By Tim Dunkin
Well, yesterday certainly was an interesting day, wasn't it? Things generally looked good for conservatives and Republicans - even in the small set of races that we didn't win. I'll explain why this is the case below. First, to recap the results of the important votes:
In Virginia, the Republicans swept the "Big Three" races - Governor, LtGov, and Attorney General. And when I say "swept", I mean just that. McDonnell, Bolling, and Cuccinelli thrashed their Democrat rivals in what really was a bellwether referendum on Obama and the Democrats in Congress. Remember, Virginia is now supposed to be the quintessential "purple" state, with blue cores in the urban areas, surrounded by a reddish exterior. By all accounts, the blue areas were not so blue last night, and Obama was handed a huge personal rejection. There was some definite buyer's remorse in VA last night, as Obama's appearances with Creigh Deeds leading up to the election seem to have done absolutely nothing for the Democrat - and quite possibly helped to drive more voters to McDonnell.
The big news, however, was in New Jersey, where Chris Christie, the (conservative enough) Republican defeated über-liberal Obamanista Jon Corzine by a margin wide enough to make Democrat vote fraud efforts ineffective. Again, this race was a "win one for the Gipper" type race for the Democrats, where Obama's personal and political popularity was on the line. And New Jersey just isn't that into him anymore.
Unfortunately, Doug Hoffman in NY-23 wasn't quite able to pull it off - this time around, at least. Still, you have to admit that a come-from-behind push by an insurgent third party conservative who came within three points of defeating the Democrat - and that with a lousy "Republican" acting as a spoiler - is impressive. While I'm sure the Dems and other lefties will be spinning it today as some sort of crushing defeat for insurgent, "Tea Party" conservatism, this is simply not the case, though it does send a few messages that the more hard-core third party supporters may not like to hear (more below).
Granted, there are roughly 11,000 absentee ballots left to count, and the electronic voting machines in Fulton County (which went for McCain fairly strongly last year) broke last week and were impounded, which means those votes have to be tallied by hand, so are yet to be counted. Still, I doubt these will be enough to pull it out for Hoffman, especially as most of the absentee ballots were cast before Hoffman really started to surge, and when Scozzafava was still viewed as a viable candidate.
In the CA-10 race, unsurprisingly, John Garamendi staved off a strong challenge from conservative Republican David Harmer to win the race by ten points. This district does lean pretty heavily Democratic, and Harmer got basically no support from the national GOP apparatus at all (yet another failure on the part of the GOP "leadership"). Who knows what could have happened had the NRCC and RNC not wasted a million big ones on Dede Scozzafava in NY-23, and focused their monies on helping a REAL Republican instead?
All the same, the result in CA-10 ought to be a bit unsettling for Obama and his minions. Garamendi won 53% of the vote. Obama carried this district with 60+%, and Tauscher (the Dem who previously held the seat) routinely won it with around 65% of the vote. The fact that a big name statewide Democrat like Garamendi (who was previously California's LtGov) only took 53% in a Democrat gimme-district shows that the "Obama effect" was in play even in CA-10. The only problem is that the district starts out so much further left that even this wasn't enough (yet) to push it into the Republican column.
Some other results from last night? In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court is now in Republican hands, with the victory of conservative Republican Joan Orie Melvin over her leftist Democrat opponent, Jack Panella. The court now sits 4-3 for the GOP. Also, in bright Blue Maine - a state that Obama carried 57.7% - 40.4% - gay marriage was handed a crushing defeat, as 53% of state voters chose to reject it. Once again, we see that even neon blue states, when given the opportunity, reject the radical social initiatives of the Left.
So, now for some analysis. What can we take away from these results?
Well, first of all, let's look at the NY-23 race. Here, we see that the third party acted as a spoiler. Of course, in this case, the third party was the GOP, whose liberal candidate helped to throw the race to the Democrat via her endorsement, while siphoning votes away from Doug Hoffman. Let's face it, there are always going to be a certain percentage of voters who vote a party line, no matter who or what is on the ticket. In a district in which the GOP carries a 45,000 voter registration advantage, there are bound to be thousands who will vote for the Republican, no matter what. I suspect this to be the case in NY-23, and likely accounts for the roughly 6K votes that Scozzafava won (larger than the margin of victory for Owens).
The problem is, by the time Hoffman started to surge, there was really nothing that could be done about it - Scozzafava's name was on the ballot, she'd already got it into her head that she "deserved" to win, and that's all there was to it. All the same, it is almost certain that if Hoffman had been the nominee to begin with - meaning that the GOP leadership at the county and district levels had actually had a clue - we would be celebrating a Republican retention today in NY-23. The problem was vote-splitting, not the conservative message Hoffman brought, or the support of conservatives like Sarah Palin.
Take home message? There are two:
First, third partyism doesn't work. All it does is splits the vote, so that Democrats win. The evidence is right there for us to see, and frankly, brooks no argument. It's simple mathematics. When you divide the vote that is in opposition to a Democrat among two other candidates, you will more than likely reduce both to a vote total lower than the Democrat's. As I said, in this case, Scozzafava was the third party spoiler, but the lesson holds across the board. Let's bury all this nonsense about third partyism.
