Focusing on the campaign in New York’s 23rd Congressional District as if it were the only election conducted last week, leading Democrats from the White House on down tell us that the GOP is a divided party, beholden to its far right extremist fringe.  Well, those people peddling that partisan nonsense weren’t paying much attention to events on the other side of the state.

In Westchester County (where Obama snagged 63.39% of the vote last fall), Republican Rob Astorino ousted Democrat Andy Spano, winning more votes than did Congresman-elect Bill Owens and erstwhile Republican Dede Scozzafava combined.  In Nassau County where Obama ran one point ahead of his national percentage, voters this week returned the County Legislature to Republican control.  Guess, everyone in in the Empire State (outside its far northern reaches) is becoming extremist.

And it wasn’t just the Empire State.

Republican Barbara Comstock’s ousted a Democratic incumbent in an inside-the Beltway Virginia Delegate district.  Republican Joan Orie Melvin won a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  Not to mention other Republican victories in Obama jurisdictions.

So, if the GOP is so divided and so beholden to its extreme wings, how did Republicans manage to do so well in these jurisdictions which went overwhelmingly for Obama last fall?

The Religion of Peace is alive and well in the ranks of our own military.

Wonderful.

RELATED: President Obama’s “My Pet Goat” Moment?

At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.”  Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

So, California Democrats are calling Carly Fiorina “a failed CEO.”  California Democrats know a lot about failures, failure to balance the budget, failure to stand up to public employee unions, failure to hold the line on taxes.  Failure to prevent businesses from leaving the state and taking jobs with them.

And if they think Carly’s a failed CEO, wait till they take a look at Barbara Boxer’s record in the Senate.  But, first, let’s look at Carly’s.  HP’s revenues more than doubled during her tenure there (from $39.3 billion the year before she took over to $86.7 billion when she left). She helped create the conditions for HP to become the world’s largest technology company and the world leader in PC sales.

Meanwhile, the woman Carly seeks to replace, Ma’am Babara Boxer has spent 17 years in the Senate, but only gotten three laws enacted.  Not just that, even though she was elected during a recession, she has seen unemployment in the Golden State increase by 33% since she first took office in 1993.  And since she voted in February for the “stimulus,” saying it was needed to save or create jobs, 336,400 jobs have disappeared from her jurisdiction.  Kind of sounds like a failure to me.

Not much of a record to run on.  No wonder her minions in Sacramento are attacking her likely opponent.  Hey, Ma’am, let me tell you something, your gutter politics may have worked in 1992 and 1998, but they won’t be effective this time.  Just take a look at New Jersey when Jon Corzine (kind of a Barbara Boxer in a beard) tried just that tack this time.  And though he outspent his Republican opponent three to one, Garden State voters ousted him from office.

Ma’am, you’ve been in office 17 years.  And today, in a world where the MSM has far less power than it did in the 1990s, we bloggers are going to do something the California media has failed to do, hold you to account for your record.  You haven’t gotten anything done these past 17 years while the citizens you were elected to represent keep losing their jobs.

And that’s why you should lose yours.

It seems gay leaders exist to make my point about their incompetence to appeal to those whose minds they most need to change.  Now, we learn that the leader of the No on 1 campaign in Maine, instead of learning from the campaign’s mistakes, intends to target those voters in the Pine Tree State:

No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly pledged that his side “will not quit until we know where every single one of these votes lives.””

Yeah, that kind of rhetoric will really help you change minds.  How about saying something like this

We came up short this time, but who’d have thought that five years ago, we could have got 47% of Maine citizens to vote for gay marriage.  We need to look closely at our campaign, figure out where we went wrong and make a stronger case next time, telling voters why marriage is good and why it’s good for gay people.

Let me give Mr. Connolly a piece of advice, angry rhetoric is not going to change minds.  You need to make the case for gay marriage not against those who voted against it.  ’Cause if you want to win next time, you’re going to need some of their votes.

It seems some conservative bloggers are so devoted to defeat the more establishment Republicans in the race that they assume all contests on the right are between a “stimulus” supporters like Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio or Dede Scozzafava and Doug Hoffman.  Here, in the Golden State, some of my fellows in the rightosphere, including some very good bloggers are committed to Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in the race to replace our big-spending, California citizens-avoiding junior Senator Ma’am Barbara Boxer.

And because his opponent Carly Fiorina is backed by many establishment figures, they figure she’s not different than Dede.

