It goes without saying that whatever happens in NY-23 on Tuesday, it will be good news for conservatives. If teabagger Hoffman wins, it will signal a profound political realignment, the likes of which have not been seen since the days of Ronaldus Magnus. If the Democrat Owens wins, it will still be amazing that Hoffman came out of nowhere to make the race so close; this will probably be true no matter what the vote totals are, though there is also the possibility that Hoffman will lose by so much that it will turn out that he wasn’t a true conservative.
I have some serious question here. First off, what benefit does all the good news, here and elsewhere, actually bring conservatives? Is it really a smart tactic to claim that everything that happens is good news for your political movement? The only parallel I can think of is communism where good economic times for capitalist countries meant that capitalists were getting fat and lazy while bad economic times meant the workers were getting ready to rise up. Is this a fair comparison? And was it smart for communists to spin things that way?
cleek
if Owens wins, he’ll be the first Dem to win it in 140 years.
it might be a bit bold to assume this is much of a sign of anything but GOP infighting.
Robert
It’s not so troubling that conservatives spin everything as good news them and their movement. That’s pretty much standard operating procedure in political PR. The real problem is that the villagers eats it out of their hands.
I have no issue with Karl Rove trying to tell us everything is good news for Conservatives. That’s him doing his job. What’s going to make me want to light myself on fire is when those exact same sentiments are put forth on the op-ed pages of so-called libruhl newspapers and repeated ad nauseum by the likes of Candy Crowley and Jake Tapper. Because, that’s them most certainly not doing their jobs.
Raenelle
I don’t think the spin is tactical. It’s just more evidence of magical thinking–(1) gnome underpants; (2) ? ; (3) profit. The power of positive thinking, faith, will–in whatever way they think of their magical minds, they have already assured us they are not reality-based; they create their realities.
They would be strange, odd creatures worthy perhaps of some pity or a giggle, if only they didn’t occasionally gain power.
Derelict
Since Socazzfava dropped out of the race today, it looks like Hoffmania will indeed sweep the district. So it’s absolutely great news for the hyperconservatives.
It’s also disastrous news for the old-line core of the GOP. Newt’s endorsement went nowhere. Endorsements for Hoffman from the likes of Palin, Beck, and the rest of the extreme right-wing whackjobs will be viewed as proof positive that there is a mjor realignment taking place.
But that realignment is within the GOP. The real money interests may find themselves driven out as the party devolves to LaRouche-like levels of support (with LaRouche-like campaigns and rhetoric, too).
calipygian
I welcome a Hoffman victory. It will be a triumph of the will for the teabaggers. It shines a spotlight on just how evil and crazy they are.
And when they over-reach in districts across the country next year, they will fail horribly.
This is the high water mark. Mark my words. Hoffman victory just leads to irrelevance.
Karmakin
Well, the current conservative movement of all flavors is all about a constant supply of the thrill of victory. Everything else is secondary to just winning.
me
Doesn’t this call for a new tag, “Can’t fail, only failed”.
calipygian
There very much is a LaRouche/Teabagger axis in play. The LaRouchies were not only out in force at the Teabagger’s Ball back in September, they were welcome and expressed views that could only be described as square in the Teabagger mainstream.
Tim F.
If they stop talking to anyone but themselves, Hoffmanites will be Larouchies in ten years. They will spoil the right just like fringe leftist parties spoil the left in Europe.
Republicanism can come back if the fringe teabaggers who are cackling right now about finally holding the reins of power immediately shut the hell up and go back to their traditional place on the chump seat where their ridiculous demands get mollified with empty election-year rhetoric. And hey, I could grow a fourth leg.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
If Owens wins, he won’t hold onto the seat. Morever, as has been pointed out over at the GOS, as Dems go, he’s pretty craptacular. Not sure he brings anything to the table since on most core Democratic votes, he’d vote like a DINO.
Whether or not the Repups spinning this the way they do is smart is really beside the point. It’s how they’ve spun everything since Dubya took office and there’s nothing to indicate they’ll change anytime in this generation. It usually takes a generation and a half of political exile, and getting the next generation into the party, to bring about a fundamental change in direction. And this assumes the next generation of party don’t come from the same farout reich wing of the party that’s essentially in charge now. That being said, never underestimate the power of the corporate wing to set course of things if not the tone.
In the meantime, this is all they know so that’s what they’ll be doing.
clonus
Ironically, Hoffman doesn’t know jack shit about his supposed constituency and doesn’t even own a home in the district.
calipygian
There IS a weakness:
The Teabaggers have personalized the race and are running against Pelosi.
If Owens wins, the Dems really need to spin this as Pelosi beating back the Teabagging hoards and demonstrating that the Speaker’s values are closer to American values than the Teabaggers.
