Phew. So, it turns out:

Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucus.

Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, Marianne, is getting her revenge. Live by scorched-earth. Die by scorched-earth, eh, Newt?

And Rick Perry is reportedly set to drop out today — removing another body from another GOP debate tonight in South Carolina and freeing up more time for more liberal media bashing, potential Romney gaffes, Ron Paul foreign policy screeds.

Looks like he is set to follow RedState founder Erick Erickson’s advice and endorse Newt:

While closer to Perry than Romney on some points, Perry campaigned on reducing the size and scope of Washington, privatizing social security, and fixing entitlements. Endorsing Santorum may leave Perry in good stead with his fellow evangelicals, but it would fly in the face of the limited government principles he outlines both on the campaign trail and in his national bestseller Fed Up!

Then there is the man who wrote the introduction to Fed Up!, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

I’m willing to bet that among activists in Texas, Newt Gingrich is more popular than Romney. His message has been rather consistent to Perry’s, including a man on a mission to gut Washington, D.C. While Gingrich lacks Perry’s limited government bona fides, he is the only other candidate in the race emphasizing that business as usual in Washington is not acceptable if the nation we love is going to survive – as Gingrich wrote in his introduction: “Devolving power out of Washington is critical to our long-term survival.” And that’s the truth.

But Erickson wrote the truth back in 2009, when he expressed deep-seated grass-roots conservative discontent and distrust of Newt:

Newt endorsing Scozzafava aligns him with Markos Moulitsas who declared Dede the most liberal candidate in the race.

That aligns Newt with ACORN, which has twice endorsed Dede.

That aligns Newt with Planned Parenthood and NARAL, active supporters of Dede.

That aligns Newt with the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, and a host of other left wing interest groups including the gay marriage lobby.

Today Newt Gingrich stands athwart history and pees on the legacy of 1994, where it is no longer about principles, ideas, ideals, and integrity, but the raw acquisition of power for the sake of power. He aligns with a candidate to the left of the Democrat.

The GOP will not take back power until it repents of its sins that caused it to lose power. And chief among those sins was the abandonment of principle for the sake of power. But when a political party stands for nothing, it fails to stand.

At least we can thank Newt today for declaring himself out of the 2012 race. Or, should he stay in, conservatives at least no longer have to feel under any obligation to stick with him, since he makes clear in NY-23 as he did in MD-01 that he feels under no obligation to stick with conservatives.

Here is the awful GOP conundrum. We have a liberal Northeastern Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, who can’t articulate conservative principles. And we have a Beltway insider with massive moral baggage, Newt Gingrich, who believes he’s above living conservative principles. Via Hot Air:

[Ex-wife Marianne Gingrich] kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. “‘I can’t handle a Jaguar right now.’ He said that many times. ‘All I want is a Chevrolet.’”

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

Noseplugs, anyone?

***

Perry post-mortem: I see that Team Perry is already blaming “fringe” pundits for exercising inordinate influence on voters.

Newsflash: Perry did himself in. All by himself.

***

Should be quite a Final Four debate tonight. Will the Non-Romneys focus more on each other? Or the lib CNN moderators? More SuperPAC-a-palooza whining? Submit your debate questions here.

***

Update 11am Eastern Rick Perry announces suspension of his campaign. Throws endorsement, as expected, to Newt Gingrich. Absolves him for not being “perfect” and preaches redemption ahead of Marianne Gingrich “open marriage” interview with ABC News.

Perry: Newt is a “visionary” who can “transform our country.”

How about less transformation and more restoration?

Perry’s last words: “I have just begun to fight” for conservatism.

Good to know.

And now…Rick Perry can now make Washington more inconsequential in Americans’ lives — by making it more inconsequential in his.

***

Flashback video via Drudge Report: Perry slams marital cheaters. “If you cheat on your wife, you’ll cheat on your business partner:”

Yes, I’m still struggling. Like many of you, I am still carefully weighing all the costs and benefits of each declared GOP candidate. As the candidates continue highlighting each other’s unsavory left-wing alliances, I thought it might be helpful to compile a Hold Your Nose Tracker of the current top four front-runners. I’m just giving it to you straight. One way or the other, the plugs will come in handy. This is the hand we’ve been dealt, alas. Same as it ever was. (Flashback February 2008: The John McCain Nose Plugs.)

Update: Latest Rasmussen numbers are out. Cain: 43. Obama: 41. “Cain is tied with Romney for the lead in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Nobody else is even close at the moment.”

***

Newt Gingrich. This weekend, Gingrich called out Mitt Romney’s liberal Northeast Republican record. All well and good. But let’s not pretend away Newt’s own very recent strayings from mainstream conservatism. He snuggled up to Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore in 2008 (and laughably tried to spin the humiliating lovefest as a “debate”).

He went on tour with Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan and race hustler Al Sharpton in September 2009 and again in November 2009:

He endorsed ACORN-friendly, Big Labor-backing, tax-and-spend abortion radical Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 debacle in October 2009, prompting rank-and-file conservatives to send back his book and GOP solicitations like this one from reader Barnaby, who sent back his crossed-out Republican solicitation forms with a “NO RINOS” sticky note for Newt Gingrich:

He’s played footsie with Hillary Clinton on health care, backed an individual health care mandate and aspects of Romneycare, and vigorously attacked Paul Ryan’s free-market-based Medicare reform plan.

