House of Eratosthenes

So on the GOP side of things, who gets the blame? The seat was considered to be a safe Republican one…if Owens had some special, perhaps local agenda he was publicly embracing, I’ve yet to hear of it. Obviously the voters were recoiling from something.

Is there something inherently nasty and off-putting, as I have been repeatedly told, to be a “tea party” guy? Just standing up for more freedom and lower taxes somehow takes on an acrid, visceral tone? People still get the feeling they can’t look at themselves in the mirror unless they do their bit to send Barack Obama out and apologize to the world and throw around money we don’t have?

Or could it be they were recoiling from the instability. The heat that was radiating from that big crack in the middle. The wobbling. The self-contradiction. The “We’ll get your vote by being exactly like those other guys…except not quite so much.”

Looks to me like the second of those two. John McCain was certainly wobbly, certainly trying to get in (to whatever extent he was really trying) leveraging the “Not as much of a democrat as that other guy” approach. He wasn’t visceral. He wasn’t nasty. Yes there was a lot of campaign propaganda coming from the Obama camp that McCain/Palin represented meanness, ill will, toxicity, poison, acid, snips snails & puppy dogs’ tails. And yeah I think a lot of hardcore democrats bought into it, but those were folks who would never have voted Republican anyway.

I think when people choose leaders they want to choose someone who’s going to stick to something. They’ll choose someone who’ll stick to something ugly, over someone who doesn’t stick to anything. When people vote, it seems they vote with the expectation that as soon as the guy’s sworn in, he’ll go meet behind closed doors with Satan himself. Someone whose interests are directly contrary to the electorate’s. And so a wobbly-guy who’s voted in, will produce decisions worse than a fairly-sturdy guy who can remain consistent about what he’s pushing, even though he might be pushing the wrong stuff. No reflection on Doug Hoffman. But the GOP party machinery was obviously completely taken-fer-a-ride on this thing. They spent too much time in smoke-filled back rooms just like it was the Tamany Hall days, and I think that flipped this thing over.

It makes sense, and people do seem to be voting that way consistently. Consistently. How many people have we seen run on this “I’m not all-right or all-left, I’m just in the middle somewhere”? When has it ever worked? It hasn’t, because “in the middle somewhere” means every single decision is up-for-grabs. No…people aren’t wild about fringe-kook stuff. They just want to know what they’re getting. They always choose a transparent packaging. Always. Well, except for where the really charismatic hopey-changey people are concerned.

Twenty-four hours ago it looked like Hoffman had this thing locked up. Some of the news reports I read were droning on about how much he had to worry about in 2010, as voters…blah, blah, blah. Well, it’ll be interesting to see if I read the same stuff about Owens and his chances in 2010.

Update: Interesting take on things: “Conservatives Win.”

I’m going to takes this in a slightly different direction since I don’t give a rat’s about the brouhaha over the 23rd district of New York or all of the flames flying around the large egos who got involved.

Here is the difference between democrat voters and conservative voters:

The democrat voting populace are in 95% agreement on big brother government programs and social policy.

The conservative voting populace is divided into several slices of pie on those same issues.

The social/religious conservatives who endorse big social spending and large government intervention in some areas, as long as they don’t touch schools or abortion clinics. These folks love Huckabee, a man who makes gag every time I see his dog-eyed face.

The quasi-social/fiscal conservatives who want more government control for the sake of the children (i.e – bicycle helmets, smoking in parks banned, kill the pit bulls, rash free nappies laws) but they don’t like welfare, war, the death penalty or higher taxes. They love regulation, though, this pack of nudgy bastards.

You have the moderate intellectual crowd, they wouldn’t have an abortion but they’d rather fund one than provide for a lifetime of care, prison and another eventual round of needy bastards. They see everything through a grey filter with the bottom line ending at their pocketbook and doorstep. Culture has no place in their heart, pragmatism does.

Am I boring you yet? I’m starting to bore myself, so I’ll stop. I think you get the drift. We on the right side of the aisle aren’t in agreement about very much when it comes to public policy, so how can we manage to elect any conservative leaders that we can find even fifty percent agreement on?

In last year’s republican primary, I supported Duncan Hunter. I’ve since supported his son. Most conservatives would find these men to be far right wing, even though neither ran on a socially conservative campaign platform. My two favorite senators both hail from Oklahoma. They both live the same socially conservative lifestyles I do, but they work as fiscal conservatives trying to limit the scope of federal government, something I’m passionate about.

The GOP may need to divide with social conservatives on one side and limited government people on the other. I tend to think if you support small government, the social issues will work themselves out locally if they have no federal involvement or funding, but that’s not a litmus test anyone running for the religious right’s votes will ever pass.
- Daphne | 11/04/2009 @ 17:19
Hoffman lost because he does not live in the district, and because he is anti-abortion. To be committed to the elimination of abortion one must favor the type of muscular state presence we may abhor otherwise. It is ironic that the militant abortion types do favor that type of state. Reagan was wise to fight other battles.
- xlibrl | 11/04/2009 @ 22:24
[…] Memo For File CII D’JEver Notice? XLVI Hoffman Loses “We Can’t Make That Up; It’s Right There in the Bill” Gullible Eager-Beaver […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/04/2009 @ 23:42

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Hoffman LosesWednesday, November 4th, 2009

Hoffman Loses
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009