While DeVore may be a solid conservative, he’s been in the race for the better part of the year and raised only $714,ooo while having one-tenth the cash on hand as does Mrs. Boxer.  Some conservative bloggers carp about Carly because she has “shown either an inability or an unwillingness to campaign to the Republican voters of this state.”

Hardly.

While conservative Republican Senator Jim DeMint has backed DeVore, Dr. Tom Coburn, perhaps the most principled conservative in the United States Senate has backed the former HP Executive, calling Ms. Fiorina:

Our nation is facing serious economic challenges because we keep rehiring the same failed career politicians who have proven themselves incapable of making hard choices.  Carly’s common sense and fiscal conservatism will be a welcome addition to the United State Senate.

And to show just how much a fiscal conservative Carly is, within moments of announcing her bid for the Senate yesterday, she signed the Americans For Tax Reform “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.”  In signing the pledge, she has agreed to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.” (more…)

Shortly after Bob Dornan lost his Orange County congressional seat by fewer than 1,000 votes (many of which turned out to be cast illegally), I was talking with a Republican political consultant who said that a number of his associates (in the political consultancy world) had warned the right-wing firebrand that he was in danger of losing to his Democratic opponent because he was neglecting the district.

But, the man who began the year by launching a quixotic quest for the White House, preferred to address his conservative fans across the country than to tend to his constituents in Southern California.  He saw himself first and foremost as the leader  of a conservative movement and not a representative of California’s 46th House District.  And that’s why he no longer represents a district that narrowly went for George H.W. Bush in 1992 and overwhelmingly rejected Barbara Boxer the same year.

With that history in mind, we can perhaps better see another reason Doug Hoffman narrowly lost a congressional seat earlier this week in a district that while historically Republican, went for Barack Obama last fall.

Jim Geraghty echoed a point made by a number of bloggers when he wondered yesterday if anyone asked upstate New Yorkers if they wanted their race nationalized?

Well, perhaps Hoffman’s botching of an interview with the Watertown Daily Times editorial board should have been a red flag.

We junkies of national politics overlook local issues way too easily.

No one ever really asked the voters of this district whether they wanted their House race to be a national fight. I’m slated to appear on Fred Thompson’s radio program today, and I’m a fan of him, and Sarah Palin, and all of the other big-name conservatives who jumped in to beat the drum for Hoffman. But maybe the locals wanted more than criticism of Obama and Pelosi and spending. Maybe the fact that he lived on the other side of the district line rankled with them.

Writing in a similar vein, Ann Althouse studied pictures of the two leading contenders in the race and observed

Owens, by contrast [to Hoffman], is big and rugged-looking. He’s an Air Force veteran and he has that military solidity, calm and self-possession. (more…)

. . . and Rahm Emanuel and Anita Dunn and David Axelrod.

Fox News pulls huge election day ratings. Mr. President, White House aides, they couldn’t have done it without your support, er, condemnation. On election night this week,

Between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. (8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time), Fox News grabbed 4.04 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The other outlets weren’t even close.

MSNBC had 974,000 viewers. The CNN-owned HLN (previously CNN2 or CNN Headline News) had 842,000, and CNN trailed with 826,000.

Even with the CNN networks’ combined 1.67 million viewers, it was still way behind Fox News in viewership.

Fox News even dominated in the younger 25-54 age demographic with 1.13 million. The three other networks combined don’t even touch that number.

Let’s see, more people who turned to news networks, got their news from FoxNews than from the other three networks combined. And that holds if we count MSNBC’s audience twice.

(H/t:  Jennifer Rubin)

Active in Virginia politics when living in Arlington in the 1990s, I reached a conclusion about most suburban “swing” voters, they are neither pro-gay nor anti-gay, but are rather anti-anti-gay, that is, they really don’t like candidates who make opposition to gay issues the centerpiece of their campaigns.  This applies even to voters who agree with the candidates on said issues.

I didn’t need to see the polls to know that Bob McDonnell was going to to well on Tuesday, I knew it from the e-mails I received and blog posts I read.  My gay friends in the Commonwealth were voting Republican.  It seemed that the gay Republican vote was a kind of barometer of electoral success.  When, in the 1990s, gay Republicans embraced the GOP candidate, he won statewide.  When they didn’t, he lost.  The only two GOP statewide candidates to lose in the 1990s, Mike Farris and Oliver North were perceived as anti-gay.

