Today, everyone is waiting for the results of the special congressional election in NY-23 because everyone believes that the results will determine the outcome of a storm that has been brewing within the once GOP, which just isn’t so "grand" anymore.
This special congressional election in upstate New York is remarkable precisely because it shouldn’t be remarkable at all. The district has been reliably Republican since the Civil War. The Republican in the race, Dede Scozzafava, should have handily trounced the Democrat, Bill Owens.
But in stepped Doug Hoffman, who, having failed to secure the Republican nomination, decided to run against the Republican on the Conservative ticket. And in stepped Glenn Beck, tv personality and Grand Teabagger Poobah, who saw an opportunity to raise his ratings, and Sarah Palin, a failed-politician-turned-ConservaCelebrity, who saw an opportunity to sell more books. And others, including Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and the ever-huffing-and-puffing big-bad-wolf Rush Limbaugh, followed their lead.
But, contrary to what has far too quickly become conventional wisdom, what happens today will not determine the outcome of the Republicans’ family feud.
In fact, it really doesn’t matter who wins in NY-23 today.
Rather, the scuffles that we’ve been seeing spin around this special congressional election in upstate New York have just been a preview of the real war that’s just getting started: the ConservaCred War.
And so, today, the ConservaCred War began.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn), a presidential wannabe who wants to secure the 2012 presidential nomination in a very confused Republican Party, took the first shot this morning in this war that potentially could rip the Republican Party apart, saying:
We want Olympia Snowe in the big tent, but she can’t say she’s a Republican and vote against the Republican position much of the time.
In other words, even before the results are in, Gov. Pawlenty, a once moderate Republican, threw the first stone in his scramble to establish his ConservaCred by kicking a fellow moderate Republican to the curb.
In “Pawlenty watching for Snowe to fall,” Chris Steller of the Minnesota Independent puts it rather succinctly, saying
Fair warning to U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe: Gov. Tim Pawlenty is watching you.
And like lightning, Sen. Snowe responded. As Glenn Thrush puts it in “Snowe to TPaw: GOP should "borrow" my approach” at Politico:
Snowe, who is pro-abortion rights, took serious issue with Pawlenty’s underlying argument that some members of the GOP’s fast shrinking left flank, including one-time NY-23 candidate Dede Scozzafava, are so far out of the party’s anti-abortion, anti-gay rights mainstream they are a "joke."
Snowe warns Pawlenty right back:
I think we’ve got to be inclusive in the model of President Reagan… The Lee Atwater approach, the big tent, I think that’s what we have to be all about. I always think that we have to be flexible in accommodating a variety of views if we want to be a majority party in reflecting the spectrum across America.
And yet regardless of the outcome of today’s contest in upstate New York (or of the contests in other parts of the country, for that matter), Snowe knows that she’s facing strong headwinds and that the times are changing for once proud moderate Republicans:
I’ve been a lifelong Republican — I haven’t changed, I don’t know what the problem is — I really don’t.
That the Republican Party kicked Scozzafava to the curb in a special congressional election in upstate New York will soon be forgotten, but the ConservaCred War is just getting started.
3 Comments
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About The Seminal
Advanced search
I have a question. Why do we allow them to keep calling themselves conservatives, and fooling people by the term.
There is nothing conservative about them.
The religious right with their so-called social issues are not conservative, they are radical, because they wish to push their beliefs on everyone else whether others like it or not.
As to the conservatives views towards Government of wanting smaller Government, low taxes, and basically government out of the way so anyone can do what ever they want.
We have put them in Governments from the smallest town to the federal government, and they are little difference from the Dems.
Yet we can’t seem to see if their ideas were so good, that we would have States where they were in power, that had no problems, were fiscally sound, low taxes, prosperity, and there would be no reason for opposition.
We saw them in power in the last eight of nine years, and all the problems that were there, now nine years ago, are still there, only many have been added.
Call it the NutcaseCredWar.
There are no moderate Republicans — or rather there are, but they are called, “the Democratic party”, and the left half of the Democratic party to boot IMO.
The basic inability to understand language, like, say, pro-life and conservative, is a hallmark of the teabaggers – oh, yes, they also didn’t understand that term.