Second, however, is that the typical elitist Republican "business as usual" won't work anymore, either. Picking a candidate like Scozzafava who is radically out of step with both the Republican rank-and-file and with the majority of Independents is a losing strategy that just invites the conservative majority to dump you. The message that NY-23 ought to send is that, in the ostensibly conservative party, you need to have conservative candidates.
Let's face it - the GOP has been bleeding members for years. The GOP is at one of its lowest ebbs in listed membership. This is NOT - and I repeat this for emphasis NOT - because they've been "driving away moderates." It's because they've been driving away conservatives. Conservatives make up 40% of the population, while Republicans only make up 20%. That ought to tell the GOP where it's bread is buttered. Imagine where the GOP would be if it could get conservatives united behind it, instead of driving them away and demoralizing them by running squishes like McCain and abject DIABLOs like Scozzafava? I said above that third partyism is NOT the answer to conservatives' woes. But the only way to defuse the third partyist tendencies which are fracturing conservatism is for the GOP to come back to the Right.
This will not drive away moderates now anymore than it did when Reagan brought the party way back to the Right in 1980, and when Gingrich did the same in 1994. Moderates are fundamentally people who have little in the way of firm principles or convictions. In a sense, they are people looking for a leader. When conservatives step up and start presenting sound fiscal and social policies, start providing that leadership, the moderates will fall into line. Bank on it, for it has happened before. It should be little surprise to analysts that the period of GOP decline from 2004 onward coincides precisely with congressional Republican abandonment of the core principles of fiscal conservatism and personal liberty that the party once stood for. When you don't provide leadership, when your platform is to provide just slightly less spending than the other guy, when you are supporting the same TARP bailouts and No Child Left Behind and hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending programs that the Democrats are, don't be surprised when moderates sense your lack of leadership, and abandon you. I repeat - first and foremost, what moderates are looking for is leadership, not ideological compromise. Provide it, and they will come.
So, combining these two lessons, we see a simple solution for the GOP - put forward, support, and get behind the conservative candidates that the rank-and-file of the GOP wants. We don't need third parties, nor do we out-of-touch party hacks trying to push the Party to the Left - we just need the Republican Party leadership to do its job of representing the wishes of the base of their own Party.
Another lesson we can learn from the results of this election is that those big bad scary social conservatives really aren't so scary to normal people. Sure, radical leftist fanatics may find them frightening, but by all accounts, the average voter does not.
After all, Bob McDonnell, who just won big in VA, is the epitomé of the "scary SoCon". He's firmly socially conservative right down the line on every issue. He even wrote a religiously-based thesis twenty years ago which basically advocated for women to stay at home with the kids! The Democrats and the Washington Post tried to play this to the hilt, making it one of their central arguments against him. Net effect? McDonnell won bigger than any Republican has statewide in Virginia for 15 years, even polling quite well in upscale, socially liberal northern Virginia. In short, people didn't care. Social conservatism didn't bother them.
Likewise, we see that New Jersey now has its first pro-life governor in decades. Chris Christie opposes abortion, and he opposes gay marriage - the two signature issues of the so-called "Religious Right." Again, net effect on the race in socially liberal New Jersey? Nada.
And what about Maine, where a genuine social issue that divides the nation was on the line, and where there can be no argument about other mitigating factors concerning a specific candidate? Again, social conservatism won. Gay marriage lost. Bright blue Maine handed the gay mafia a stunning defeat. End of story. Not only was social conservatism not scary in this case, but it succeeded in attracting enough votes to win in one of the most liberal states in the union. This follows closely on the lesson we should all have learned last November, when the only kind of conservatism that won in 2008 was social conservatism. Remember the defeats for gay marriage in California and Florida? The defeat for gay adoption in Arkansas? The defeat for affirmative action in Nebraska? Indeed, if the two initiatives had not been so poorly written, to the point where many pro-life advocates didn't even support them, the anti-abortion efforts in Colorado and South Dakota would probably have succeeded as well.
All in all, social conservatism - despite the arguments from people like David Frum and Kathleen Parker - is not a loser for the GOP. Indeed, these issues serve as one of the few bridges for the GOP to minority voters - people who have little attraction to the fiscally conservative "rugged individualism" of the libertarian wing of the GOP.
Speaking of which, in CA-10, we see that running the libertarian line - emphasizing fiscal issues to the complete and total exclusion of any mention of social issues - certainly didn't help David Harmer win. It's doubtful that the occasional statement of opposition to abortion or gay marriage would have hurt him. I'm not saying that he should have gone out there and cut loose with both barrels about social issues, but I do think the drive to minimize talk about socially conservative positions by GOP candidates is misplaced, and ultimately detrimental to the Party's competitiveness nationwide. Just something to keep in mind as we move ahead.
So where does the GOP go from here, if it wants to continue its winning streak, and maintain its competitiveness? Really, the answer is not anything new. It is to return to the tried and true movement conservatism of Ronald Reagan and the 1994 Republican Revolution. Return to the conservative principles of smaller government, traditional values, strong national defense, and fiscal responsibility. It really is as simple as that. If and when the GOP, nationally and across the board, gets serious about providing the voters of this nation with a genuine alternative, instead of being the party of Dede Scozzafava-style "me-too moderates," the voters will reward them with the opportunity to govern this nation again. Let that be the take home message.
