Wingnut Rejection

Well, yesterday was Election Day and yes, I was a little disappointed in a couple of races that the MSM was concentrating on. John Corzine losing in New Jersey to Chris Christie was anticipated as was the Democratic no-name running against the Republican no-name in Virginia. But Jersey is a fickle bitch. They want honesty in their politicians, but when someone like Corzine tells them their $8 billion budget deficit will mean cuts and higher taxes, they vote for Christie, the guy that told them what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear. What do they expect Christie to do, eat the shortfall?

And we all know that Virginia is a purple, if not a maroon state. We were all surprised Obama won the state in the presidential election just last year, so why would a Republican winning the Governor's race be a "referendum" on President Obama?

In my own home town, Michael "I'm Support Term Limits Until It Affects Me" Bloomberg bought his third term as Mayor of New York City. I was mostly disappointed in the voter turnout. A little over a million people voted in the election with Mr. Monopoly receiving 557,000 votes. Spending an estimated $100 million on the race against his former Comptroller Bill Thompson, that amounts to about $180.00 per vote. And he still only won by 50,000 votes. Had this race not been billed as a blowout which in my opinion contributed to voter indifference and indirect suppression, there might have been a different outcome.

But if there was a real referendum, it was in New York's 23rd District, where Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck were flatly rejected by upstate New York voters. This was supposed to be the beginning of something big for the Teabagger movement but it might turn out to be just a big bowel movement and the beginning of the end for them and the fractured Republican Party. Their anointed Conservative candidate, Doug Hoffman, who doesn't live in the district and therefore didn't know the important issues at hand lost to Bill Owens in a district that hasn't seen a Democratic congressman since the Fillmore administration in 1852. Eighteen-fifty-fucking-two!

They were so confident they were going to win the district, (because after all how can you possibly be unimpressed by endorsements from Ms. Wasilla, America's Mayor and the relatively rational Tim Pawlenty?) that GOP leader Rush Limbaugh put his intrepid reputation on the line, predicting a victory along with liberals downplaying such a coup post election. He was banking on it:

If Hoffman wins -- and polls suggest that he will -- the race there will be dismissed as an outlier...

Folks, I want you to print these words out. I want you to get the transcript off my website. I want you to print these out, I want you to distribute them, I want you to carry them with you, and we'll just see how close I am to being right. (When Hoffman wins) the State-Run Media will say, "New York-23, the race is more about the demise of the Republican Party and anger on the right than Obama or his policies."

Rush is right. The debacle in New York's 23rd District was more about the demise of the GOP and the anger of the fringe right toward Obama which is why their candidate lost.  The voters knew better than to listen to the teabag loudmouths who don't even know they're sponsored by the corporate interests they claim to despise. The country (at least conservative, rural upstate New York) didn't seem ready for a Party of Crazy and said so by electing their first Democrat in 157 years. That's a pretty damning repudiation of Palin's Facebook followers and Beck's 9/12 Boneheads.

Chris Kelly has more.