GOP Off the Endangered List in the Northeast
Political zoologists have been fretting for some time over the fate of the vanishing sub-species of Northeastern Republican Politicians. (NERPs) In New England, pandas and spotted owls snicker at GOP senators, who number only four today, and Republican House members went extinct several years ago.
This year, however, new breeds of conservationists — primarily found in tea parties — are seeking to reintroduce these endangered creatures back into their natural habitats.
I’ve gotten a firsthand look at these efforts while working full time on a New York Republican’s congressional campaign and coordinating with staffers engaged in the same task in other districts. What some observers seem to find more remarkable than anything else is that a tea party movement in the Northeast even exists. Most contemporary media depictions tend to portray the tea parties as a traditional, conservative Republican phenomenon fitting most comfortably in the Deep South or Mountain West.
But here in upstate New York we have been contacted by no less than nine individual tea parties and related constitutional restoration groups in the 22nd district alone. We even located one thriving membership in Ithaca, New York. This was particularly shocking, given that Ithaca is virtually indistinguishable from most of San Francisco except for the snow during the winter months. Similar activity is being reported across the rest of the state and the entire Northeast.
They hold meetings and rallies, write letters to the editor, and show up outside the offices of elected officials to voice their displeasure. Organizers have already been hosting “meet the candidates” forums where voters can get a firsthand look at political hopefuls and pepper them with questions. Most importantly, though, they are turning up the volume to the point where citizens are paying attention during a midterm election year which normally sees more apathy than activism.
Is it having any effect? We won’t know for sure, of course, until after the November elections, but the early signs are promising. During a recent meeting, Ed Cox — top dog in the New York Republican Party — told us that one of their biggest challenges was identifying all of the congressional races where scarce resources should be allocated. The party is suffering from an embarrassment of riches in terms of potential turnover in NY congressional seats, with as many as seven of them definitely in play. The biggest disappointment for me was the failure of a top-tier candidate to challenge Senator Kirsten Gillibrand — a seat which looks ripe for the picking.
As a native New Yorker (NYC) I am heartened to hear that the tide is turning, albeit at a glacial pace. However, any movement in the Conservative direction is a promising sign.
It is important to note that RINOS are not what Conservatives are looking for, Republicans who go along to get along, unable to distinguish true Conservative values and platforms on behalf of an electorate who supported them. Therefore, a word of caution is in order.
IF the game plan is to just shuffle the board with the likes of malleable Republicans then nothing will have been gained. Squishy Republicans are by nature allergic to Conservative values and they will be ousted the next time around. That’s a fact.
There are 21 local tea party events scheduled in Maine between May 9 and June 26. There were a number in April. One in Augusta counted around 2000 participants between 3 pm and 7 pm. One in Old Town filled 500 chairs with SRO places along the walls pretty well filled. No count on the others. Two GOP candidates, Paul LePage and Bill Beardsley have identified themselves with the movement. LePage has a fair chance of election. Spontaneous in origin although some loose coordination begins to take shape.
Given the reckless runaway spending and other uniformly disastrous decisions of the Obama administration the number of Tea Partiers is not surprising – except to a squish.
One has to wonder if the Maine Democrat Convention might have a wiff of tea as well. I have met quite a few Democrats in Maine that were either sympathetic to the cause or actually attended the events.
For this reason I have kept trying to encourage our tea parties to avoid looking like fronts for the Republican Party, with varied success.
What’s happening with Peter Schiff in CT? Has he been unable to get name recognition? Not enough ads? GOP undermining him? McMahon is such a lightweight RINO. The Senate needs Schiff to tell them how financials work. We don’t need lawyers, we don’t need airheads.
Schiff? The guy who understands Economics 101? He thinks we should spend less than we make. Simple and effective. My kind of leader!
“….the once moribund Republican Party is on the comeback trail in the Northeast.”
Yes, but are these “Republicans” of conservative persuasion or of the country club variety, which the northeast is infamous for producing?
What of Rick Lazio?
