Posted on 10/26/2009 8:34:05 AM PDT by pissant
The feeble pulse of moderation in the Republican Party is in danger of flat-lining in the Nov. 3 Congressional election in upstate New York. Luminaries like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have taken opposing sides over whether the party dare tolerate the official Republican candidate in the 23rd district Dede Scozzafava, a six-term assemblywoman whose record includes refreshing tinges of centrism.
Ms. Scozzafava was nominated by local party leaders as eminently electable despite or because of her defense of womens abortion rights and her tolerant views on same-sex marriage.
She is already shunned by many more ideologically narrow House Republicans, and deep-pocketed right-wing purists, pouring in hundreds of thousands of dollars, have driven up the poll numbers of Douglas Hoffman on the Conservative line. Barely noticed in the intramural scrum is the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens. He could profit most from the three-way split in the heavily Republican district, which was vacated by John McHugh, the G.O.P. moderate appointed secretary of the Army by President Obama.
Helping to elect the Democrat is not the aim of ambitious conservatives like Ms. Palin, last years vice presidential nominee, who is now intent on building a national constituency. She pronounced Scozzafavas candidacy unacceptable because it blurs the lines, at least of Ms. Palins idea of party orthodoxy. Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, nostalgic for the G.O.P.s big tent fantasy days, disagreed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Exactly.
Newt should take Dee Dee to his own district if he likes her politics that much.
It is heart warming to see that the Times is worried about the direction of the GOP. They better start worrying about their bottom line.
By the way, this is how the House is supposed to work: a local candidate represents the local interests of the local electorate. The ideals that the Times finds so abhorrent are in fact the local sentiment.
This is how it is supposed to work in a representative republic. I dare say that the sentiments of the constituents of Pelosi are not shared by the majority of Americans, but that is how it works!
How many times have we heard this crap down through the years?? The Republicans must have a big tent and support Scranton or Rockefeller over Goldwater in ‘64, Ford over Reagan in ‘76, Bush over Reagan in ‘80, Dole over Buchanan in ‘96, McCain over Bush in ‘00, Specter over Toomey in ‘04, McCain over Romney et al in ‘08.
It gets tedious. When Republicans run as conservatives (other than in ‘64), they win, 68, 72, 80, 84, 88, 00, and 04, they win. When they run as moderates, 60, 76, 92, 96, and 08, they lose.
Big surprise that the democrats and their mouthpieces love the moderate big tenters!
Actually, cc2k, it's "In a small tent, we stand closer." Tagline Material courtesy of UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide
(adopts Bubba accent) Well, now, that all depends on what your definition of "refreshing" is...
I’m not a Ron Paul supporter but I’m not one to attack him for being right about a great many things.
good point
They correctly call McHugh a Moderate, but then call DeDe a “centrist” (actually, they just say she has hints of centrist leanings, suggesting she is more to the right). Centrist to them means abortion rights, apparently, even though half the country opposes those rights, and a vast majority opposes the unfettered right to abortion that DeDe supports.
McHugh was no conservative, but he was much more conservative than DeDe. If the nyt knows McHugh was a moderate, they know that DeDe is a “liberal republican”. However, the MSM never uses the term “liberal republican”, just as they never use the term “liberal democrat”.
They also won’t use “progressive republican”, because that’s too “positive” a word from their point of view, so they use “moderate” and “centrist”., while they use “progressive” for far-left democrats, and “moderate” for ordinary left-wing democrats.
The logic of my tag is obvious.
The Dem “big tent” is gays, race, peace, environment, immigration, unions, atheists etc.
But it is really a small tent because if you are gay, you must also be green, pacifist, pro-affirmative action, amnesty....
If you are in a Dem group, you must support all of them, even if they are detrimental to one another (i.e. unions vs. illegal immigrants or race - Blacks are mostly religious - vs. gays and atheists)
The Republican “Big Tent” is economic, security and social conservatives.
There is no necessary conflict between them.
So it is not too much to expect them to squeeze together in a “smaller tent” and start supporting each other like the Dems do.
And if they don’t support all three, ask for their support but for God’s sake, don’t elect them.
Wonder if she and Rahm have each other's phone numbers?
In 1995, Clinton sold his office to the Chinese for a lot of money (and other favors, like our neatest and bestest W-88 thermonuclear warhead design, and guidance technology suitable for MIRV'ing Chinese Long March ICBM's aimed at the United States).
Clinton took that money and, with Dickie "Toe-Perv" Morris, did a lot of test-marketing and focus-group work in "C" markets (Jackson, Mississippi, for example) "below the radar" of the GOP. He tested an array of pitches and opponents all summer and came up with his "right matchup": Bob Dole. Bob Dole would be the weakest candidate the GOP could field against Clinton.
In August, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter ran an essay the burden of which was that the GOP was on the verge of becoming a silly, irrelevant party in danger of "never being taken seriously again" or words to that effect, because of their embrace of conservatism and the Contract with America, which had given them their biggest electoral success since 1946. The antidote to that inchoate silliness, that gaping maw of press disrespect and perpetual "unseriousness"? Nominate Bob Dole. Bob Dole has experience, Bob Dole is a known quantity, Bob Dole has .... gravitas!
No, I'm serious, that's what Alter wrote.
Think he didn't know the results of Clinton's test polling and marketing?
Let us rest our case. If Pinchy loathes Sarah Palin, then we've found our woman, our Joan of Arc.
Hurliferous liberal journopolemicist Theodore White, author of the Making of the President series of campaign books, referred to the RiNO's fondly as "the best of their kind."
He snarled at conservatives as "primitives" -- an epithet recycled from the McCarthy era a dozen years before, when liberals used it about McCarthy's supporters and anti-Communists generally. (Documented by Ann Coulter in Treason.)
How serious are liberals about these terms of abuse? Well, McCarthy himself died drunk and insane at age 48, thanks to them. That tough enough?
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