Even though they lost a district that has been in republican hands since the Civil War to a Democrat, the TEA Party crowd and their fearless leaders consider the loss a victory in the effort to oust moderate republicans and take over the republican party.

Democrat Bill Owens won New York’s 23rd Congressional District last night even though Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, and Fred Thompson led an invasion of the longtime republican district. They demanded that the republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was not conservative enough for them. Right-wing activists imported their own candidate and insisted they would win with a true conservative. They didn’t.

Meanwhile, GOP leaders in Virginia chose a moderate former Attorney General with 14 years of legislative experience for their Gubernatorial candidate. McDonnell downplayed his partisan affiliation and conservative social views, choosing to instead focus on the traditionally Democratic issues of jobs, healthcare, and education - the top 3 on the issues section of his web page. In fact, McDonnell didn’t even list his party affiliation anywhere on his home page and his ads didn’t either. He even used the traditional Democratic blue background, though he wears a sporty red tie, as you can see in the example to the right:

In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie used similar techniques, not announcing party affiliation anywhere on his home page. The Democrats stuck with a wildly unpopular Governor who had been languishing under rock-bottom approval ratings since 2008 in a state that chose Barack Obama by nearly 20 points. The outcome? Moderates who downplayed their conservative republican background won the Governorships in New Jersey and Virginia.

It is clear that voters largely rejected the far right yesterday, but let’s hope the right-wing doesn’t get the memo and continues to recruit fringe candidates like Lou Ann Zelenik against common sense Democrats across America. We sure don’t want to be thrown in that awful briar patch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Elections, FYI, Lou Ann Zelenik, Radical Republicans, Tea Parties. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.