Now, I realize that New York State’s 23rd Congressional District has different demographics than does the Commonwealth of Virginia, but maybe some of the voters have similar concerns.  When we endorsed Doug Hoffman, I heard from a number of readers who said he had run an anti-gay campaign.  I could find no evidence of that.  (If I had, we would not have endorsed him.)  Still, the perception persisted.  If some voters in upstate New York thought as much, did they vote for Owens or stay at home because they didn’t want a representatives who emphasized gay issues?

Now, we know from the results in Maine as well as those in thirty other states where voters have considered the issue, that Americans reject gay marriage.  But, that doesn’t make opposing gay marriage a winning issue, that is, if said opposition is the centerpiece of your campaign (or is perceived as such).  If people think the GOP is the anti-gay marriage party, we lose.  Americans may oppose gay marriage, but it is not high on most people’s list of priorities.  They need to see us as the conservative reform party where our primary issue is, to paraphrase the Garden State’s Governor-elect, turning government “upside down.”

If they think Republicans prefer talking about the “evils” of gay marriage to putting together plans to reduce government spending, they’re not going to come out and vote for us.  But, if as Governors-elect McDonnell and Christie, they put forward reform ideas that don’t involve tax increases, but do include regulatory relief, then they can win even in “blue” regions of the country.

Young people swarmed to the Obama bandwagon last year because of the Democrat’s hip campaign and powerful presence. Many had little idea what exactly their man stood for save the amorphous appeals to hope and change, but they sure liked the contrast between his image and that of then-the tongue-tied incumbent.

Well, poring through the exit polls after Tuesday’s Democratic rout in two states which voted for Obama, Michael Barone found that the youth vote dropped off substantially, with younger voters in the Old Dominion voting “about as Republican as their elders“:

The big-government programs of Obama Democrats evidently have less appeal than those trendy posters and inspiring rallies and cries of “We are the change we are seeking.” I have yet to see survey research showing that young Americans want to work under union contracts, with their 5,000 pages of work rules and rigid seniority systems. That doesn’t sound like a tune that appeals to the iPod generation.

Obama may not have been on the ballot in New Jersey, Virginia and New York’s Westchester County, to note just three jurisdictions which swung to the right on Tuesday, but his policies were.  And the more people look at them, the more they move away from his party.

Grover gets it:

Conservatives cannot win without the Republican party and the Republican party cannot win without conservatives. Everything else is commentary.

If President Obama and congressional Democrats want to prevent more Democrats from suffering the fate next fall as outgoing New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, outgoing Westchester County Executive Andy Spano and various Democrats across the Commonwealth of Virginia did last night, they would do well to ditch health care as an issue and focus on legislation designed to create jobs.

And as they work on that legislation, they need bear in mind that to generate job creation without further burdening taxpayers and their descendants, you need remove the burdens on employers.  No wonder Virginians and New Jerseyites voted, respectively, for Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie.  These men know that government regulation won’t help entrepreneurs in their states.  They knew that the big issue in their jurisdictions was Joe Biden’s favorite three-letter word, jobs.

In Virginia, forty-six percent said “that the economy and jobs are the most important issue to their vote. One in four indicate that health care reform is their most pressing issue,”  In New Jersey, voters rated health care the fourth most important issue, after the economy/jobs, property taxes and corruption.

And yet the Democrats in Washington, D.C. have made health care their most important issue.  From my perspective as a blogger who follows the news, the 111th Congress has devoted far more time to health care reform than it has to economic growth (which give the makeup of the current Congress is not necessarily a bad thing).

But, I do think politicians in Washington follow election returns.  They read the Washington Post and know that the Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia carried Fairfax County.  Republican Barbara Comstock even knocked off incumbent Democratic Delegate Margi Vanderhye in an inside-the beltway district.

And this is why as mayor of the gay conservative city in the county of the land of blogs, having found a few coroners who have thoroughly examined Obamacare and have thus averred it’s not only merely dead, it’s really most sincerely dead, I can let the joyous news be spread that Nancy Pelosi’s wicked big bill will soon to be dead.

The other night I attended a screening of a friend’s documentary-in-progress following a number of gay couples who, in 2004, went up to San Francisco to get married when Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed his city to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  A number of things struck me about the footage, but two things that my really stood out.  First, here were almost no attacks on social conservatives.

