(This commentary was written after a surprise conservative election upset in a long-held Democrat congressional district. It is re-posted here for your enjoyment and enlightenment.)

There can be only panic among Democrats over the September 13 special election that gave the US House seat in a strongly Jewish and Orthodox Jewish New York City district called NY-9 to conservative Republican Bob Turner.

Democrats have held that seat since… 1922!

And Turner is no shrinking violet. He is a pro-life Catholic, the TV producer who put Rush Limbaugh on the air in the 1990s, and a candidate who ran strongly against Obama and campaigned on making massive cuts in federal government spending.

After 682 Republicans took Democrat-held seats on the federal and state level in the November 2010 election, Democrats can only be feeling grim with the results of NY-9.

And while Republicans cannot expect that 2012 will approach the 2010 numbers – after all, those seats are now Republican – the trend looks dire for Democrats, including the race for the White House. Republicans also are expected to make major gains in the US Senate – to win the majority easily, for starters – simply by dint of the fact that twice as many Democrat-held seats are up for challenge than Republican seats.

In other words, the crucial element of political momentum now is running strongly against the Democrats and Obama.

This president is acting confident with his big smiles and aggressive politicking (“pass this bill!”) but behind the scenes there can be only dread and alarm at the Turner victory, and sinking satisfaction about Obama within his own party.

The NY-9 seat was formerly held by disgraced Democrat congressman Anthony Weiner who resigned in June in a sex scandal, and before that by US senator Charles Schumer, one of the most powerful, liberal, outspoken and bare-knuckled Democrat operatives/politicians in recent history.

Republicans have won many crucial offices since Obama took the White House. Is there a pattern here? Is the GOP finally winning significant elections simply by running fearlessly against Obama and the Democrat agenda as we conservatives have long recommended?

Yes. Consider these GOP victories:

*In Illinois in November 2010 Barack Obama’s own former US Senate seat fell to Republican Mark Kirk.

*In Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown in January 2010 won ‘Ted Kennedy’s seat’ in the US Senate by running forcefully against ObamaCare.

*In New Jersey activist Republican reformer Chris Christie was elected governor in November 2009 in a heavily Democrat state. Christie has produced real results as governor, fixing the state’s budget mess in just months by taking on the unions without apology and without blinking while Republicans long have played along with union demands.

*The Tea Party movement was launched less than three months after Obama assumed office. This movement is directly confronting the Democrat agenda, and is responsible for the November 2010 Republican tidal wave.

*Four conservative Republicans took governorships from Democrats in November 2010 in the most important electoral swing states in the nation – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio.

*In Wisconsin, Democrats and their union backers failed to re-take control of the state senate in special recall elections even after the Republican-sponsored legislation curbing union power became national news and the subject of a ferocious Media Left assault.

These are all major blows to Obama and the Democrats. And even when Democrats win the occasional Republican stronghold as in the western New York state special US congressional election last Spring, it is only with the help of third-party Democrat shills to drain votes away from the GOP.

Turner won NY-9 on economic issues but, critically, on Obama’s stand on Israel. Obama announced last Summer that Israel must return to her pre-1967 borders, which is heresy among genuine supporters of the Jewish state.

Thus finally even committed Democrat Jews are seeing the real face of anti-Jewish liberalism in America. This bodes ill for Obama’s re-election in vital and heavily Jewish states like Florida, which already is turning to the right with the elections of US senator Marco Rubio and governor Rick Scott in November 2010.

Turner won NY-9 with a whopping 54% of the vote, a virtual landslide for a Republican in a New York City district even though Turner’s opponent, David Weprin, is an Orthodox Jew himself. Turner was endorsed by former New York City mayor Ed Koch who is a Jewish liberal but who is disturbed by many Democrats’ abandonment of Israel.

Seeing the loss coming in polling, national Democrats poured hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad money into the NY-9 race, but to no avail. And while those Democrats in public are saying that NY-9 is no big deal, they are panicking behind closed doors, rest assured.

Does this mean that Democrats are seeing Obama as a liability and that Hillary Clinton will challenge Obama in a 2012 primary race?

Wow. Interesting. And just think of the implications. But Democrats also know that such a challenge is fraught with peril. A divisive primary race – that Obama would probably win, but not necessarily – would hobble whoever wins it. And that would come just before a presidential election that already looks bleak for Democrats. And so Democrats are caught in a political squeeze.

And Hillary probably would not take the challenge anyway. She understands the current political landscape.

The Democrats’ bind is of their own making, however. Obama has pursued radical policies, and Americans are reacting.

In another Tuesday special election, this one in Nevada, Republican Mark Amodei defeated his Democrat opponent to win a House seat vacated after GOP congressman Dean Heller was elevated to the US Senate to fill the seat vacated by Republican John Ensign in a sex scandal.

Amodei won 58% of the votes to represent Nevada’s 2nd congressional district while his opponent garnered only 36%.

That outcome was expected, however. The district has been Republican since it was created in 1983. But the scope of the victory is impressive.

Please visit myt blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.