But, the Dems suck, so we know they wont.
KCinDC
The media coverage of NY-23 is and will be irritating, but at least something significant is happening there. We haven’t seen this sort of Republican abandonment of their own candidate since the Lieberman-Lamont-Schlesinger race.
In Virginia, on the other hand, if McDonnell wins the governor’s race it’ll just be business as usual, since the party that’s not in the White House has won every time starting in 1977. So if the Virginia governor’s race is a key indicator of presidential popularity, our last popular president was Nixon.
No one claimed that Chuck Todd’s 1981 win meant that Reagan’s year-old presidency was a failure, nor did they make similar claims about George W. Bush in 2001 after Mark Warner won. But somehow I expect that Wednesday we’ll be hearing endless clucking in the media about how the race was a referendum on Obama and he lost badly and how can he ever recover?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Which also means his candidacy isn’t at all about representing his district. It’s all about the know nothing crazies behind his candidacy flexing their muscles nationally within the GOP in terms of influence.
Parochial interests of the district be damned. At least Dede and Owens would have been your regular, run-of-the-mill Congressperson looking out for the two highest priorities of any such person:
1) Getting reelected next time, and
2) Bringing home the bacon so that it can be pointed to when doing #1.
Hoffman’s nothing more than a poster child for the talibangelists in the party. Makes you wonder how the voters in the district will actually view this. Most Congressional district voters, regardless of party, hate thinking that they’re being carpetbagged by a candidate. Hoffman’s that in spades.
BlizzardOfOz
@calipygian
Actually the teabaggers started kicking the Larouchies out of their activities. They felt they were discredited by associating with them. On the other side, the Larouchies are disappointed that the teabaggers turned out to be nothing more than right wing bigots and know-nothings, and/or that they couldn’t coopt their movement.
Surabaya Stew
A very valid comparison, DougJ; one that I hadn’t thought of before. Not only is the comparing the Soviets and the GOP totally fair, it’s also unintelligent for so-called conservatives to be associated with such a crazy vessel. Then again, there aren’t many actual conservatives left in the Republican ranks anyway, so they will have to find another party to belong to…
calipygian
Ewick calls for a Night of the Long Knives:
How long until Ewick calls for some sort of Stalinist show trial, complete with forced confessions from Steele and the RNCC leadership?
calipygian
@BlizzardOfOz: Maybe that is happening in some places, but the LaRouchies and the Teabaggers seemed to co-exist quite happily at the Teabagger’s Ball and it was pretty tough to tell where the LaRouchies ended and the Teabaggers began.
Their signs were pretty much similar.
mistermix
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: I disagree with Kos on this one. There are two kinds of Blue Dogs:
1) The ones who have to be. In other words, they are in a district that is R+ some big number. Owens would be this kind of Blue Dog.
2) The chickenshits. They’re in safe Democratic seats but are Blue Dogs because they’re afraid of tacking even a little bit left.
Kos lumps (1) and (2) together, and he shouldn’t. (1)’s are better than the alternative, because it’s better to have a moderate/conservative Democrat in a House seat than a Republican, no matter what. Republicans circa 2009 are just oppositional-defiant. Much better to have a solid procedural vote from a (1), and the occasional vote for something a little more progressive, than an automatic “Nay”.
The solution for (2) is primary challenges, or just the threat of challenges. Greenwald and Hamsher are already talking about funding primaries for (2) and the Lord be with them.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Sigh. You’ve just described the unintended consequences of media consolidation on “journalism” circa 2009. In 2001, nobody in the MSM would have voiced such a thing since we were all still in the midst of post-911 “support that stoopid fuck in the White House because of the attacks” mania.
The endless clucking will be led by Faux “News” of course, that’s to be expected. But other craptastic, defacto righty outlets like Politico will also be some of the lead cluckers, which will feed into the usual Beltway windbags do more clucking and so on and so on.
Again, welcome to American Journalism 2009. The Hearst people of 3 generations ago would be proud.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This is an issue we deal with here in Misery vis a vis Claire McCaskill. On every core Dem vote, she votes with the Repups. She’s timid on anything that requires even a modicum of political risk, in other words, she’s a huge disappointment to Dems in the state.
And yet, yeah, she at least ensures Dem control of the Senate (for what little that’s worth these days it seems). Thus, it always puts voters like me in a quandary since at the strategic level, it’s better to have her there than what the Repup alternative would be. But it does make for a shitload of teeth grinding whenever she votes like the Repup alternative would have voted.
Yeah verily to primary contests for the lot of them.
parksideq
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: This.
In the long term, it’s great that tea-baggery will be exposed as the far-right wankfest that it is, but in the meanwhile NY-23 (assuming Hoffman wins) is going to be screwed by being represented by a congressman that cares even less about the district than most run-of-the-mill congressmen.