Indeed, when the various couples talking about how getting the license impacted their relationship, many sounded a lot like social conservatives.  And that was the second thing that really struck me.  One spouse realized she couldn’t just walk out the door after they’d had a fight or faced a trying situation.  They realized they had made a lifetime commitment.  Their relationship wasn’t just about love.  There was also a sense of mutual responsibility.  Not only did marriage bring the two individuals closer, but it also integrated each more closely together into the lives of his (or her) partner’s extended family.

In short, they talked about marriage as mosst heterosexual couples in traditional marriages have talked about it for generations.

I wish my friend every success with his film and hope it soon becomes available to a wider audience.  But, it hit home to me in large part because it stood in stark contrast t0 the imagery I have seen and the arguments I have heard in favor of state recognition of same-sex marriage.

It’s almost as if those “designated” to make those arguments (or those who designate themselves to make them on behalf of the “gay community) are afraid of sounding like social conservatives.  And that’s the primary reason, I believe, we need a complete overhaul of the gay leadership.  These people are versed in left-wing politics, more ready to bash “right-wingers,” the very people whose minds they most need to change. (more…)

Would-be Jon Corzines are quaking in their boots (and heels).  Having watched firsthand an unpopular Democratic Governor win reelection in the Golden State in 2002 by trashing his opponent, I thought the New Jersey Democrat’s nasty campaign might have worked.

My opinion of Garden State voters improved dramatically last night.  They are not as numbed by images on the boob tube as are their counterparts in California.  Or maybe it’s the times.  The way we get our news has changed dramatically in the last 7 years.

Despite spending $20 million in ads trashing Chris Christie, Jon Corzine lost to that good Republican.  That conscientious prosecutor won with the largest margin of victory of any New Jersey Republican in 24 years — since the very popular Governor Thomas Kean’s reelection in 1985.

With unemployment in the Golden State the highest it’s been since World War II, having increased by 33% since the state’s junior Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer, was first elected during a recession in 1992, that Democrat is going to have a hard time running on her record and is likely to pull a tactic (or two) from the bag of tricks she used in her successful 1992 and 1998 campaigns, trash her opponent and avoid taking questions from the media.

But, will she be able to succeed in a political world reshaped by blogs and the internet?

I will wait to write a more comprehensive post on gay issues and the 2009 elections when we get final returns from Washington State where a measure to uphold the state’s Domestic Partnership program currently clings to a narrow lead.  If that margin holds, the Evergreen State will be the first state where voters ratified a state law recognizing same-sex unions.  In Arizona in 2006, voters rejected a sweeping measure which would have banned recognition of same-sex marriages as well as domestic partnerships.

The margin, in this socially liberal state, is way too close for comfort.

With 31 states having voted on gay marriage, Maine became the 31st to vote against it.

These results make clear that new leadership is needed in the gay movement.  If the heads of the various gay organizations, including and especially those devoted to “marriage equality,” didn’t get the message last year after the passage of Proposition 8 in California, they should get it today after the passage of Question 1 in Maine.

So, Joe, Evan, Geoff, Kate, the door is thattaway.

UPDATE:  To accent my point about the need for new leadership, take note of this tidbit.  Question 1 passed in Maine

despite a massive outpouring of resources by gay rights groups. Gay marriage advocates spent an estimated $4 milion defending the law, while opponents reportedly spent about $2.5 million.

Last night, on FoxNews Michael Barone delivered his interpretation of the election results.  Unlike other big name pundits, he looked beyond the big races and found some significant trends in the contests to which others weren’t paying much attention.

After that sage political prognosticator he pointed out that the Republican won a resounding victory in New York’s Westchester County (where Obama captured nearly two-thirds of the vote last fall), I quickly googled the jurisdiction and found that Republican County Executive-elect Rob Astorino wasn’t the only Republican to oust an incumbent Democrat in that suburban county adjacent to the Big Apple.   Other Westchester Republicans, while not winning, ran well ahead of their party’s standard bearer in the 2008 presidential election.

Republican Susan Siegel ousted incumbent Democrat Donald Peters for Yorktown supervisor while her fellow partisan Charles Duffy ousted Democrat Edward Brancali for the same post in Lewisboro. Republicans ousted incumbent Democratic Mayors in Mamaroneck and Rye.

To be sure, these are small races, but they hardly show a party reduced to rump status.