And a friendly reminder for grass-roots Tea Party activists who were against the government bailouts before it was cool: When push came to shove, Gingrich supported TARP.

***

Herman Cain. His endorsement of pal Alan Greenspan’s Fed tenure shows too much trust for the central banking bureaucrats who helped inflate the housing bubble and who, like Naked Emperor Henry Paulson, engineered the era of endless bailouts.

For all his Tea Party cred and outside-the-Beltway status, Cain fell for the gun-to-our-heads, Chicken Little propaganda and supported TARP — vigorously — when America needed every consistent fiscal conservative voice possible to try and stop the predictable, all-purpose morphing of the bank bailout before it started.

***

Rick Perry. He tried to embarrass rival GOP gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison in September 2009 by painting her as soft on radical community organizing/fraud outfit ACORN — only to watch the attack wither after conservative opponents found him championing the group’s government shakedowns at a pro-ACORN bill-signing in 2005.

He has adopted the illegal alien DREAM Act agenda and echoed their attacks on opponents as “heartless:”

(Texans, by the way, are revolting against Perry’s lax attitude. Texas A&M students are petitioning Perry to call a special session to repeal the DREAM Act. Texas Tea Party leaders want Perry to come home and address illegal alien sanctuary cities now.)

He’s knee-deep in crony Merck lobbying ties and cash, a pair of massive government subsidy slush funds for friends and donors, and his own Solyndra-style penchant for picking taxpayer “investment” winners and losers.

And yes, he was for, then against, the government-knows-best TARP intervention. This weaseling about his position on a core Tea Party issue is typical Beltway behavior:

***

Mitt Romney . He embraced Nanny State Sen. Edward Kennedy and the federal dollars Uncle Teddy brought to the table to help subsidize Romneycare.

He put Romneycare/Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber on the map.

He took environmental advice from global warming zealot, eugenics/population control freak John Holdren, among other eco-command-and-controllers.

He stood by and watched NJ GOP Gov. Chris Christie smear Romneycare critics as “intellectually dishonest.”

Oh, and yeah: He supported TARP, too. And defends it today.

***

Gah.

***

As all of these candidates’ campaigns remind us — endlessly — there’s no such thing as a perfect candidate.

Yep, don’t we all know it? Politics is the Pageant of the Imperfects.

Every single one of these front-runners is a pro-TARP interventionist with a variety of problematic Big Biz/Big Government impulses and alliances.

Which one will do the least worst job against Obama in the debates, on the campaign trail, and ultimately in the White House? Which one will insult the base the least? Which one will actually have the energy, competence, and credibility to directly challenge Obama’s corruption, profligacy, class-warfare demagoguery, progressive pandering, and epidemic failures?

Watching, waiting, hoping, praying. And yes, preparing the nose plugs however this race turns out…

***

GOP debate viewership is nearly double the last presidential cycle’s.

The next one’s on Tuesday in Las Vegas, organized again by CNN.

Would be nice to get more conservatives to Occupy GOP Debates next time around.

I dream.

I hope Newt Gingrich and all the GOP Beltway groups that dumped millions of grass-roots dollars into the radical Big Labor, ACORN-friendly, Margaret Sanger Award-winning tax & spender’s appalling NY-23 campaign are proud.

From NY Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press release today:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the following appointments and nominations to senior positions within the state government.

…Dede Scozzafava will serve as Deputy Secretary for Local Government at the Department of State. Ms. Scozzafava served as a member of the New York State Assembly from 1999-2010, serving as Minority Leader, Pro Tempore from April 2009-December 2009. She served as Chairwoman of the Assembly Republican Review Committee and the SAVE NY TASK FORCE. Prior to joining the Assembly, Ms. Scozzafava was Mayor of the Village of Gouverneur from 1994-1998. In the private sector, Ms. Scozzafava spent 20 years working for Tucker Anthony/RBC Dain Rauscher as an investment advisor. She is a graduate of Boston University and received an MBA from the Clarkson School of Management in Potsdam.

The times they are a-changin’ — and it’s ladies of the Right who are kicking ass and naming names.

Five items for your viewing and reading pleasure:

* Jeri Thompson smacks GOP poobahs and pooh-pooh-ers upside the head:

While they may not be intending to be sexist, the message, the attitude and whining sure make many in the GOP look eerily like the elites we are trying so hard to usurp. The sexism issues aside, it’s time for the Washington GOP establishment to man up and stop sulking over losing — no, getting walloped — by a woman they continue to insist is unqualified despite the fact that she has a pretty big win under her belt under pretty difficult circumstances.

I might point out that being trounced by an unqualified (they think) opponent is more a reason, not less, to humbly buck up, congratulate her and move forward. Frankly, it seems an emotional response. Strange, huh? This behavior does not play well with the very grassroots voters they are counting on to put them over the top in November. It’s time they understood these are different grassroots from anything the D.C. crowd has dealt with before.

The fact is, despite all of the Beltway Boys’ attempts to co-opt the Tea Party movement — which to my way of thinking is really a revitalized conservative movement under a much bigger tent — the movement has refused to play the Washington game.

