As I've said many times before on this blog, the political landscape in America is changing. And today's early results show, at least I think, that it's changing for the better too.
Here's a look at what's going on in the broader scope of today's elections.
Uncivil War: Conservatives to challenge a dozen GOP candidates
In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.
Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.
But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.
Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.
“I would say it’s the tip of the spear,” said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. “We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today.”
In almost every situation, the lay of the land is the same. Whether it’s California, Illinois, Connecticut, New Hampshire or Kentucky, the NRSC has found a candidate who appears to be an exceptionally strong general election prospect — either well-known, well-financed or ideologically well-suited to the state’s politics — who is nevertheless meeting with tough resistance at the grass-roots level from activists who believe the conservative cause would be better served over the long term, even if it means the party nominee loses in the short term.
New York's 23rd Congressional District has become the site of a showdown between RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and conservatives. The conservatives are winning -- but the RINOs are not being gracious in defeat. Now the RINOs are showing how much party unity means to them. They have no loyalty to conservatives, so why should conservatives have any loyalty to them?
The latest showdown came when ultra-liberal State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava became the Republican candidate in NY-23. ACORN's racketeering arm, also known as the Working Families Party, backed her. Yet the Republican old guard also backed this useful idiot. Newt Gingrich backed this tool. The name "Republican" was all that mattered to them. Not principle.
NY23: What New Media have done
Danny Glover of AIM reflects on the role of bloggers in this campaign:
"We defeated the Daily Kos candidate," said Eric Odom of the American Liberty Alliance, one of four blogger-activists on the ground in New York over the past several days as conservative pressure mounted on Scozzafava to withdraw. The other bloggers were Ali Akbar, Stephen Foley and Robert Stacy McCain . . .
Opinions? Yeah. But everybody's got an opinion. What we have done up here is to break news by working the phones, developing sources, and being on the scene where the story has happened. As I like to say, Old School in the New Media.
See if you can spot the codewords in this DNC press release disguised as news.
Right wing purists egged on by Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin fought to capture an upstate House seat Monday and electrify their drive to purge moderates from the Republican Party.
With Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman jumping to the lead in a new poll, the hard-core right smelled a chance to remold the GOP in the image of raucous town hall protests and "tea party" rallies of the summer.
This is supposed to be a straight news story, not an opinion column. Yet all the typical talking points one would expect from a far-left blogger or MSNBC host magically find their way into the story.
ACORN expected to Protest Election Results Tomorrow in Clinton County
Multiple sources on the ground in New York’s 23rd Congressional district confirm that ACORN is expected to be actively protesting the election results in Clinton County, New York tomorrow. This move comes on the heels of a legal win for the Hoffman camp today as it was ruled that all poll watchers would have to be registered voters of NY 23.
Rob Ryan, spokesman for the Hoffman campaign, states that the legal decision is all about ballot security and that the move by ACORN is not a surprise.
“The Working Family Party is desperate, Today’s poll show that Doug Hoffman is drawing votes from all Demographics”.
While the focus tomorrow will be on securing a win for Hoffman, Ryan says there are still worries about:
“voter intimidation, absentee ballot fraud and groups like ACORN/Working Families Party and big labor stealing the election from the people of the 23rd district.”
Rick Moran and the Comatose Nuthouse
Shorter Moran: 'passion' == 'bad'.
In The Anti-Reason Conservatives, we're treated to a post that only Bob Dole could love. Let's review a few points:
* The country is broke.
* Incumbency is killing us.
* Entitlements are a mike foxtrot.
And now on to Moran:
In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention - except they reject anything from anybody who doesn't agree with them 100%. Nor can they seem to grasp complex political realities that would complicate their simplistic, ignorant view that their idea of what constitutes a "conservative" reigns supreme all across the land.
Whose goal is this 'ruling majority' again? What if Federalism reigned contra-supreme across the land, hm?
And things are only going to get more interesting from here ... I'm looking forward to it!
