It seems to be based in PC thinking, and the desire to disagree with Rush’s desire that “Obama fail.” After all, our first non-white President can’t be a bad thing, can he? So it must be only his policies. (See, I did it myself to illustrate two kinds of PC in one sentence.)

You are right. Only a sophist could separate a President’s policies from his person. In a philosophical sense, we are all nothing without our policies. Without policies, he is just a new picture on the Post Office wall.

I think I’ll expound on the “polarizing figure” theme this weekend.

http://proft2010.com/news-room/contentview.asp?c=190196

Fred Thompson covered this all very well today. Given a liberal Republican and a conservative Republican, he goes with the conservative. Given a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican, he goes with the Republican. And he always goes with the candidate he thinks will be best for the country.

Under 99% of possible situations, we would all agree. In NY-23, the NY Repub. party threw a monkey wrench into the mix, making last night’s result acceptable, in fact, making it something to work with for a year. In this one specific case, it was worth a chance to go with Hoffman, and he came very close. Although nobody else gave Hoffman a chance to win until that poll came out on Monday, I assume that we were all sincere in our support (I know my donation was real) and our intention was for him to win.

As it turned out, there was a lesson provided for those willing to learn. Liberal Republicans turn into Democrat supporters, and liberal Democrats can be beaten if we field a conservative Republican in opposition. 51% of the electorate did not want Owens to win. Against Scozzafava alone, he would have done better.

If we then opposed the winner of that process, then we’d be marked as bad faith participants in primaries, just like Ron Paul the most sore loser of them all.

As it turns out, I agree with you (aside from my sympathy for your other concerns re: this site)… IMO, it’s important to keep reminding people that the conservative vs. liberal debate happens at the primary level and NOT the general; in this way you effectively pull the quality 3rd party agitators (and I say that with appreciative inflection) back into the fold, rather than vice versa.

I hope you take part in the Committeeman project.

Those who expect us to go off on some foolhardy tangent in which we start gunning for “impure” Republican general election nominees, when they beat our favored candidates in the primaries, have a gross misunderstanding of how this site operates.

If we became conservative-only, abandoning the Republican loyalty, we’d have lost our way, we’d lose a number of contributors, and we’d lose a lot of credibility and leverage.

While I am not a third-party advocate (except for in momentary fits of rage, tending to occur only after listening to somebody like Michael Steele politicking the newer, hipper, and more centrist GOP); I have a hard time getting my craw around how someone like Scozzafava ever made it on a ballot — any ballot — as a (R) in the first place; and furthermore, why both the local and national GOP leadership chose to spit in our collective eyes by backing her early when a (vastly) more viable (and actually Republican) candidate was available…

LOL-Yeah, like THAT’s never happened before.

-Dave

Because these things are too important to be pursued on the basis of lies. Lies are ephemeral and illegitimate, and lasting, positive change cannot be effected by their use.

I agree that the best solution is to let a primary process work its way throug, (I live in Florida, I hope John Cornyn finally gets it) and the process in NY was problematic based on time constraints.

It would behoove us as a Party to try to develop a process which, for lack of the ability to conduct a primary, would make the process of restricted selection more open, transparent and at least accommodating to the widest possible segment of the REC leadership in a county (not just 11 Chairs in a process fraught with the potential for abuse that we saw).

However, every credible account of what actually happened In NY-23 lays the primary repsonsibility for this debacle at the feet of staff in Washington at the NRCC. I am also thoroughly angered by what I perceive as very real, very arrogant and very cynical attempt to mislead the base. Heads should roll.

Not saying which ones, but someone there, I think wandered very far off the reservation and if this is left unchecked will not happen again, because the NRCC will not receive enough donations to pull it off a second time.

The cluster—- that happened in NY23 doesn’t do anything to show a Conservative “probably would not win in upstate New York” and given the history here, it’s a stupid thing to say.

I saw Haley Barbour on Morning Joe the other day talking about this election and the Pawlenty Snowe comments; his take is that that Republicans should have a minimum threshold of conservatiness (not sure that is a word), but that he would probably not win in upstate New York or Maine and that the people in those locations should be allowed to choose who they want as long they go through the primary process, something that didn’t happen in NY-23.

In other words people like Erick,sitting in Atlanta, Gamecock in South Carolina or me in Texas shouldn’t be picking the GOP representative for someplace else. And when we do it generally backfires.