When self-anointed “tea party leaders” have attempted to direct the movement, the citizens themselves have been savvy enough to sniff out many of the charlatans and keep their grassroots organizations focused on achieving their goals of throwing the bums out of office where necessary and appropriate.

Perhaps the reaction to O’Donnell is the result of the Beltway Boys’ understanding that the movement that has been taking hold across the country really is out of their control. Or perhaps they really are intimidated by a woman who has already proven that she can do it without them.

* Debra J. Saunders calls out Big Government Eco-Radical Newt Gingrich:

This year, Gingrich is playing to the tea party crowd. He and his wife are about to release a new movie, “America at Risk” on national security threats. As a tea party courtier, he rails against carbon taxes. His political action committee has raised $250,000 from an Oklahoma natural gas and oil producer, and $100,000 from Arch Coal of St. Louis, Politco.com reported.

Two years ago, however, the Newter was seated on a loveseat next to Speaker Nancy Pelosi starring in TV ads for Al Gore’s global warming campaign. Quoth Gingrich, “We do agree, our country must take action against climate change.” And: “If enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need.”

Consider Gingrich to be the right’s Jerry Brown. Like the former and would-be next California governor, Gingrich talks big, but has no loyalty to his ideas. He was for tax cuts before he was against them. He supported a $35,000 congressional pay raise and leaner government.

Like Brown, Gingrich’s real skill has been in seeing a trend early and jumping on it, unencumbered by any past positions.

Then armed with a trendy vocabulary, Gingrich blusters on. During the National Review interview, he asserted Obama is “authentically dishonest.” Authentically dishonest? If anyone should know what that means, it’s probably Gingrich…

* Sarah Palin takes on Karl Rove and the good old boys:

* Christine O’Donnell on Castle’s petulance, Reid’s “pet,” and Rove’s attacks:

* And my comments on the death throes of the Old Guard — plus my call for conservatives to refuse to cede language to the “moooooderates” in the GOP who are anything but. Just say no to progressive wolves in elephants’ clothing:

***

Related: Coming Sept. 22 via Citizens United…Fire From the Heartland: The Reawakening of the Conservative Woman

Fire From The Heartland from Citizens United on Vimeo.

More info here.

Here’s today’s entry from reader Mike:

I’m sure the latest race-card lamentation of Michael Steele will result in another avalanche of rejected RNC donor forms.

How much longer will the hemorrhaging continue?

Speaking of the Stupid Party, left-wing radical Republican Dede Scozzafava is writing a memoir.

Wonder if she has asked her Beltway cheerleader Newt Gingrich to write the forward.

***

Touche’:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had some choice words today for Michael Steele after the RNC chairman said that being black gives him and President Obama less margin for error as public figures.

“That’s a fairly silly comment to make,” Gibbs told reporters. “I think Michael Steele’s problem isn’t the race card, it’s the credit card.”

Grass-roots conservatives, your attention, please: The NRCC and GOP dumped $1 million of your hard-earned money into radical Leftist Republican Dede Scozzafava’s NY-23′s campaign — money that was squandered trashing mainstream conservative candidate Doug Hoffman, who lost the race by less than 3,400 votes.

Now, the GOP elite Senate candidate in California, Carly Fiorina, is running against Democrat Barbara Boxer by…trashing mainstream conservative GOP rival Chuck DeVore.

Fiorina’s strongest argument against DeVore? He’s a white man and she’s not.

Really:

Asked why she is a better candidate than her Republican primary opponent Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Calif.), Fiorina said that a woman stands a better chance of defeating Boxer.

“I have nothing against white men, I am married to one,” Fiorina said at a breakfast at Americans for Tax Reform. “But Barbara Boxer has defeated [them] over and over again.”

Political observers with long memories should remind Fiorina how Boxer engineered GOP defeat. Bruce Herschensohn, the Republican candidate in 1992, was a staunch and unapologetic conservative talk show host who came within 5 points of beating the San Francisco liberal. Desperate to ensure Boxer’s victory, dirty Dem operatives launched a last-minute smear campaign by shouting about strip clubs.

Herschensohn’s skin color and chromosomes had nothing to do with Boxer’s win.

In keeping with Fiorina’s identity politics-driven campaign, she also said today that even though she didn’t follow the nomination closely, she would have voted to confirm Obama SCOTUS pick Sonia Sotomayor.

An Obama echo, not a choice.

***

Today’s rejected RNC solicitation form of the day comes from reader Genene H:

And from reader Stephen:

I just wanted you to know that the Republican Party called me for the 3rd time in a week. I finally decided to answer and give them a piece of my mind. They wanted money immediately for some rallies at college campuses to oppose Obama’s policies and cited the leadership of Newt Gingrich. I said I was disappointed in Gingrich, and that his support of candidates like Dede Scozzafava in New York, who supported the stimulus bill, union check card, was pro-choice, and pro gay marriage, was too much for me. The guy tried to argue that Scozzafava had gotten a bad rap and had tried to lower taxes and agreed with Republicans on many things, to which I responded that she voted more liberally than 46 other Democrats in NY government! Then I said, her support of Owens after she withdrew from the race kind of confirmed what I thought all along. I left by telling him I would support individual conservative candidates, like Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, but that I would not give money to the Republican party to support candidates like Scozzafava. Thanks for all your great work.

