A solid Republican performance

Now that the votes are in, some thoughts about the election. On balance, the election is a resounding Republican win. It is difficult to overstate the impressive scope of the Republican victories in the races for governor of Virginia and New Jersey. This is the first time in more than a decade that the Republicans have captures the three top spots in Virginia (governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general). The margin of victory was nearly twenty percent, and represents a twenty-five point party shift from the 2008 presidential election. The scope of the victory has also strengthened the GOP’s control over the Virginia state legislature.

In New Jersey, the race was closer, with the Republican governor/lieutenant governor ticket winning by four percent. But this is a state that is among the most Democratic in the country, and the vote represents a nearly twenty percent party shift from 2008. Of the previous four times that a Republican won the governorship there, three times the margin of victory was less than 1 percent. The vote totals were affected by the presence of a third party candidate who is generally thought to have taken votes from the Republican nominee. Based on his soft-liberal positions, I am not convinced that his votes would have translated entirely, or even predominantly, into votes for the Republican, Chris Christie. So it is probably justified to discount any effect on the final margin of Republican victory.

The one Republican setback was in the contested New York congressional district, where the Democrats defeated the Conservative Party candidate. This was a strategic error by the local Republican bosses. They selected a big-government, socially left Republican politician to run in this special election. The Democrats selected a “blue dog” who has come out against a public health care option. With the Republican candidate to the left of the Democrat, conservative grass roots activists turned to an unsuccessful contender for the Republican nomination and ran him on the Conservative Party ballot. This individual, an accountant named Doug Hoffman, was opposed by the Republican Party establishment, which spent $900,000 on ads attacking him and the Democrat.

Eventually the official Republican nominee’s political support collapsed. She withdrew—and endorsed the Democrat, even making campaign calls for him. That was not unexpected, as her husband is a left-wing labor union lawyer associated with an ACORN political affiliate. There were many rumors that she planned to switch political parties after the election. The only national Republicans who supported Hoffman were Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, and Tim Pawlenty. Only at the end did Speaker John Boehner chide the local Republican Party leaders and support Hoffman. Newt Gingrich was even later to the event, after having initially supported the left-leaning Republican nominee.

Despite all the campaign disadvantages, Hoffman still came within a few thousand votes of winning. I saw him on a TV appearance and found him to be a singularly ineffective speaker. Seated between Jeri and Fred Thompson, he came across as every stereotype of the nerdy accountant. I have read similar comments about him before and after the election. Nice guy, sincere and earnest, but uncharismatic, of middling intellect at best, and not well-versed in the issues.

What does this mean? Despite White House spin that this is not a referendum on the President, it is. Up to a point. These off-year elections are primarily driven by local personalities and local issues. In New Jersey, for example, there was a lot of reaction against the corruption that permeates the Democratic Party even beyond the rather lax standards of New Jersey politics, and against the incompetence of the incumbent Jon Corzine in governing the state and avoiding contamination from corrupt associates. Still, there are definite national connections, especially as the President campaigned for both gubernatorial candidates and did so extensively for Corzine.

The election is not a referendum on Obama as a person. He remains well-liked. It is, to some extent, a referendum on Obama’s performance and competence as President, but not the profound indictment that some Republican talking heads have tried to make it. What remains, though, is that there is a strong rebuke to the domestic policies that the administration has pursued. The reaction to these policies brought out the Republicans in stronger numbers than usual for such an election and gave the Republican candidates such strong support from independents. The Democrats lost big in two states that are quite different economically, socially, and politically. And they appear to have lost big in similar manner, which would show more than just local factors at work.

While the Republicans have reason for elation, they need to temper that with a dose of reality. The 2010 election is a year away. That is a long time in politics. Much can happen. Moreover, the Republican leadership still suffers from a certain cluelessness, as the New York race showed. In their defense, New York has an odd system for selecting nominees in special elections, and also has multiple parties on the ballot. It is to be hoped that in 2010, these ideological struggles will be resolved in the primary.

That said, I am not as sure as some conservatives seem to be that the Democratic victor in the New York election will be tossed out in 2010 by a full-blown Republican candidate. He will have the advantage of incumbency. He will vote moderately and buck his party’s leadership in a way that still satisfies them on crucial votes, but that he can use on less important votes to present a moderate image back home. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the Republican organization will conduct the recruitment of a candidate in 2010 in any less imbecilic manner. And I hope that the nice-but-in-over-his-head Doug Hoffman is not that candidate.

On a related point, the Democrats and their media allies are whistling past the graveyard if they think that third party challenges to regular Republican nominees will be widespread. The Hoffman race in New York was exceptional, due to a combination of odd election rules in New York, the unusual selection process for the special election, and the official GOP nominee’s status as an ideological outlier. Most conservatives in marginal districts know that they are better off supporting a Republican who is a bit wobbly but who agrees with them 60% of the time than a Democrat who agrees with them 20% of the time. But all bets are off when the Republican nominee agrees with them 20% of the time and the Democrat 40%. A good rule of thumb is for the party to select the most conservative nominee who can get elected in that district, a lesson that, one hopes, the leadership remembers in 2010 in its candidate recruitment efforts.

Another point for Republican candidates to remember is to soften social messages. Do not run away from them. Be forthright and defend them when they come up. Stand for principles. But emphasize economic and national security issues. With the exception of the last (which does not play a significant role in a state race), that’s what the successful Virginia gubernatorial candidate did.

As for the Democrats, they will likely puch their domestic agenda twice as vigorously. Look for the Left in the Congressional leadership to get as much and as radical of their program enacted before 2011 as they can. But also look to see some more compromise, as they cannot contemplate failure, despite the fury such compromise will produce among the more ideologically militant of their base. The Democratic Party leaders know they are likely to lose seats in the House. Just by historical patterns, and by virtue of the fact that the Republicans are within a dozen or so two seats of the absolute they can go in this country without an utter collapse, the Democrats could expect to lose at least 10-20 seats. Before this election, I would have thought about 20-25. Considering Tuesday’s results, that number for now looks closer to 30. In the Senate, the Democrats are all but assured of losing the filibuster-proof advantage. Because Republicans are defending more seats than are Democrats in 2010, I previously thought that the Republicans could hope to pick up at most a couple, maybe even three seats. While I still think that, by Tuesday’s reckoning, another one or two seats even sound plausible.

The Republicans still have a lot of work to do to translate the public’s distrust and fear of the Democratic Party’s dangerous left-wing domestic policies into durable support for the Republican brand. But one thing is certain. The Democratic Party theme about the demise of the Republicans and of conservative policies that was so widely accepted among the media after the 2008 election now sounds very much premature. Little works as well as the inevitable incompetence, overreaching, and arrogance of their opponents to allow a defeated political group to re-enter the contest.