New York's 23rd Congressional District ("NY-23"), which is basically the northern edge of New York State along the St. Lawrence River. A special election was scheduled to be held last night to determine who would replace Congressman McHugh.

NY-23 is a very Republican district. They have voted Republican quite literally since the Civil War. Now, something has to be understood: There are different varieties of Conservatives (i.e. Republicans). New York conservatives like the ones who live in NY-23 are not the same as, say, the Conservatives you find in Alabama or Utah. New York Conservatives don't place things like opposition to abortion and gay marriage, or support of evolution and "Christian values" very high up on their list. In addition, NY-23 is a poor area that relies heavily on government subsidies in farming and military bases: They aren't prone to listen to "limited government" messages and cuts in spending quite as much as in other places.

The New York Republican party did not hold a primary to determine a candidate. Based on their knowledge of NY-23 demographics, they selected a State Senator named Dede Scozzafava to be the Republican candidate: A politician who was pretty much the typical New York Republican, i.e. pretty liberal on the social issues, moderate on the fiscal issues, and conservative on the governmental/political/diplomatic issues. (The Democrats chose an almost-unknown fellow named Owens to be their candidate... fully expected to lose, really.)

That's the set-up of this story.

What happened was that when the "national" Republican pundits — which means basically the Far Right of the Republican Party — found out about this Scozzafava person, they got really upset. They essentially decided she wasn't "conservative enough" — even though she was generally a fine fit for NY-23. These national Republican pundits (generally ignorant of the makeup of NY-23) decided to throw their considerable influence behind the obscure Conservative Party candidate in the campaign, a guy named Hoffman, who essentially fit their own definition of what a Republican should be.

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With this mainstream support came additional high-end endorsements from around the country, including Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, Tom Delay, et cetera, et cetera. Hoffman's campaign gained momentum from the point where he was almost not visible on polls... to neck and neck with the other 2 candidates... to the point where (as he sucked more and more support away from Republican Scozzafava) he was in a dead heat with Democrat Owens.

Scozzafava, having been torn apart in the national Republican media for her voting record, and seeing her campaign going down in flames because of the out-of-state Republican resistance to her politics and candidacy, decided to drop out of the race the weekend before the special election. Meanwhile, Conservative Hoffman was running on an ultra-conservative platform, stirring up "the base", but not offering many concrete solutions to NY-23 problems (and, in fact, essentially describing them in one local newspaper interview as "parochial concerns" [note]Actually, it was Dick Armey, sitting next to Hoffman at the interview, who made the "parochial concerns" remark. Hoffman didn't disagree.).

Republican Scozzafava, realizing that one candidate was more likely to understand and help NY-23 than the other, endorsed Democrat Owens.

Anyway, the election happened tonight and Democrat Owens beat Conservative Hoffman by 4 or 5 points. For the first time ever, a Democrat now represents NY-23.

Now of course, you would think that the common wisdom here amongst the conservative pundits would be, "Oops. We probably shouldn't have messed around and handed that congressional seat to a Democrat." But you'd be wrong. Conservative pundits actually don't care about the loss to the Democrat: They are only happy that they didn't elect a Republican that didn't meet their definition of "conservative". No really.

So, what can be learned from the NY-23 election?

From this point forward, Republican pundits (and the right wing "base" who they cater to) will go to the primaries and chase out as many moderate Republican candidates as they can in favor of staunch conservatives. (Their next stated goal is to lose the upcoming Florida election for its U.S. Senate Seat by chasing out the undesirable candidate (but leading in all polls), former Florida Governor Crist, and replace him with, again, a "proper conservative" candidate.) They are going to do this with the genuine-and-deeply-felt mantra of "it's better to lose with a candidate who reflects our values than to win with one who does not."

That's exactly what is going to happen.

I've long said that the Republican party is driving towards a cliff, and somebody needs to grab the steering wheel. Well: Somebody just slammed their foot down on the gas pedal instead.