The GOP Special Election Screw Up

Married Republican Christopher Lee was caught trying to meet women on Craigslist. He promptly resigned, making a special election in NY-26 necessary to fill the vacated seat. Republicans lost that special election on May 24th. (photo courtesy of Hollywood Grind)

Once again, the Republican party has lost a special election in New York.

You may recall the 2009 special election in NY’s 23rd congressional district, where the eleven Republican Party county chairs located in NY-23 chose Dede Scozzafava to be the GOP nominee.  Hardly distinguishable from a Democrat, Scozzafava dropped out when she was clearly going to finish third in a three-way race.

Rather than endorse the Conservative Party candidate, who gained endorsements from many prominent Republicans because he was more in line with the mainstream GOP platform, she endorsed the Democrat, confirming that she was, in fact, a RINO.  The Dem went on to win the election, giving Democrats a traditionally Republican seat that remains in their hands today.

But this isn’t the only Republican special election screw up.

Going back to January 2003, Republicans have lost 23 of the last 34 House special elections, including seven of the eight special elections in which party control of the seat changed. The exception: The May 2010 Hawaii special election, a rare Republican victory in Democratic territory.

Now, a special election has been bungled in NY’s 26th congressional district.

Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin in a western New York special election that emerged as a political testing ground for the ambitious GOP blueprint to reform Medicare.

Fueled by a late wave of commercials blasting Corwin over her support for the controversial House Republican budget plan, Hochul surged in a race that few initially expected her to prevail in.

With 91 percent of precincts reporting, Hochul held a commanding 48 percent to 42 percent lead over Corwin. Tea party candidate Jack Davis received 9 percent.

Hochul’s against-the-odds win, national Democrats argued, proved the national unpopularity of the GOP proposal, given the district’s long history of supporting Republican candidates.

First off, why was there a “tea party” candidate?  Our system works best when there are two contenders, and just like in the 09 special election, there was a third-party candidate siphoning votes away from the Republican.  The NY GOP must be the most incompetent bunch of fools ever allowed to participate in the political process.  A dead raccoon could have ran as a Republican and won this race.

At the same time, Democrats were fear-mongering about the Paul Ryan budget plan, scaring old people by comparing it to throwing granny off a cliff.

The Agenda Project, a far-left organization with an agenda, has the gall to ask, “With pretty boy Paul Ryan’s draconian and savage cuts to Medicare in his budget proposal, we have to ask ourselves: Is America still beautiful without Medicare?”

This sick, disgusting, and misleading ad is typical of the Democrat response to the Ryan plan.  Rather than concede that their social engineering, big government power-grabs have bankrupted America, they allege that Republicans want to kill granny.  Changing the subject might be good politics, but it’s horrible policy.  And since when did big government make America beautiful?  When were the lyrics of “America the Beautiful” changed?

Oh, Beautiful for agencies that manage all our lives.                                                                    Thine alabaster bureaucrats, who bother and connive.                                                         America! America!
[Religious term redacted] shed his grace on thee
And crown thy prism with socialism
From sea to shining sea!

Anyway, as you can see, Republican incompetence and Democrat insolence both contributed to the outcome in NY-26.  Also, I have no future as a song writer.

For more analysis of the NY-26 special election, check out this piece from Ford O’Connell and Steve Pearson at The Daily Caller.  My one takeaway:  Republicans must remain in the arena and fight for fiscal discipline, despite Democrat demagoguery.