House of Eratosthenes

Dede Scozzafava, whom voters in New York’s 23rd district were repeatedly reassured is a Republican right down to the marrow of her bones, showed her true colors when, after dropping out of the race for the House seat, she threw her support to the democrat.

You know, we can debate about what the bedrock principles of the Republican party ought to be, and what they should not be. But I think — and feel free to call me a right-wing nutjob for entertaining such a thought — those principles ought not have a whole lot to do with helping democrats win.

Toby Harnden raises some legitimate issues about Scozzafava’s character, the lack thereof, and how stupid must the local GOP machinery be for investing so heavily in her:

If Dede Scozzafava had a shred of political integrity about her she would have backed Doug Hoffman or declined to endorse anyone. The fact that she took the Republican party’s cash, failed miserably as a candidate and then vented her spleen by trying to torpedo the new de facto Republican candidate (the one who would have beaten her in a primary had there been one) underlines what a losing bet she was right from the start.

There’s been a lot of claptrap written about this race, the most hysterical and hilarious example being Frank Rich’s wishful oped. Liberal Democrats desperately want the Republicans to be a party of lunatics, a gibbering fringe of Christianist militia members bowing down before idols of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. But saying it’s happened so doesn’t make it so.

The first thing that has to be remembered is that, leaving ideology aside, Scozzafava was a shockingly bad candidate. Any candidate whose campaign calls the cops on a reporter asking persistent questions should resign from the race immediately – and be charged with wasting the time of police who could be solving real crime.

That is not the tone & tenor of a typical Scozzafava/Hoffman piece. A typica Scozzafava/Hoffman piece is something like the Frank Rich column that was linked…and maybe like this one from The Nation:

Moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, the party’s nominee in Tuesday’s special election for an open New York congressional seat, has suspended her campaign. And with that move, the new “new right”…can claim a clear victory in its struggle to define the GOP as a far more extreme party than anything envisioned by Bush, Cheney or Gingrich.

Scozzafava, a state legislator, had the Republican ballot line and support from the party apparatus in Washington. But Tea Party and Town Hall activists — and their mentors and funders such as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and the powerful Club for Growth — threw their support behind Doug Hoffman, a more right-wing contender running on the New York Conservative Party line.

Scozzafava took a beating for her support for gay rights and abortion rights, her alliances with organized labor and her sympathy for the plight of the unemployed.

The attacks were brutal and they dried up financial support for the GOP nominee’s campaign — even though she began as a presumed frontrunner in New York’s historically Republican 23rd district, where the seat went vacant after President Obama nominated moderate Republican Congressman John McHugh to serve as Secretary of the Army.

Those tea party people! Extreme…anti-gay-rights…anti-sympathy-for-unemployed. Beatings. Attacks. Brutal.

Well, the Scozzafava problem is an interesting one. And it’s an important one. It’s persistent…and asymmetrical. This summer we witnessed the spectacle of “blue dog democrats” doing damage to the President’s health care scheme. They were called “moderate blue dog democrats” — but those who opposed them within the democrat party, were not called “extreme.” Nobody entertained any questions about whether the “blue dogs” were charting a new course for the democrat party…or should’ve. I don’t recall anybody wringing their hands about what was to happen with each & every little resistance to the blue dogs, or even thinking about taking them seriously. Only questions I recall being raised had to do with how many blue bones had to be tossed to the blue dogs, to make ’em heel.

They weren’t acting as a Trojan horse to get a Republican-in-democrat-clothing elected as a democrat…as was the case with New York’s 23rd seat just now.

So what is up with this Trojan horse move — this Scazzafava maneuver? Why is it that Republicans are constantly being introduced to the latest democrat to pretend to be a Republican, and constantly lectured and finger-waggled and tut-tut-tutted into thinking the democrat is really a Republican, when she isn’t?

The answer, I submit, has to do with the differential between two things that only appear to be the same thing. But aren’t the same thing. Those two things are: Popular preference of one official party over the other…and popular preference of one ideology over the other.

As far as party preference, just look around. White House — democrats. House of Representatives — democrats. Senate — democrats. Governors and state legislatures — democrats.

The ideological preference, on the other hand, looks like this…

I see a differential. Do you?

The differential is both a cause, and an effect. As an effect, it raises an interesting question: Effect of what? Some kind of self-loathing perhaps? Maybe conservatives are “for” things that we all want…but a lot of us just don’t envision as possible?

As a cause, it explains why the Republicans, and conservatives in general, will continue to be blitzed from all sides by this Scazzafava problem. All these David Brocks, all these Ariana Huffingtons, all these Andrew Sullivans. They’re just moral cowards. People with a desire to say stuff, to pretend they have something important to say, but really just want to go after whatever is the most popular.

Such cowards aren’t going to try to emulate liberal values. And they damn sure won’t try to pretend to be Republicans. They’ll do whatever is popular…sit on the fence…in matters of ideology, try to act like conservatives, just in tiny, nugget-sized pieces, only with decidedly insignificant issues. And weakly and temporarily. But in matters of political apparatus, vote for whichever party has the biggest label.

So it’s going to keep happening. Again and again and again.

Update: Regarding the matter immediately under discussion, Hoffman is surging but the undecideds are one-in-five.

Nevertheless…here’s hoping the whole thing turns out like this:

[…] Read it. You know, we can debate about what the bedrock principles of the Republican party ought to be, and what they should not be. But I think — and feel free to call me a right-wing nutjob for entertaining such a thought — those principles ought not have a whole lot to do with helping Democrats win. As a cause, it explains why the Republicans, and conservatives in general, will continue to be blitzed from all sides by this Scazzafava problem. All these David Brocks, all these Ariana Huffingtons, all these Andrew Sullivans. They’re just moral cowards. People with a desire to say stuff, to pretend they have something important to say, but really just want to go after whatever is the most popular. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Scozzafava Problem | 11/03/2009 @ 06:35

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The Scozzafava ProblemMonday, November 2nd, 2009

The Scozzafava Problem
Monday, November 2nd, 2009