The teabaggers wanted to turn the special election in NY-23 into a referendum on where the country was. Well, they got it. In the process of your latest attempt to purge anything to the left of Ronald Reagan, they may have put the final nail in the coffin of their Northeastern wing.
Owens' victory here is merely the latest in a trend dating back to 1992, when Bill Clinton managed to win over enough Yankee Republicans in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont to turn all of New England blue. Aside from New Hampshire going for GWB in 2000, the Repubs' rightward lurch since then has all but destroyed the party north of Virginia. As it stands now, about the only way Bill Owens loses this seat in 2010 (short of a national Republican landslide) is if Dede Scozzafava is his opponent. Instead, no thanks to the teabaggers' attempt to purge her out, it's only a matter of time before she switches parties--like a lot of other Republicans of late in this area.
Apparently the wingers still don't get it. According to OneNewsNow, the Repubs would have actually held onto this district had they gone full teabagger.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the socially conservative Susan B. Anthony List, says the Republican Party "apparatus" needs to learn a strong lesson from the New York contest.
"Being principled is the best strategy for long-term success," she states. "In New York [District] 23, if we had had a candidate who was principled in terms of accepting and embracing the principles of the Republican Party platform, we would be seeing a Republican sworn in from [that] district right now. As it turns out, Doug Hoffman ended up having to run against two parties for a very long period of time."
News flash--being "principled" has only turned the Northeast an unrecognizable shade of blue. Not only that, but in case Dannenfelser hasn't been keeping score, this district has supported a Dem for president in three of the last five presidential elections (Clinton in '96, Gore in '00 and Obama in '08).
I've been trying to figure out how in the world we could win this district presidentially even as McHugh looked all but untouchable here. My best guess is that this is because NY-23 is probably one of the most rural districts in the Northeast--and as we all know, rural districts tend to give their congressmen long tenures in Washington. I did some digging, and if I'm right, what's now NY-23 has had only six congressmen (counting Owens) since 1915.
Bottom line? If the wingers wanted this to be a referendum on the direction of the country, they got it. They only proved how far out of touch they are with the rest of the country. At least we still have some infrastructure in the South. In contrast, with Owens about to take office, the Republican Party in the Northeast is a dead man walking.