***

More on the Fiorina appearance at AmSpec from Philip Klein.

Now, the Syracuse Post-Standard reports that the race has tightened considerably — with thousands of military and overseas ballots still to be counted:

Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession — based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted — set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

Democratic Rep. Bill Owens was quickly sworn into office on Friday, a day before the rare weekend vote in the House of Representatives. His support sealed his party’s narrow victory on the health care legislation.

Now a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

In Oswego County, where Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, inspectors found Hoffman actually won by 1,748 votes — 12,748 to 11,000.

The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections.

Under a new law in New York that extended deadlines, military and overseas ballots received by this coming Monday (and postmarked by Nov. 2) will be counted. Standard absentee ballots had to be returned this past Monday.

The state has yet to certify the election. Meantime, Speaker Pelosi hastily swore in Democrat Bill Owens, who hastily voted for the House government health care takeover bill last week, which barely squeaked through.

Conklin said the state sent a letter to the House Clerk last week explaining that no winner had been determined in the 23rd District, and therefore the state had not certified the election. But the letter noted that Owens still led by about 3,000 votes, and that the special election was not contested — two factors that legally allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to swear in Owens on Friday.

“We sent a letter to the clerk laying out the totals,” Conklin said. “The key is that Hoffman conceded, which means the race is not contested. However, all ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to be removed.”

Before Owens was sworn in Friday, Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat who won a special election in California, was sworn in Thursday. The two gave Pelosi the votes she needed to reach a majority of 218 and pass the historic health care reform legislation in the House.

The bill passed 220-215 late Saturday with the support of only one Republican. The Republican, Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana, said he voted for the legislation only after seeing that Democrats had the 218 votes needed for passage.

As Jim Geraghty notes, it “would be really tough to make up a 3,000 vote margin in a three-way race among 10,000 absentee ballots.”

We’ll see shortly.

In the meantime, let it be a lesson to conservative challengers not to concede until the last ballot is counted.

The nation’s health may depend on it.

Republicans have moved ahead of Democrats by 48% to 44% among registered voters in the latest update on Gallup’s generic congressional ballot for the 2010 House elections, after trailing by six points in July and two points last month…

…The Nov. 5-8 update comes just after Republican victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, which saw Republicans replace Democrats as governors of those states.

As was the case in last Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections, independents are helping the Republicans’ cause. In the latest poll, independent registered voters favor the Republican candidate by 52% to 30%. Both parties maintain similar loyalty from their bases, with 91% of Democratic registered voters preferring the Democratic candidate and 93% of Republican voters preferring the Republican.

The bad news? The GOP chairman continues to be an embarrassing panderer to left-wing interviewers out to smear conservatives as racists.

And grass-roots conservatives are not letting NY-23 go.

Here’s the latest round of rejected RNC/NRSC solicitation forms from readers.

Jeff e-mails:

From reader Brandon:

From reader Todd:

And from Roger B. Heh:

***

Townhall’s Jillian Bandes looks at a possible “Scozzafava repeat in California.”

Chuck DeVore is the proven conservative in the GOP race to challenge Barbara Boxer. He’s backed by staunch conservative Sen. Jim DeMint. Chuck’s campaign site is here.

***

Related:

Republican leaders in a South Carolina county have censured their own U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for working with Democrats on a climate bill and other legislation.

The Republican has often worked with Democrats in Congress, but Charleston County Chairwoman Lin Bennett says his work on climate legislation is the last straw.

The party resolution passed Monday says Graham has weakened the Republican brand. Bennett expects a similar resolution to be introduced at the state GOP convention next year.

GOP offices better prepare for a new onslaught. As I said earlier this morning, the repercussions of NY-23 will be felt well beyond New York’s borders.

From reader Denise:

From reader Keith:

From reader Catherine:

From reader Rakkasan:

And reader Jeff:

***

GOP leader John Boehner today via J.P. Freire:

When asked about rumors that the New York Republican Party picked Scozzafava because of the advice of Washington insiders who felt she would be a more electable candidate, Boehner rolled his eyes. “We told them to hold off on a decision, to work with us, but they went ahead and did it.”

So if she was a rotten egg, why spend money? “All the money spent on that race was anti-Owens money, not pro-Scozzafava money.”

The second claim is demonstrably false, casting fatal doubt on the first claim, too.

J.P. also has this reminder of NRCC trashing of Hoffman:

“[Conservative] Party bosses in New York have been sold a bill of goods in the form of Doug Hoffman’s deceptive smoke-and-mirrors campaign, but fortunately they aren’t the ones deciding this election,” said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the NRCC, which has produced Web ads attacking Hoffman’s conservative bona fides. “We will continue to remind New Yorkers that a vote for Hoffman or Bill Owens is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and her far-left, radical agenda.”

Gag.

***

Related: Michael Patrick Leahy spotlights how Scozzafava’s endorsement of Democrat Owens put him over the top.

Conservatives’ money went to pay for specious attack ads against Hoffman run by the NRCC like this.

