So by now we’ve all heard about the rather historic election in New York’s 23rd district. The special election resulted in the first Democrat winning the seat in a generation which, while on the surface seems to be evidence of a big rise in support for Democrats, is actually a big story about the split in the GOP.
It wasn’t that Owens beat a Republican, it’s that he beat the Conservative (capital C) candidate of Doug Hoffman, while the Republican’s actual candidate dropped out early. Further still, the right-wing media dove upon Hoffman as the torchbearer, with FOX’s various talking heads and the radio squealers all likening him to Mr Smith heading to Washington, that he’d show the nation that the right-wing, Teabagging base is for real.
This is, of course, suicidal for the party. To attempt to purge the moderates and push for a far-right only GOP would leave the party fractured down the middle and all but guarantee Democratic supremacy from now until doomsday. Turn more races into three-way jaunts among a Democrat, a Republican, and a Conservative and you aren’t going to see too many R’s or C’s on the roster come 2011.
I could have predicted this, but already some are trying to say that the Democrats are guilty of this as well, using the only two examples possible: Lieberman and left-wing frustration with Obama.
Remember the enthusiasm, indeed smugness, that the left blogosphere and netroots exhibited when they helped defeat incumbent Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in September 2006 because he was a supporter of the Iraq war?
…
Indeed, many on the left are now openly talking about abandoning support of Obama unless he withdraws completely from Afghanistan and Iraq by a date certain.
The differences here are pretty stark. In Lieberman’s case, it wasn’t his war support. It was that he spent the years prior calling his own party weak and basically being a thorn in the donkey’s side. Simply supporting the war was far from Holy Joe’s only sin, and it wasn’t even like he was alone in that regard. It was that Lieberman went out of his way to trash his own party. As for Obama, the problem there is that Obama said he would get us out of Iraq, close Gitmo, and repeal DADT. Holding an elected official to his promises is far from cries for party purity.
By contrast, Specter was ousted solely for his support of Obama’s stimulus package. Olympia Snowe is getting pushed out for her occasional support of Democratic legislation, and Hoffman’s rise was against a seeming moderate. This is a crusade against the impure, and is rooted in forcing any non-basers out. If the GOP wants that, good on ‘em. It just means obliteration for the party.
A side note for Lieberman: if you look at the results of the 2006 Senate election in CT, the split was 49-39 Lieberman over Lamont, with a paltry 9% of voters siding with the Republican. Now unless you think Connecticut is 91% Democrat, you then realize that it means Lieberman’s victory came largely on the backs of Republicans who abandoned their candidate in order to make sure that the lefter of two evils didn’t win. This stands in sharp relief against atraditionally Republican election that saw the split between a Dem and the new Conservative candidate.