Invest in popcorn futures; the 2010 GOP primaries are going to be just like this, but everywhere.
Sly
In order:
1) In practical terms, nothing. In emotional terms, it helps the fringe not feel so bad for being the fringe. They’re cutting of their nose to spite their face.
2) Following the first answer, it isn’t a political tactic, so the efficacy of it as one is irrelevant. It’s the same argument that was used against Clinton: He isn’t a legitimately elected President because he never got more than 50% of the vote. While true, it had no implication other than making them feel better for sniffing his underwear.
3) There’s a better parallel with Lysenkoism, the agricultural reforms put forth by Trofim Lysenko that were based on a rejection of sound biology (Mendelian genetics) in favor of one that Lysenko felt was a better representation of Marxist doctrine. Stalin loved him for it, the Soviet establishment loved him for it, and they executed a large number of Soviet biologists who disagreed with him to prove it. They also exacerbated one of the greatest famines in the 20th century in the process.
KCinDC
I disagree. If we have a big enough majority, then having one more Blue Dog doesn’t help us on party-line or near-party-line votes in the House — who cares whether we win by 50 votes or 52? But having another Blue Dog makes the Democratic caucus that much more conservative, and Speaker Pelosi has to pay attention to the new Blue Dog, whereas she could’ve just ignored the Republican. At this point I want a House where there are more non-Blue-Dog Democrats than there are Blue Dogs plus Republicans.
The situation is very different in the Senate, where we have to deal with the cloture rules. There having even a very conservative Democrat is better than having a Republican, at least until we get near 70 or so Democrats.
mistermix
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Not to pick on you, but I also disagree with the view that Owens can’t hold the seat. Take a look at the history of SD-AL. Stephanie Herseth won the special in 2004 by 3,000 votes. Five months later, she beat the same guy by 29,000 votes. That was the same year that Daschle lost, btw.
When voters see a few months of hard work from an incumbent, the next election is a completely different event.
BTW, SD is R+9. NY-23 is R+1.
mistermix
@KCinDC: There’s nothing wrong with Blue Dogs voting against their party when the caucus majority has a more liberal position. In fact, a key to a Blue Dog holding his/her seat is to be seen by his conservative constituency as “independent”. Blue Dogs have been vocally opposed to the public option, yet it looks like the House bill will have it, to pick one example of how their bark is worse than their bite.
Also, having a bunch of Blue Dogs means that elections are more expensive for the Republicans. They have lots of “targets of opportunity” in the Blue Dogs, but each of those Blue Dogs has the huge advantage of incumbent fundraising. So if they want to try to take a few Blue Dogs out, they need to spend big.
KCinDC
NY-23 is not a teabagger district. Obama’s approval there is 59 percent. Unfortunately special elections are all about turnout, only the truly motivated come out to vote, and teabaggers definitely have the motivation to fight the Islamo-Nazi-Africo-Communist menace of Obama.
KCinDC
Mistermix, assuming we get a public option, it won’t look like the public option we would’ve gotten if it hadn’t been repeatedly watered down to appeal to conservative Democrats (and, hopelessly, to Republicans). And notice that single payer, which should have been the left-wing position to which a strong public option was the compromise, was never in the conversation at all. Instead, we got the public option defined as the extreme left end of the politics of healthcare reform, so we’ll get to compromise from it with something ridiculous like a trigger that will never be set off or an opt-in system.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@KCinDC:
I think you met Chuck “Robb”, not Chuck “Todd”, as winning the VA governorship in 1981. Robb is married to LBJ’s daughter, Lynda Bird.
charlequin
@KCinDC: It’s almost impossible to blame the House for that, or to suggest that replacing Blue Dog seats with Republicans would have improved that dynamic. The vast majority of water poured into the HCR broth is by the hands of moderate Senators who are abusing the Senate’s terrible rules for personal gain.
@calipygian: Delicious. Nothing could really make me happier than a purge of the unfaithful on the GOP side. A sufficiently emboldened wingnut faction looking to extract a pound of flesh in 2010 is going to wind up with a much higher wingnut percentage of a smaller GOP delegation, which suits me just fine.
KCinDC
Heh. Right you are, of course, phoebes-in-santa fe. I think I had Chuck Todd on the brain after looking at my Twitter updates.
BlizzardOfOz
@calipygian
That’s interesting because the Larouchies are for single payer and the teabaggers are for… God knows what but I’m guessing not SP.
calipygian
@BlizzardOfOz: Yeah, but the LaRouchies and the TeaBaggers both think Obama is Hitler.
And the LaRouchies had some really over the top signs. Like parody almost.