Conservatives’ money went to support a GOP candidate who shares the same socialist alliances with fellow SEIU/ACORN/New Party/Working Families Party activist Patrick Gaspard, the Obama White House political director who intervened in the race to secure Scozzafava’s endorsement of Owens.

Hoffman’s candidacy illuminated the stark difference between GOP political opportunists willing to pimp out their endorsements to any old ACORN-embracing, Working Families Party-consorting, Big Labor crony who puts an “R” by her name — and movement conservatives who refuse to “mooooderate” for the politically expedient sake of mooooderation as dictated by out-of-touch Beltway party leaders. The NRCC/RNC’s $1 million debacle will cost much more than that.

As I’ve repeated many times over the last several weeks:

One thing is guaranteed at the conclusion of the NY-23 special congressional election: The Beltway Republicans who endorsed radical leftist Dede Scozzafava are going to have indelible egg stains on their faces. And GOP establishment fund-raising organizations will be the poorer for it.

To illustrate the point: This blog now has a regular feature spotlighting readers’ RNC rejected solicitation forms of the day.

Today’s rejected RNC donor form comes from reader Bud:

Which brings me to my syndicated column today.

Hoffman may have lost narrowly, but NY-23 is a much broader victory for conservatives who believe the Republican Party should stand for core limited government principles. Scozzafava, who was endorsed by far Left blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and backed by Planned Parenthood, the National Education Association, and card-check-promoting trade unions, was denied the congressional seat because movement conservatives refused to support Arlen Specter in a skirt. This is a victory of principle.

Better a donkey in office that acts like a donkey than a donkey in elephant’s clothing making a complete ass of the GOP.

Moreover, NY-23 is a victory for conservatives who refuse to be marginalized in the public square by either the unhinged left or the establishment right. A humble accountant from upstate New York exposed the hypocrisy of GOP leaders trying to solicit funds from conservatives by lambasting Pelosi and the Dems’ support for high taxes, Big Labor, and bigger government — while using conservatives’ money to subsidize a high-taxing, Big Labor-pandering, bigger government radical. The repercussions will be felt well beyond NY-23′s borders. Conservatives’ disgust with the status quo has been heard and felt. They have been silent too long. They will be silent no more.

The GOP leadership knows it cannot afford to rest on its laurels, continue business as usual, and bask in yesterday’s electoral victories without confronting its abysmal abdication of principled conservative leadership in NY-23.

As Hoffman said in his concession speech, “This is only one fight in the battle.”

Onward. Upward. Rightward.

***

Who are you calling “extremist?”
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

Here is one of the loudest messages of the 2009 off-off-year elections: Conservatives in America will no longer let their opponents define them out of the mainstream. They will not submit to Democrats. Or to the media. Or to Beltway Republican capitulationists. They will not “rebrand.” They will not sit down. They will not shut up.

Just this past weekend, Democrat Rep. Jim Moran attacked the Republican candidates for governor and attorney general in his state of Virginia as the “Taliban ticket.”

New York Times columnist Frank Rich decried the Right’s “Jacobins” and “Stalinists” who he said joined a “putsch” by supporting Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over ACORN-embracing, Big Labor-promoting, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, tax-and-spend Republican Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd congressional special election.

And senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett told ABC’s “This Week” that the grass-roots conservative-vs.-GOP leadership battle over NY-23 showed that the Republican Party leadership was “becoming more and more extreme, and more and more marginalized.”

Let’s talk “extreme.” Valerie Jarrett is the White House official who bragged openly about recruiting disgraced Marxist rabble-rouser Van Jones for the green jobs czar post. She lavished praise on his public career and said she had followed him “for as long as he’s been active out in Oakland.” In Oakland, Jones was working to dismantle California’s juvenile justice system, pitting minorities against police officers, and crusading to free Death Row cop-killer Mumia abu Jamal.

Who are you calling “extreme?”

Jarrett’s White House colleague Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s political director who intervened in the race to convince Scozzafava to endorse the Democrat candidate Bill Owens after she dropped out, was a top organizer at the militant Local 1199 chapter of the Service Employees International Union and an activist/organizer for the New Party and the Working Families Party – both ACORN/Democratic Socialist Association front groups.

Who are you calling “extreme?”

“It’s rather telling,” Jarrett sniffed, “when the Republican Party forces out a moderate Republican and it says, I think, a great deal about where the Republican Party leadership is right now.” It’s rather telling that the White House persists with this pointless marginalization strategy as Gallup polls show conservatives continuing to outnumber moderates and liberals across America.

As I pointed out in my Oct. 16 column, there was never anything moderate about Scozzafava. There was no fiscal conservatism to balance her social radicalism. It wasn’t merely that she was “pro-choice.” But that she was a proud recipient of a pro-abortion award named after eugenics proponent Margaret Sanger.

It wasn’t merely that she favored higher government spending. But that she supported the stimulus that every single House Republican in office opposed, on top of her support for the union-expanding card-check bill, on top of her ambiguous statements on the energy tax-imposing cap-and-trade bill.

Newt Gingrich, who foolishly stood with Scozzafava until she threw herself under the bus over the weekend, piously invoked Reagan and condemned the extreme “purism” of unruly conservatives who wouldn’t keep quiet about Scozzafava’s radical Left agenda.

