It was the only thing the (D)onks could crow about after Tuesday's elections, their slim victory in the by-election in New York district 23, where their man barely beat out a Conservative Party candidate.
What are the lessons for the GOP out of that unique election?
First lesson: The National GOP MUST pay closer attention to candidate selections by local party apparatchiks. Dede Scozzafava is a well-known VERY liberal Republican in those parts, and has flirted more than once with the idea of switching parties. Scozzafava should have never gotten to the ballot as a Republican candidate.
Second Lesson: When a third-party candidate such as Conservative Party Doug Hoffman begins to outpoll the GOP candidate, why didn't the GOP have a plan in place to deal with it? That plan could have included options such as dumping Scozzafava and supporting Hoffman with enough money to allow him to win the election over Demoratic Party candidate Bill Owens. Is it possible that the entire NY State GOP party machine (I may be overusing the word "machine" here) is weak enough so that they didn't recognize what was was happening? If so, the National RNC should have stepped in.
Third Lesson: When Fox News asked Dede Scozzafava last week if she would switch parties after the election, and she REFUSED TO ANSWER, that should have set off every alarm bell at RNC HQ, but it didn't. Michael Steele and Co sat on their hands. At that point, they had five days to send some high-powered people up there, talk to Hoffman, get him on board, and start helping him with some last-minute TV ads, but they sat on their hands, Scozzafava dropped out and asked her supporters to vote Democrat. Somehow, I see that as having been perfectly predictable, and if I can see that from here, why couldn't the RNC?
The questions from this Congressional election debacle just keep cropping up, like mushrooms in the lawn in Oregon during November.
The GOP needs to examine EVERY State party apparatus, and invite GOP voters to send in evaluations of whether that apparatus can actually handle the job at hand. If they had done this in New York, Dede Scozzafava would still be just another crossover voter, not the national spoiler she turned into.
IN NY23, the GOP had an opportunity to ally themselves with the upcoming Conservative Party and use mutual strengths to take a seat that had been a "safe" Democrat seat since the Civil War. They blew that opportunity.
With Speaker Pelosi trying to force an unpopular, early, ill-advised vote on socialized medicine this week, the GOP has a great opportunity to gain visibility as saviors of the culture (it WOULD help, though, if they advanced their own Bill). After the Scozzafava debacle, I wonder if anyone is home at RNC?
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