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Its fairly obvious that there's a massive change brewing in the depths of the GOP. Although the Tea Partiers and the "grassroots" have made it clear that Obama is their primary enemy, there's another front that's come to light in this war; the mainstream conservatives are now taking on the tough job of purging their party of big-government bureaucrats from within. Nowhere is that more evident than the battle taking place in NY-23.
Silvan Johnson adores Sarah Palin, belongs to a conservative discussion group and fumes at President Obama's spending policies. But when it comes to picking a new congressional representative for her upstate New York district, she is in no mood to help the Republican Party.
In fact, Johnson and many other conservatives want to use a Nov. 3 special election to teach the GOP a lesson about sticking to conservative values -- even though that lesson could mean the party loses a House seat it has held for decades. The conservatives are backing a third-party candidate, splitting the Republican vote and giving the Democrat a lead in some recent opinion polls.
That last part really depends on who you ask. Some polls, now, after over a week of fervor surrounding Doug Hoffman's upstart third-candidate campaign against GOP choice Dede Scozzafava, it seems Hoffman is starting to appear in the lead in district polling.
So what happened? Well, for starters, in the Bush years, the Republicans made a mockery of the conservative tradition, refused to stand in the way of bigger government, fed the beast of entitlment spending and expanded spending until Washington was bloated and, worse, intensely intrusive into the private lives of American citizens. In essence, they became no better than the Democrats they claimed to despise, alerting millions of American citizens to a truth they'd ignored out of fear: the people we send to Washington end up being, um, well, the people we're constantly trying to get out of Washington. And the electorate got sick of it.
I imagine this hit the Republicans first because for Republicans, bloating the Federal budget and poking into people's lives is, essentially, hypocritical, if you consider what were (at one time before we threw them entirely out the window), conservative values like smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom. Say what you want about Sarah Palin, but she seems to have drawn forward a renewed commitment to what used to make the party one to believe in: the values and principles that are supposed to make up the foundation of the GOP.
So, of course, when the GOP, using its recently-traditional MO, decided to appoint Dede Scozzfava, someone who may as well have a (D) after her name, to a seat vacated by John McHugh who was recently named Secretary of the Army, the "base" got angry and have spent the last few weeks actively rebuffing the party standard-bearers, even mainstays like Newt Gingrich in an effort to prove that conservative candidate who represents the values of the grassroots conservatives is more desirable than someone who, well, represents Democrats. Scozzafava is a pretty traditional moderate who leans to the left on most social issues (she has liberal views on gay marriage, won the Margaret Sanger award for her support of legal abortion), but who seems to have no opposition to raising taxes and supporting large government programs.
As a larger strategy, Newt Gingrich (who has openly and repeatedly endorsed Scozzafava), and other Republican mainstays seem to believe the road to more widespread success is to support moderate candidates whose beliefs seem to reflect the American psyche. In a sense, their theory should pan out, particularly if, when in office, the GOP were effective at passing relevant legislation that served the American people. As such, it seems the actual American psyche seems to be socially moderate (they've got that one right), but fiscally conservative. Sure, I can't claim to hold sway with American voters on the whole libertarian thing, but even if I'm a teensy bit warmer than the GOP establishment - and I'd like to think I am by virtue of being human - the natural electable "moderate" would be someone who favors a more culturally aware social agenda but who stays true to the fiscal policies that should, in effect, differ Republicans from Democrats. Anything else seems like a waste of time.
Which brings me, then to Dede Scozzafava.
As Adrienne at Motivation:Truth puts it:
Scozzafava is no conservative. She is a RINO (Republican in