But conservatives are not demanding “purity.” They are simply abiding by Reagan’s own wise counsel in 1975: “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.”

The Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee threw an estimated $900,000 down the toilet for a candidate whose core views and political alliances undermined conservatism’s fundamental beliefs in limited government from day one. It was a reckless expenditure of the GOP base’s hard-earned money and a bitter tuition bill for a teachable moment on the perils of political expediency.

The days when immoderate political operatives and feckless Beltway opportunists could define “moderation” by their own warped yardsticks without pushback are over.

***

Making sure the message sticks: More rejected RNC forms from readers.

Guess it’ll be an early night for all the Democrat water-carriers in the media who have already filed their preemptive pieces downplaying whatever happens tonight after the polls close and the ballots are counting.

Here’s a bit of the Obama-as-a-factor-but-not-as-much-as-we-want-you-to-think analysis of exit poll results.

Politicker reports on the return of “It’s the economy, stupid:”

Forty-six percent of Virginian voting Tuesday, as Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds faced off for the governor’s mansion, say 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, 14 percent said taxes were upmost on their minds, and 8 percent suggest that transportation woes were most pressing.

“The economy as the number one issue probably bodes well for the Republicans in Virginia,” says CNN Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.

Here’s another Democrat screaming about GOP “extremism” in the NY-23 race.

The Hill shows Hoffman ahead at the finish line:

Jim Geraghty jumps ahead of the pack and calls Virginia for the Republicans:

With the polls in Virginia closing in one minute, the Campaign Spot Decision Desk gets a jump on the competition and declares the winners in the statewide races: Bob McDonnell wins the governor’s race, Bill Bolling wins the lieutenant governor’s race, and Ken Cuccinelli wins the attorney general’s race.

Early turnout indicates that Cuccinelli is the winner of the 2013 governor’s race as well.

In NJ, pollster Pat Caddell blows the whistle on Democrat fraud:

Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell blew the whistle Tuesday on vote fraud in New Jersey’s race for governor, citing “chicanery” in the bitterly contested gubernatorial race between incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican Chris Christie.

“I’m convinced Christie has the votes,” Caddell told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. “The question is whether he has a lead that’s steal proof, as I call it, with all the things going on.”

“That’s rather damning,” Cavuto replied.

“Well,” Caddell replied, “you’ve got to be damning when you see what’s going on. You know, I attacked Republicans when they were intimidating voters not to vote — the American people have a right to have their votes counted right, and not played with.”

Caddell, who has conducted polling for the likes of former President Jimmy Carter, then-Sen. Joe Biden, and former California Gov. Jerry Brown, pointed to unusual absentee-ballot voting patterns in some areas of the state.

Stay tuned.

***

Here are the live-updated Va. governor’s race election results from the Virginia Board of Electionsv.

GOP candidate McDonnell wins in Va.

With 80 percent of precincts reporting:

Robert F. “Bob” McDonnell 910,309 60.50%
R. Creigh Deeds 592,662 39.39%
Write In 1,442 0.09%

GOP sweeps other top Va posts: Wins for Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Republican Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli.

***

NY-23 election results will be live-updated here.

Watertown Daily News reports that four St. Lawrence towns suffered machine glitches that may delay vote tallying until tomorrow.

In NJ, GOP candidate Christie is crushing among independents.

***

Update: 8:53pm Eastern. Via Lorie Byrd, Obama claims he’s not watching the election results. He’s watching basketball instead:

President Obama is not planning to watch Tuesday nights election returns, Obama aides Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod tell CNN.

Obama is more likely to watch Tuesday night’s Chicago Bulls game than any political coverage, according to Axelrod.

The president’s senior staff have also decided not to hold a watch party to keep an eye on election returns as they come in.

Well, of course, since the results Don’t Mean Anything, there’s no need to watch!

Perfect symbolism: The American people speak across the country on Election Day. Obama switches channel from elections to…basketball. Deliberately not paying attention — just like he did with Tea Party protests.

***

10:11pm Eastern – AP has called NJ for GOP candidate Christie, but not seeing anyone else calling it yet. Meanwhile, Hoffman is trailing Owens with about 20 percent of precincts reporting.

NBC, Fox all call for Christie.

10:41pm Eastern. Latest on NY-23:

Owens 49%
Hoffman 46%
Scozzafava 5%

11:20pm Eastern. Voting machine problems create court order in Fulton County NY:

NewsChannel 9 has learned voting machines in Fulton County, which is a part of the 23rd Congressional District, have been impounded, after the machines were not working property today, the Fulton County Board of Elections confirms.

The county was forced to switch over to paper ballots.

They were not planning on counting any votes Tuesday night. We’re told by the Board of Elections, the paper ballots cannot be touched until the absentee ballots are opened a week from Tuesday.

The Board of Elections says they do not know how many people voted, but there are 22 districts in Fulton County.

It’s a squeaker with Hoffman “closing in:”

The Plattsburgh attorney has 57,050 votes compared to Conservative Doug Hoffman, a Lake Placid CPA, with 54,538 votes.

Dede Scozzafava, a Republican who dropped out of the race Saturday, has 6,982 votes.

