Posted on 05/24/2011 7:19:58 PM PDT by Perdogg
BREAKING NEWS: Democrat Kathy Hochul wins special election for US House seat in NY
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
We live in the adjacent district, so were still blitzed by the ridiculous ads from both sides.
Besides the “Tea Party” X-factor, it was interesting the amount of negative comments about Corwin from even Conservative voters. Of course, her defending entitlements like Medicare didn’t help.
Well, seems to me turnout was the main issue here.
In Nov Lee won this seat roughly 150k to 50k over the dem.
So, it looks like the dem is going to wind up with around the same 50k, maybe slightly less, than the party got in Novemeber.
But the GOP went from 150k for Lee to around 40k this time.
What happened to the other 110k who voted Republican just 6 months ago. If even 10% of them showed up we’d have held the seat.
The dems didn’t find any new voters. They just were able to motivate nearly all of the same ones who came out in the fall to come out again.
For some reason, the GOP couldn’t do the same. Only around 30% of those who voted last fall showed up.
I don’t know if they didn’t do a good job of GOTV, of publicizing the election, of keeping people informed, if the candidate was bad, etc... I didn’t reall follow this.
But it’s hard to understand how you go frm o150,000 to 40,000 in 6 months in a heavily GOP district that has delivered heavy GOP wins for quite some time,
Well, Ryan’s budget was a nice effort but it obviously has no chance now. Not that it did before. There weer never 60 votes in the Senate for it, and there were never going to be. So I never really got the big deal over it. It never had any chance of becoming law.
I guess the good news is that all of the 2012 candidates can now move on from it and not have to defend it. They can just say “look, it was a good plan, I still think it has a lot of positive elements. I think the medicare proposals obviously raised a lot of valid concerns and those will have to be addressed. I think there are still plenty of good ideas in it and it’s a good starting point but we need to figure out a way to do it that allays people’s concerns over medicare. I’m confident we can”
Newt's comments were stupid and a disaster, but he had a point. The republicans will not be successful if they try to change Medicare and the seniors aren't on board - it just won't work.
Obama has the media and the repubs don't have that same cover. How many seniors know Obama wants to cut half a trillion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare - not that many.
The repubs need to learn and need to know they have to explain better and in clearer terms what they want to do with Medicare, but I have a feeling that the seniors will not put up with any changes and basically we are doomed.
Good points. It still stinks that we lost this one, but New York doesn’t have GOP districts anywhere near as solid as you’ll find in most states. Plus the final result looks to be about 48%-43%, so no majority vote here for the Dem.
Nothing 'usual' about the Republicans in that district...
the tea party person was a fake, he split the vote and now gives it to the Dems.
Why did the GOP not go after this person much stronger?
Why are the voters so stupid up there, as this is the 2nd time up there the voters have screwed up?
The left used the Ryan plan as scare tactics and Ryan should not have put a plan forward until the Dems did , now we have seriously screwed up and this will be played for next year.
When the hell will the cowardly GOP wake the hell up they the left does not go by the gentleman rules?
Since Kathy Hochul is in charge of the local DMV, perhaps this could be her "swan song" ;)
correct the GOP should not have come out with the Ryan plan, now this will be used as a scare tactic and here it worked even if the left put a fake candidate.
I guess we touched the 3rd rail and all these voters who said they wanted to cut spending changed their minds when they realized it might slow down their own personal gravy trains.
Thanks Perdogg.
I read an earlier story about this. Apparently the Republican candidate was a good, solid conservative, but some nitwit Tea Party boss nominated a Tea Party candidate who was actually further to the left.
If I understood correctly, this was not a fake Democrat Tea Party candidate, but a Tea Party boss whose nose was out of joint because the Republicans wouldn’t do what he told them.
If so, then the national Tea Party needs to take some kind of action. Or conservatives in New York.
It is Buffalo. I would not be surprised if the Democrats had a huge movement in the State college there.
I’m sure this will be the leading story on MSNBC tomorrow and they will all sway that this means that the tea party is officially done.
It matters. This is a very heavily Republican district. The party will claim it means nothing, but it will scare the wits out of Republicans in "this Congress" from advancing much more in the way of entitlement reforms.
Yes, there was a fake TEA Party candidate, but even that is bad news. The left will see that some dunderheads will vote for anything with a TEA Party after their name and run many more just like all over the country in 2012.
It’s a great day for the ruling class.
Now they can get back to the hard work of raising our taxes and taking our freedom. :)
Agreed. We won’t beat obama without strong support from seniors. Very strong support. Higher than McCain or Bush got. Seniors were the only age group that voted for McCain over Obama 53-45. They were the only age group he did better with than Bush did in 2004. They were the age group that went the most for the GOP last fall(59%, largely because the GOP effectively portrayed Obama and the dems as threatening medicare). We’re going to need at least 55% of them in 2012, if not higher.
I don’t care how good your ideas are, how good your plans are. They won’t mean anything if Obama gets re-elected. So the #1 goal has to be the beat Obama.
Simple logic tells you we need to lay off medicare for the time being. Yes, Ryan’s plan has good ideas and it’s not as bad as the dems make it out to be. But the dems can easily demagogue it and the media will support them and it’s hard to respond to. Even when you watch Ryan he does it in the context of a long, detailed speech. But the dems have a simple 30 second ad that he wants to get rid of medicare. It’s just not good politics.
And the whole “it won’t affect current seniors or those over 55” just doesn’t work. It didn’t work when W tried it on Social Security and it won’t work now.
Medicaid is much more fertile ground. Seniors may actually vote GOP, and have in the past. They don’t like Obama. However, most of the poor and those on medicaid are already Dems are likely to vote for Obama. So, we don’t relaly lose anything by going after them. We do by going after seniors.
The good news is this happened early enough to serve as a warning and we can adapt. Obama and the dems got a similar warning in Jan 2010 with MA. They chose to ignore it. We all know what happened. Hopefully we won’t ignore this.
My prediction is that this district goes back to the GOP in ‘12
She was. There was nothing wrong with Corwin. She was a good conservative and would have made a good member of Congress. Many TEA Party people had been backing Bellavia, and when he didn't get the nomination he and a few of his supporters got all butthurt and endorsed Davis (who is obviously a liberal Dem).
Whatever anyone may have thought about the GOP nominating Corwin, the fact that Bellavia endorsed the fake TEA Party candidate is a good indicator the New York GOP made the right decision. Bellavia is a dirt bag for doing this.
MSNBC is spinning it as a successful exploitation of Democrat mediscare tactics.
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