Barone found that the results in Westchester County were not unique. Crediting “longtime Democratic pollster and political analyst Pat Caddell,” he found “affluent suburban voters moved sharply toward Republicans in 2009″:

Bergen County, New Jersey, a 56%-42% Corzine constituency in 2005, came within a point or two of voting for Christie, and in Virginia McDonnell carried 51%-49% Fairfax County—Republican for years but recently in cultural issues and with an increasing immigrant population Democratic (60%-39% Obama in 2008). . . .

From the 1996 election up through and including 2008., affluent counties in the East, Midwest and West have trended Democratic, largely through distaste for the religious and cultural conservatives whom voters there have seen (not without reason) as dominant in the Republican party. Now, with the specter of higher tax rates and a vastly expanded public sector, they may be—possibly—headed in the other direction. An interesting trend to watch.

This year, however, the tax issue resonates.  As does opposition to Democrats’ big-government initiatives.

This should serve as a sign to the GOP of how to wage future campaigns. Republicans thinking about running in next fall’s elections would do well to listen closely to Governor-elect Chris Christie’s speech last night where he outlined his agenda to turn Trenton (the state capital) “upside down.”  People want change–and the kind of changes Republicans like Ronald Reagan have been talking about  for more than forty years now.

Given that the elected legislature had passed and the elected Governor had signed the law in Maine recognizing same-sex marriage, I had expected the dynamics of the race to be a little different in the Pine Tree State.  But, the result is nearly identical to that in the Golden State just one year ago.  With 87% of the vote in, 52.8% of the state’s citizens voted to reject the law.

On the other side of the country, in the Evergreen State, an initiative to approve the state’s domestic partnership law is ahead by about 2 points with half of all precincts reporting.  If that margin holds, it would confirm polls showing increasing support for state recognition of same-sex civil unions, but steady opposition to gay marriage.  In every state where citizens have been asked about gay marriage, they have voted it down, but by smaller margins than when such referenda first appeared on American ballots.

Methinks that for now, we should focus on getting state recognition of civil unions, but the closeness of the Washington State result is striking.  The state, like others on the West Coast is socially liberal, particularly in its western counties.  And there are likely many Republicans who voted to approve the Domestic Partnership proposal.

My biggest fear about the Maine vote is that the President will use it as an excuse not to move forward on issues of concern to the gay community, particularly repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  DaveO gets it:

No on 1 made the same mistake that No on 8 made in California. It WAS a vote on “Equality”, or at least that’s how that side tried to portray it. They just don’t get that fuzzy terms like “Equality” only appeal to liberal Democrats with guilty consciences and pretty much to no one else.

That’s just one reason we needed new gay leadership, not individuals beholden to such socialist-sounding words as “equality.”

In New Jersey, “union brass knuckles were not enough to carry” New Jersey’s Democratic Governor “over the finish line,” but union support likely made the difference in Bill Owens narrow victory in New York’s 23rd congressional district.  Earlier today (Tuesday), when I heard on the news that with Dede Scozzafava’s endorsement meant of the Democrat meant that unions which had previously been divided were now united behind Owens, I felt a disturbance in the force.

The good feeling I had about today’s elections was tarnished a bit.  Given the haphazard nature of Hoffman’s campaign, I doubted he had the chance to organize a good ground game, essential to victory in a special election. He may have the enthusiasm, but the unions had the organization.  It seems to have paid off.  As did Rahm Emanuel’s gamble.

Something else too may have hurt Hoffman.  The media attempt to portray him as a right-wing extremist surely hurt him with libertarian voters in the district.  They made Scozzafava out to be a moderate and attributed conservative dissatisfaction with the one-time GOP nominee to her “moderate” stands on social issues and not her liberal positions on fiscal one.

The Scozzafava endorsement clearly helped; Owens was leading in Jefferson County, her “strongest territory.”  Given that he has represented the area, she has certainly earned the affection of many of her constiuents.

A disappointment, to be sure, but a reminder that, in special election, organization matters.

And as to Nick’s point, I’ll just say that I think Congressman-elect Owens arrives neutered by the results in the Garden State and the margin in the Old Dominion.  The political class can’t ignore that the Washington Post’s best efforts notwithstanding, Bob McDonnell won Fairfax County, being, I believe, the first Republican to do so this century.  His victory, in short, does nothing to advance the Obama agenda.