There are more than 10,000 absentee votes to still be counted.

Owens now leads in Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Franklin, Clinton and Essex counties.

Hoffman leads in Lewis, Oswego, Oneida, Fulton, Hamilton and Madison counties.

Owens is maintaining a 48 percent to 46 percent lead.

Four precincts in St. Lawrence County are having mechanical problems and total results for the county won’t be available tonight.

***

12:23am Eastern. Hoffman concedes. Stand by for more post-race analysis.

Read and bookmark here.

For NY-23, check 73wire, The Other McCain, Riehl World View, and TCOT Report.

Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com has analysis on NY-23 polls and concludes:

…my experience conducting surveys for political campaigns, especially in Congressional districts in non-presidential year races, taught me the value of the vote history available on registered voter lists. More often than not, surveys I helped conduct based on such lists came closer representing the true likely electorate than media RDD samples which, like the Siena survey, disclose little to nothing about their likely voter screen or demographic composition.

Add to that the potential advantages of a self-administered automated survey in getting voters to provide more honest answers about whether they plan to vote and who they plan to vote for, and I find it difficult to ignore the PPP results. Hoffman looks like he’s headed to a comfortable victory.

Democrats and their media water-carriers got a head-start with this preemptive AP piece downplaying anticipated GOP wins.

So:

Tea Party movement? Doesn’t mean anything.

Nationwide government health care takeover revolt? Doesn’t mean anything.

Gallup poll showing “Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group?” Doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

If they plug their ears, stamp their feet, and say it often enough, maybe they can wish tomorrow and the conservative surge all away.

***

Notice I said conservative surge. Not Republican. Read and send Doctor Zero’s excellent essay on the Stupid Party to every clueless GOP leader you know. Excerpt:

The radical nature of the current Administration makes the idea of “moderate” compromise laughable. What’s the moderate position on freedom-crushing trillion-dollar health care and environmentalist legislation? They’re okay, as long as the Democrats pinky-swear to keep the cost under $800 billion? That’s the kind of promise no politician could keep, even if it was made in earnest. A moderate Republican is someone who lives in a state of perpetual surprise as he ponders the monthly bills for nanny-state government. What’s the point of electing people who are guaranteed to spend the rest of their political careers complaining about how they’ve been played for fools?

Too much of the Republicans’ “Stupid Party” strategy is based on the mechanics of getting people with little elephants on their campaign signs elected. They view the election as the conclusion of a contest, when in fact it’s only the beginning. A successful Republican Party doesn’t have to be ideologically rigid, but it should insist on candidates who possess an intellectual foundation of conservative theory, and the ability to explain it at least as well as the thousands of people posting comments on conservative blogs.

***

Brace for Democrat dirty deeds, led by — who else? — ACORN.

I noted earlier this morning the GOP’s need to purge its suicidal ACORN/WFP/SEIU alliances.

Last month, I spotlighted Republicans in Illinois who continue to take gobs of money from ACORN’s alter ego, the SEIU.

Anita MonCrief has a related must-read in the Hot Air Green Room on “How NY23 Revealed the Republicans’ ACORN Problem.” Excerpt:

ACORN is a Democrat scandal and it is hard to separate one from the other. Corruption is the overriding theme and it comes mostly from the left. Another particularly odd pairing continues to be the radical reformers of ACORN and top Conservatives and Republicans. The ACORN 8, a group of former ACORN board members, have formed a Scozzafava-like partnership with the Republicans. In attempting to expose ACORN, some appear to have ignored key facts and overlooked a pattern of withholding key information to coincide with opportunistic timing aimed at aiding Democrats. An example of this is the complete removal of two longtime Obama ACORN cronies from a complaint filed with the United States Justice Department last January by the ACORN 8. Madeline Talbot is described by Stanley Kurtz of the National Review Online as “the woman who first drew Obama into an alliance with ACORN.” And Keith Kelleher is Talbot’s husband, the Chief Organizer of SEIU Local 880 in Chicago.

Another example of the GOP ignoring the evidence in front of it involves investigative reporting by the National Legal and Policy Center, a group that “promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education and legal action.” The NLPC uncovered more on ACORN’s relationship with Scozzafava. The GOP seems quick to support organizations and people with strong ties to ACORN as long as they technically are not ACORN. Unfortunately for conservatives, the credibility being bestowed on such groups receives little scrutiny beyond the blogosphere and Fox News . Key ACORN opponents have formed relationships of convenience with little thought to the outcome. As the NLPC reports, even the unions are involved:

“The powerful New York City-based health care workers union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1199, also has endorsed Owens. But common sense says that if Mrs. Scozzafava is elected, she effectively will have established a Republican congressional beachhead for ACORN, who would claim its ‘bipartisanship.’ It’s not as if her own party will be against her. Top GOP members sending her checks include House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (Texas), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (California), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), and Rep. Peter King (N.Y.).

“How did leading Republicans, some of whom (like Boehner) have been ACORN’s toughest critics, come to endorse a candidate with a history of endorsements by its main political front, the Working Families Party?” (emphasis mine).