Shell
I think you just summed up the Tea Bagger movement/mentality. Or at least how they see things
DougJ
I agree that Owens is likely to hold the seat if he wins. Hoffman will likely get redistricted out in 2012.
Martin
Count me in with the magical thinking angle. Even when they are brutally honest, the ability of the teabagger wing of the Republican party to honestly assess a situation is very limited. The teabaggers all too often sound like my kids when they dream up some fantastical plan to construct a hovercraft with laser cannons in the back yard.
Any given situation yields countless scenarios, at least several of which are plausible, but they seem incapable of doing anything more than picking out their preferred scenario and treating it as though it’s the most likely, and then ruminating on the world domination that the scenario would lead to.
So yes, no matter what, Hoffman and the whackadoodles have won here. At the very least, they have successfully purified a corner of the GOP, and even if Owens wins (er, even if Scozzafava hands it to him – remember, the voters have no role to play here) establishing their purification cred is really what they were after – winning was always a bonus. This, apparently, will ‘send a message’ to any RINOs in 2010, and cause Democrats to quake in fear at the teabaggers that surround us. Also.
Chuck Butcher
You do have to keep the troops motivated. What you talk about behind closed doors may have little resemblence to the public dialogue. You have to keep things realistic enough to not offend the troops’ intelligence (sure, in teabaggery that may be easy) and upbeat enough to keep them going.
If I’m working on a cause and trying to keep people motivated to make the contacts and do the other work, do you suppose it is in my interest to tell them it is impossible? I’ll get a hell of a lot farther by saying it is an uphill battle but we’re gaining and even a loss has the result of our viewpoint being out there as opposed to ignored. Depending on your cause (say single payer) you may well lose repeatedly but if you stop because you’re losing you’re done on something that is important and possibly the best policy despite losing.
Losing can be motivating if you can point to energizing reasons for that loss. It is hard enough to get people to give a sufficient damn to do the work so keeping them motivated is important.
Re: wingers? I did mention realistic motivation…
Martin
Obama’s approval in the north is 89% – that includes Republicans. 59% in the north *is* a teabagger district. I doubt there’s a single district in the south which has him as high as 59% approval. His approval in the south is around 30%.
People forget how insanely geographically polarized this country is right.
kay
@Shell:
I thought that was true, that the main rallying cry was bail outs and stimulus, but now I’m a little disillusioned with the teabaggers.
They’re looking more and more look like the Christian conservatives who lost in 2006.
They may not be the same people, but the whole “leftist” tag seems to be pinned on abortion and equal rights, same as it ever was. The economic shrieking looks like window dressing.
I guess I didn’t realize the importance of the values voters nonsense to the teabag “movement”. How are they different than Bush-margin voters in 2004?
Martin
Duh.
Did you see any shrieking when Bush was in office? No? Funny that.
kay
@Martin:
Well, I know that. I know Republicans lie about any number of “core principles”.
I thought they were marketing teabaggers as something new.
Martin
There is nothing new in the GOP. That’s not to say that there can’t be (and shouldn’t be) something new, but the teabaggers sure as hell isn’t it. Just go back to the origination of the group: TEA = taxed enough already. They rolled out these protests against Obama when *Obama introduced a tax cut* – the same tax cut that he campaigned on.
The socialism angle was picked up from some other groups who dragged out the old civil rights = socialism meme and couldn’t let a good smear go to waste.
It’s been a bullshit smear campaign from the get-go.
Dave S.
Absolutely, as long as you don’t get called on it. So far, so good.
Bootlegger
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Won’t the R-Party be happy with electing another Blue Dog? This is a no-lose for the R’s, unfortunately. Now, if Dede somehow shocked everyone with some middle support, then she could have been the awesome for the Dems.
It just hasn’t gotten weird enough for me.
Jason
I suppose it’s interesting, but “NY-23” is a bit like “ACORN” in terms of “things people weren’t talking about, ever, until a week ago.” I don’t think we’ll have real or lasting indicators pointing to a long-term retrenchment until we see a Sen. Toomey. Then we got trouble; even so, he’s still a Club for Growth guy first, and any teabag affinity is coincidental.
The problem I see is the brightness of the line they’ve drawn between what they believe and what they will tolerate. You have to literally join the teabaggers, not simply agree with them. McCain, say; you could just go along with that, if you habitually voted Republican, Palin or no. Palin went onstage with McCain in the same way she’ll be onstage with Oprah – safe in the knowledge that their audiences overlap. I don’t think there’s much real buy-in right there. People in NY-23 obviously have a different sort of reckoning, and I assume the motivated voter would admit to a lot of what they’re actually backing. When the stakeholders are representative of the nation itself, it’s not as easy to insist on fidelity to principles over toleration of dissenting discourse. I think Pres. Obama is ample evidence of that, for the gamut of the political spectrum.