I find it astonishing that Gillibrand is getting a pass. This was low-hanging fruit that either Giuliani or Pataki could have walked off with and held until another up-and-comer came along. The RNC or NRSC leadership are negligent for letting this happen. It might have been the clincher to gain control of the Senater in 2010. Pathetic!!!
sorry, Bob in Virginia, but neither Giuliani nor Pataki are held in high regard by enough New York voters anymore, which is why they passed on challenging Gillenbrand.
It is not that New Yorkers are so liberal. Half did not bother to vote in 2008. Why bother? The Dem machine picks their primary winner in advance (THAT worked really well with Spitzer and they are about to make the same mistake with Andrew Cuomo). The GOP is STILL trying to figure out how to again win statewide. If the NY GOP is smart, they will let Steve Levy run for the gubernatorial nomination as a proven fiscal conservative who used to be a Democrat, and let Rick Lazio welcome the competition.
Both parties are too rigid ideologically for about 50% of the voters. Stop with the RINO and DINO disgust. The Club for Growth does as much damage to America as the tax and spend liberals.
How many New England and mid-Atlantic Democrats are only Democrats because they’re more socially Liberal than what they perceive to be the stereotypical Conservative? I can’t believe that even in the Northeast that people don’t care about massive government spending, massive taxation, and the erosion of personal liberties that we in the South do. Recent polls show that only 20% of people consider themselves Liberal so I’m assuming that many of the moderate Democrats are simply voting for Democrats for social reasons, including a belief that the government ought to help the poor, although probably not on the same scale as Obama. But I do not believe that even Democrats want to see the imposition of socialism or the destruction of capitalism because even they work mostly in the private sector.
Liberalism has been allowed to get this far because we Conservatives by and large just want to be left alone to go about our lives. We’ve been too busy working, raising our families, and paying our taxes to have noticed the gradual, until now, encroachment of statism. We actually trusted our elected representatives to, well, represent us and look out for our best interests. The election of Barack Obama and his many radical appointments to powerful, key, high level government positions has shocked us awake. The Tea Parties are a long overdue awakening of a people that do not want government telling them what to do, confiscating ever large portions of their incomes, and driving this nation down the path to serfdom. We must drive the Leftists from the field for good. They must be defeated, mocked, held up for ridicule, and driven from the public sphere wherever they have disproportionate influence. If we cannot defeat these people then we’re finished. We will be as dead as Europe will soon be.
Scott Brown is a place holder. Unless he votes like Snowe and Collins he will be defeated in the next cycle and he knows it. This is the only kind of Republican that can survive in the northeast. Don’t go by whether or not they have a D or an R by their name. They’re all cut from the same cloth and that isn’t going to change no matter how much tea you drink.
Scott Brown did what he was hired to do: destroy the filibuster-proof majority of the Senate Democrats (and scare the cr@p out of the Democrats). He wasn’t enough to stop passage of the abomination known as ObamaCare, but at least it became obvious to EVERYONE that the Democrats have absolutely no scruples and care not a whit what the American people want. It has highlighted their incredible arrogance–and Americans tend to dislike arrogance.
No matter now they vote, the more Republicans we elect, the greater the chance the Republicans will take control of Congress. If nothing else, it means Republicans head the various committees. But with this administration’s socialist shock and awe rampage, more and more Americans are awakening to what we may be about to lose.
Of course, that’s only those who are paying attention.
Good Analysis Mr. Shaw.
Many republicans don’t realize that while the conservative Republican is preferred, the ultimate objective is to have a Republican Majority Leader and Speaker,therefore given the choice between a Rino and a Democrat, we need to support the Rino.
Mr Dunetz, I disagree.
We need conservatives in office. I don’t care if they are Democrats or Republicans, so long as they are conservatives.
I will grant that a RINO is better than a Liberal Dem, but only because the majority of Dem’s are liberals.
#12: “…given the choice between a Rino and a Democrat, we need to support the Rino.”
I also disagree. I mean no disrespect, but this is a terrible idea.
RINO’s don’t stand up to large liberal majorities. They tend to go along with the flow. But they’re even worse than up-front open liberals. They give the liberals cover of “bipartisanship” and the illusion that their agenda is the “will of the people”. They are just useful pawns to the idealogues when they are trying to cram down an unpopular bill.