Sinz – knowing how much a primary costs, and knowing that local jurisdictions virtually never foot the bill for a primary outside of the regular election cycle – do you think the Republican Party should have stepped up and footed the bill for a mid-term primary in NY-23, rather than leaving it to local party officials to select a candidate?

But that would never have been possible, if the economy hadn’t been booming. A booming economy generated the tax receipts enabling the Government to pay its bills without borrowing.

I believe that now it is getting harder and harder for the American economy to grow robustly. We face stiff competition from India and China; our manufacturing base is hollowed out; the Internet boom has matured and reached saturation and is unlikely to produce any more skyrocketing wealth; service jobs and gambling casinos don’t produce goods of lasting value to make the country richer; our economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels, whose use must now be restricted to fight global warming. And in such conditions, the budget cannot and should not be balanced.

The GOP leadership were the ones who picked Scozzafava, a center-left Republican, to run in NY-23. So they clearly were NOT wedded to a “homogeneous idea of party positions,” at least as far as NY-23 was concerned.

It was “meddling” for the GOP leadership to anoint Scozzafava, rather than having a primary and leaving the choice to the voters.

The knee-jerk GOP critique of Obama on virtually all issues is that he’s a “dangerous left-wing radical.” You hear this from Congressional leaders, especially on the House side, as well as the conservative talkers Hannity, Beck et al. But this doesn’t even approach the reality: Obama has staked out moderate positions on issue after issue, much to the chagrin of the real leftists in his party. Just a few examples off the top of my head: Iraq, Afghanistan, gay marriage, bailouts, single payer. On each of those issues, the Dem base and the real liberals in Congress strongly disagree with Obama’s approach.

Continuing to call Obama a “radical” will probably work about as well as it did in the 90s, when the GOP’s stock response to Clinton was to label him a socialist. Extreme rhetoric like that did little to diminish Clinton’s popularity, and nothing to prevent his re-election.

I harp on this, mostly because it shows how disconnected from reality and conservative principles the “conservative movement” has become.

Palin/ Beck/ Limbaugh do not run around making arguments about how to fix the economy; unless one considers “tax cuts” to be the essence of reasonable economics.
Conservatism, as I mentioned in the earlier post, always seeks the reasonable solution based on evidence; which means that sometimes taxes should be cut, sometimes raised; sometimes the budget should be balanced, sometimes not;

The conservative movement is wedded to abstractions like capitalism and supply side economics, and considers any other solutions to be heresy, traitorous and inconceivable.

So as a conservative, I would argue that Omaba’s stimulus is the most reasonable economic policy I have heard. I only wish he would consider a Value Added Tax, or adjustment in the income tax, to increase revenue.

Your original point from your first point touched on something important. America is full of districts, represented by politicians who should be catering to that base. But I disagree with you that the polarization effect is due to local, rather than national, interests. Especially in the current GOP national party, there seems to be a concerted effort to ignore that Republicans around the country are not one-size-fits-all. A GOP voter in, say, Oklahoma, has basic conservative ideals of the national party but differs greatly with say, a GOPer in California or Oregon, on many social issues. Their representatives understand this (witness Olymipa Snowe’s indredible popularity in Maine, despite being labeled a RINO), and go to Congress with the intention of supporting the views of their constituents.

The current national GOP leadership, however, has an homogenous idea of Party positions. Its is their charge, of course, and their option. The problem lies when the fringe element in the national party starts making across-the-board demands on their politicians that are based on polarized priorities that have nothing to do with regional priorities. And meddling in areas where they don’t belong and don’t understand is a huge prblem too. NY district 23 is a great example. Had the original GOP candidate been allowed to run unopposed from the right, would she have won? Given that that particular electorate had elected an “R” since 1757, I’d have to say that there was at least a fighting chance. Instead, there was a factional split and the seat went the other way.

I’m not arguing who would be the better representative for the national GOP interests, rather, that the electorate had been sending a relatively moderate Republican-one that reflected the concerns of the local electorate- to Washington election after election. And when push came to shove and the choice was between a radically right candidate and a center left one, center left (and the Democrats) won. The electorate- just as the local GOP knew- rejects fringe in favor of the center.

Even while the candidates refused local media interviews, Hoffman involved himself in a media blitz with Beck, Ingraham, Limbaugh et all, all of whom have strong media presences in upstate New York and how FUN it was for the national stars to come out for him and bring Sarah Palin with them! But really-what the hell did they really know about the regional politics of the area? Not enough to even question the candidate they backed about why he lived out of the district he was running in. Do read or listen to some of those interviews…HILARIOUS in their fluff.

If the GOP wants to gain national strength again, it will have to go back to broadbase support for broad Conservative concepts (and support them with a matching legislative agenda) rather than narrow, zealous insistence that every GOPer in the country embrace the fringe. And it will stay out of regional political fights that it doesn’t comprehend.