Posted by
RME KRNL on Friday, November 06, 2009 5:27:01 PM
The last few days, analyses of Tuesday's election results have been like quickly turning the dial past several stations on the radio: "NY-23 was" -- "NY-23 was not" -- "off-year elections don't mean" -- "off-year elections can be a bellwether" -- "all politics are local" -- "national implications" -- "What this means for the Republican Party" -- "What this means for Democrats" -- "NY-23 was important for both" -- "The upstate New York election was not important because" -- "Republican's sweeping victories in Virginia" -- "upset in New Jersey" -- "the right wing of the Republican Party" -- "moderate Republicans" -- "moderate, Blue Dog Democrats" -- "the conservative movement" -- "left-wing Democratic agenda" -- and blah, blah, blah.
Stop! Enough, already! You're all making my head hurt. Yes, there's a lot which can be said about Tuesday's elections, to include diametrically opposed things about the same election results, depending on who you are and how you want to spin those results. For example, the White House is sad, doesn't care, is scared, dismisses, is encouraged by, sees things this way, doesn't see things that way -- and all at once, if you believe all the "interpretations" and spin and blather.
What it all means to me, and I do hope I'm right about this, is that these off-year elections are a culmination of a long simmering disaffection with establishment Republicans in general and Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) in particular, which has been given even more impetus by the TEA Party and 9/12 grassroots movements which have been growing since last Spring's Tax Day TEA Party protests. If the nationwide TEA Party protests on April 15 and July 4, 2009, didn't give the Republican establishment and RINOs enough of a heads up, surely the massive march on Washington and protest at the Capitol building of hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, TEA Party and 9/12 protesters on September 12th surely should have. And if even all that didn't, then look to Virginia's and New Jersey's elections and their crushing victories for real Republican conservative candidates.
All liberals, in and out of the lamestream media and entertainment industries, and all Democrats and, so far, most of the Republican establishment, and RINOs alike, have acted like if they just ignore or make fun of the TEA Partiers and 9/12ers and frustrated town hallers long enough, the angry I-want-my-government-and-freedoms-back protesters will simply run out of steam and just go away. Well, hellooooo? Not hardly. Ain't gonna happen.
Add it up. Long-term, simmering conservative dissatisfaction with Republicans acting too much like Democrats and losing in 2006 (benchmark), then losing even bigger in 2008 (benchmark), to hundreds of thousands all across the country protesting on April 15th (benchmark), to hundreds of thousands more protesting on July 4th (benchmark), to many hundreds of thousands more protesting on September 12th (benchmark), to as recently as this Thursday when an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 more, again from all across the country, in the middle of a workweek, showed up to protest at the Capitol Building -- again -- based on a call from a single conservative, Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and with only a few day's notice! I'd say "benchmark" again. That's not a sign of going, as in going away. That's a sign of growing, as in growing enough to say, "We're here to stay and will not be denied."
I'm beginning to wonder how many times and in how many different ways we have to write things large and small for the Republican establishment and RINOs to finally see the handwriting on the wall: Conservatives are fine, and real moderate Republicans are okay, but RINOs are not! RINOs are an endangered species!
Case in point: Many liberals and much of the left-wing media are describing the NY-23 district election as a "split" in the Republican Party because a "moderate" Republican candidate was forced to withdraw because some national level Republicans and Conservatives supported the Conservative candidate. Well, yes, although the national Republican establishment did support the "moderate" Republican (that is, until they didn't), some nationally known Republicans and Conservatives did support the Conservative candidate. But they did not do so against a "moderate" Republican candidate, for there was no "moderate" Republican candidate in the race.
To describe State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava as a "moderate" Republican is about as accurate, and truthful, as saying one of your very and most favorite things to do is reach, barehanded and blindfolded, into a sack to pull out a really ticked off rattlesnake.
Let's see, what makes Susieflavor NOT a "moderate" Republican? Well, for starters, she had run for the State Assembly several times before on the ballot line of the Working Families Party, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ACORN, which is not exactly a moderate, much less Republican, and certainly not a conservative organization. She's pro-abortion, for same sex marriage, for Big Labor's cherished “card check,” and in favor of Obama's so-called stimulus money. (Has she even read the official GOP national platform and what Republicans are at least supposed to stand for?)
Then, in this race, after accepting $900,000 in Republican establishment campaign money, in addition to another individual (and, as it turned out, embarrassing) contribution of $5,000 from none other than misguided Michael Steele, the Chairman of the RNC, she sees she can't win, drops out of the race, ostensibly for "the sake of the party," but THEN, perhaps in a snit fit of sour grapes, bites the hand that fed her and endorses, not the Conservative Independent, but the Democratic candidate. Can we all say, "True colors"? Oh, and while suspending her campaign, she still remained on the ballot lines of the New York Independence Party AND the GOP. Talk about trying to hedge your bets! Shades of Arlen Specter.
So, no matter how much which liberals try to spin that Susieflavor was a Republican, much less a "moderate" Republican, she was not. She was at best a RINO in name but a liberal at heart. And no matter how many nominal "Republicans" think we need to "expand the tent" ever bigger and bigger, they should remember that too big a tent can become unstable -- a somewhat smaller and sturdier, more storm worthy tent is better -- and that we don't need any RINO tent-pole shakers acting like traitorous weaklings in our midst and pulling the tent down on all of us from the inside. You can be a Conservative without being a Republican, or you can be a truly moderate, centrist Republican without being a Right-winger, but you cannot be a liberal Republican. That makes you a RINO.
So, welcome the TEA Partiers and 9/12ers, who are probably looking for an establishment home anyway, and other Conservatives, the Independents, the Libertarians, the Blue Dog and other moderate Democrats, and the disillusioned Obama voters, and I think our tent will be big and inclusive enough, while still strong and conservative enough. Then, take the RINOs out behind the tent and just shoot them.