Good question. In NY 23, the GOP candidate selecters chose to ignore the evidence of Scozzafava’s ACORN tainted background…

…The question now is whether the GOP can overcome its fear of being labeled “racist” by the left and learn to respond to these attacks. Fear of that seems to be the tipping point for their ultimately disastrous relationships with liberals who wish to keep Democrats in power…

***

Learn your lesson, GOP. Don’t be suckers again. You can bet conservatives who regret giving money to the RNC and NRCC won’t be forking over any more tuition to the learning-challenged party elites:

The top-ranking House Republican told reporters on Monday that he regrets having supported former GOP House candidate Dede Scozzafava.

Scozzafava, the official Republican Party candidate in the special election in New York’s 23rd district, dropped out of the race over the weekend and then endorsed the Democrat.

“This lady clearly has as agenda that’s different than most Republicans; she was out there promoting herself,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, noting that he has encouraged all members of the GOP conference to support Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

All together now: D-U-H.

No surprises here.

Radical leftist Dede Scozzafava, the GOP NY-23 candidate who dropped out over the weekend, was an ACORN-embracing, Working Families Party-consorting, Big Labor crony.

White House political director Patrick Gaspard is a leading ACORN/SEIU/Working Families Party operative from New York.

The Washington Post reports that Gaspard played a critical role in Scozzafava’s endorsement of Democrat Bill Owens:

Over the last few days, Gaspard has also had a quiet hand in some of the good news to come Democrats’ way.

Steeped in New York politics, he played a pivotal role in the effort over the weekend to persuade Republican State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava to endorse the Democratic candidate in the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, two senior White House officials said Sunday. One senior official added that Gaspard was the “air traffic controller” of multiple parties as events in the district unfolded. Scozzafava, a rare Republican who who supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights, endorsed Bill Owens rather than the Conservative Party candidate two days ahead of Election Day, a major victory for Democrats in arguably the most closely watched contest in the country.

Gaspard is using his office and his power to meddle obsessively in his home state:

. Gaspard appears to have found it exceedingly difficult to tear himself away from New York politics. He still reads the New York political blogs and frequently corresponds with local New York reporters about local New York affairs. And while fighting political fires in his own back yard may be necessary for an operative with a national profile, New York elected officials and veteran political operatives have expressed surprise about the degree to which Gaspard has concerned himself with local issues since his departure, given all the national challenges for Democrats. Among other things, Gaspard got involved this year in the race for city comptroller and made rounds of calls to support Bill de Blasio, a close friend of his, in the race for public advocate.

Gaspard was just as involved in such minutiae at the height of the presidential race. In October 2008, as Obama operatives launched a massive national get-out-the-vote operation, Gaspard, then the campaign’s national political director, participated in local strategy calls opposing Michael Bloomberg’s extension of term limits, according to a person with firsthand knowledge of the calls.

This past September, Gaspard’s fingerprints were all over the White House’s effort to force Paterson, the first African American governor of New York, to withdraw his bid for reelection. The effort was sanctioned at the highest levels of the administration, but became a public relations nightmare when news of the meeting seeped out — and Paterson declared he would not quit.

“Patrick is making some difficult political calls that are in many cases sloppy by definition,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). “But the key thing is that most people who are affected by these things breathe a sigh of relief that he’s gotten involved.”

I repeat: Membership in radical Left circles has its privileges.

***

Purge the GOP of suicidal ACORN/WFP/SEIU alliances: Support Doug for Congress.

Hey, how did that six-figure RNC donation to the NRCC plus $85,000 to the New York GOP plus nearly half-million-dollar investment in advertising and other independent expenditures on behalf of radical leftist Dede Scozzafava work out?

She repaid the GOP by endorsing Democrat candidate Bill Owens. Some gratitude, eh?

“Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it’s about the people of this District,” Scozzafava wrote in an e-mail sent to supporters this afternoon.

“It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.”

I repeat: One thing is guaranteed at the conclusion of the NY-23 special congressional election: The Beltway Republicans who endorsed radical leftist Dede Scozzafava are going to have indelible egg stains on their faces. And GOP establishment fund-raising organizations will be the poorer for it.

Suckers.

***

TCOT Report: “The NRCC and RNC Just Spent $1 Million on Dede Scozzafava. This is their reward.”

The shadow of Big Labor looms:

At 10 p.m. last night – right in the middle of the Halloween festivities – Scozzafava’s husband, Ron McDougall, president of the Jefferson/Lewis/St. Lawrence Central Labor Council issued a statement through the AFL-CIO that he is endorsing Owens against Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman.

According to his statement, it basically all comes down to support of the labor movement’s top priority, the Employee Free Choice Act and its controversial card-check provision, which Owens and Scozzafava supported – much to the chagrin of the right – and Hoffman pointedly does not.

“This has been a difficult day for my family. But the needs and concerns of the men and women of the 23rd Congressional District remain paramount,” McDougall said. “As such, I wholeheartedly and without reservation endorse the candidacy of Bill Owens.”

“As a life-long labor activist, I know that Bill Owens understands the issues important to working people. On the other hand, Doug Hoffman has little regard for the interests of workers.”

“Hoffman’s opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, coupled with his support for the failed policies of the Bush Administration make him a poor choice to serve the citizens of the 23rd Congressional District.”