While Owens may not have run as far behind Obama as did Corzine and Deeds, he did run three points behind the Democratic presidential nominee.

I know, I know. I should really be counting my blessings. And I hate to piss on our parade. A HUGE sweep in Virginia (expected) and an incredibly pleasant surprise up in New Jersey (I have to be honest, I wasn’t counting on that, but WOW!). All GOPers should be glad this morning as both major candidates of the party were successful in knocking the ruling power of these two states out and replacing them with Republicans.

On the other hand, I have to say…

Now, I’m a Republican–registered and active (as far as the Hatch Act allows me)–and as such, I’m bully for our side, as they say. But I’m first and foremost, beyond party affiliation, a small-government, low-tax, individual-liberty small-’l’ libertarian. And from that perspective, something else happened last night:

In a solidly (for over a century, we’re constantly being told) Republican district, the clear fiscal conservative lost in (ostensibly) a two-man race against a leftist lawyer. While the constituencies of New Jersy and Virginia alone each dwarf that of NY-23, and together render it completely negligable, something larger happened last night that gives me great pause as to the direction of our great Nation.

It’s not simply a (yet another) Congressional rubber-stamp vote for the Stalinization of the American health care industry, massive tax increases, enormous government expansion and Pelosiesque class warfare that was garnered last night. It was, in a conservative district a repudiation of smaller government and lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and individual liberty. Clearly the only candidate in NY-23 last night running on shaping the US the way small-government, small-’l’ libertarians desire lost. And not in Manhattan or Hollywood. Not in Hyde Park or Washington, DC. In rural, upstate New York.

The entire NY-23 episode was a healthy blood-letting for the GOP, yes. We have proven to all who question that ours is the party of fiscal restraint, personal responsibilty, individual freedom, and smaller Federal government. Ask Ms. Scuzzafava about that.

But a bigger question seems to remain, thanks to Congressman-elect Bill Owens: Can we turn these core American beliefs into an actual movement? This summer’s tea parties and rallies against big-government gave me hope about a new American sense of Independence. The repudiation of this newly-reborn sense of respect for our founding principles last night in (of all places) upstate New York gives me great concern about our Nation and its ability to embrace these precepts that are the very basis of our unique experiment in the first place.

The bottom-line is this: Over the past 9 months, we have heard every political pundit and web-spinner worth his salt interpreting poll results and the general mood of the Country as basically this:

While the president remains terribly popular on a personal level, Americans are en-masse revolting against his policies. They like Barack Obama; they just don’t like what he’s trying to do. His personal approval ratings are still quite high, but his policies are terribly unpopular.

Bla, bla bla.

Virginia and (to an even greater extent) New Jersey tell us that President Obama is wildly unpopular. Not able even to deliver the bluest-of-blue Garden State to an incumbent(!), and the gubernatorial vote swinging about 25% from his victory in last year’s presidential contest clearly shows that the president’s political wave has ebbed to say the least. On the other hand, a red district (historically, yes, I know it went to Obama last year) in rural New York just sent a guaranteed vote for Nancy Pelosi and every cockamaime big-government Leftist scheme to the House of Representatives. This turns every political analysis of the past spring, summer, and fall on its ear.

From where I’m standing, I’d have traded New Jersey and Virginia for NY-23. Am I crazy? Please say so.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Just watched Michael Barone on FoxNews and he alerts us to really big news in New York’s Westchester County.   Republican Rob Astorino ousted incumbent Andy Spano with 57.65 of the vote.  Obama carried the county last fall with 63.39% of the vote.  Astorino ran more than twenty points ahead of John McCain.

Seems Republicans are once again relevant in socially liberal suburbs.  They’re going to need to sound a lot like New Jersey’s Govenor-elect who also ran ahead of John McCain in those once-Republican suburbs.

The Garden State which went 57 percent for Obama has a Republican governor as his supporters chant, “Yes, we can!”  (Or was it, “Yes, we did!”)

UPDATE: I do hope the president is listening to this speech, especially where he said that he doesn’t want the government to fix every problem.  His supporters cheered that line heartily.  He promises to turn the state capital upside down.

He talk about cutting taxes, spending and onerous regulation.

A lot of good stuff in this speech, sounds like my kind of Republican.  And I am delighted that he has focused on government reform and avoided social issues.  Let’s hope more Republicans are paying attention.  (Will try to get a copy of his acceptance speech so I can quote him more accurately.)

I like this guy.