There are lessons to be learned from last night’s elections. A good sign the Republican Party has learned them would be replacing Michael Steele as the chairman of the RNC. He’s just not very good at his job, and he must shoulder the blame for spending a million dollars to get a Democrat elected in New York – which would have been the outcome even if Dede Scozzafava had stayed in the race and won. Scozzafava actually pulled something like 7000 votes last night, more than enough to have put Hoffman over the top, so Steele blew about $150 of contributor money per spoiler vote.
Scozzafava might have been selected by local party officials, but it seems unlikely there was no communication between the local party and the national chairman… and if there wasn’t, it’s even more urgent to replace Steele with someone who can avoid such elementary mistakes.
Blaming Doug Hoffman, or people like Fred Thompson and Sarah Palin who pitched in to help his outsider campaign, for last night’s narrow defeat would be a dangerous mistake. The fault lies with a party that made it necessary for Hoffman to knock out Scozzafava in the first place. Hoffman essentially won a bruising primary on Sunday, and was forced to stagger into the general election two days later, with no time for the wounds to heal. There’s nothing shameful about running a dark-horse campaign against a tidal wave of money and support from both major parties, and coming within a few thousand votes of victory.
The voters in NY-23 have a year to ponder the events of their unexpectedly chaotic special election, and learn some lessons of their own. It’s been said that Hoffman suffered from an inadequate understanding of purely local issues, or that independent voters in the district were annoyed by all the outside interference in the Hoffman vs. Scozzafava battle. Their feelings are understandable… but misguided. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that no Congressional election is “local.”
Congressmen from obscure districts, where 99% of Americans will never be eligible to vote, acquire gigantic amounts of power over our lives. The American financial system crashed in 2008, largely due to the actions of Barney Frank, who holds his office because of 200,000 voters in the 4th Congressional District of Massachusetts. My fondest desire is to reclaim an America where Doug Hoffman’s position on the St. Lawrence Seaway is more important that where he stands on allowing the government to seize control of national health care… but we don’t live in that country, and the man NY-23 just elected to Congress isn’t going to help us get there.
Independent voters who want to settle local issues locally need to stop voting for representatives of a statist party with an unquenchable thirst for centralized power. If they don’t start taking a firm stand against the surging growth of government, it will become increasingly laughable to refer to them as “independents.” No one will be allowed to assert their independence from Barack Obama’s agenda. When a carnivorous government is bearing down on you, it does little good to protest that you’re a vegetarian.
The Republicans should be careful about drawing dangerous lessons from their victories last night, as well. If their new strategy revolves around hoping every Democrat opponent is as lousy as Creigh Deeds or Jon Corzine, they’re in deep trouble. Not to throw too much cold water on Chris Christie’s stunning victory in New Jersey, but the incumbent he defeated wasn’t far from receiving constituent complaints via flaming arrows fired into the door of the governor’s mansion. That race probably shouldn’t have been as close as it was, and the victory belongs much more to Christie than to the Republican party apparatus. This won’t stop the bigwigs at the RNC from claiming credit for the wins in Virginia and New Jersey, even as liberal commentators are frantically deleting the “New York district 23 is irrelevant” paragraphs from their op-eds this morning.
The truth is that all these races matter, and all of them have something to teach us. Michael Steele doesn’t seem to be learning those lessons. Today he remarked, “I don’t see victory in losing seats. I’m in the business of multiplication and division.” The problem in NY-23 was substitution. The Republican Party needs leadership that doesn’t see the challenge of making conservative ideals attractive to moderate voters as an inscrutable puzzle, or watch in helpless confusion as people outside the party scramble to save it from itself. I don’t see victory in putting Dede Scozzafava on Capitol Hill, and waiting for her to join Olympia Snowe in following the call of history over the edge of a cliff.
