Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
News from the election in New York spells trouble for any kind of sweeping entitlement reform. From the NYTimes:
Democrats scored an upset in one of New York’s most conservative congressional districts on Tuesday, dealing a blow to the national Republican Party in a race that largely turned on the party’s plan to overhaul Medicare.
The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans, who questioned whether the party should rethink its commitment to the Medicare plan, which appears to have become a liability as 2012 elections loom.
Two months ago, the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, was considered an all-but-certain loser. But Ms. Hochul seized on her Republican rival’s embrace of the proposal from Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, to overhaul Medicare, and she never let up.
With 66 percent of the precincts reporting, Ms. Hochul led with 48 percent of the vote, to 43 percent for the Republican candidate, Jane L. Corwin.
John Podhoretz, as usual, figures it out. From the excellent Commentary blog:
All signs right now suggest the Democrats have taken away a Republican House seat in a special election in upstate New York after a particularly screwy race. And great efforts are already underway to explain the GOP defeat on the House budget plan pushed by the remarkable Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. Democrats and their proxies were deceitful about the details of the Ryan plan, scaring seniors about how Medicare would change for them when in fact it will be preserved for all current recipients. Those scare tactics seem to have worked to some degree.
And then he connects the dots:
A great many people have been looking at Paul Ryan and seeing the perfect presidential antidote to Barack Obama. Last year, watching Ryan tussle with the president, we all saw a superstar politician in the making. And some, like my friends Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer and Rich Lowry, have been saying up until today that Ryan might and should get in. I don’t think that idea is viable now, given the real questions that will be posed about whether Ryan’s budget proposal is an electoral liability.
This is one of those life-isn’t-fair occasions that characterize politics. What Ryan did in drawing up his budget plan was brave, visionary, and direct, and therefore highly controversial. And the words “controversial” and “successful presidential candidate” do not mix.
John may be right about the politics. I'm not so sure, myself. But he's certainly right about the nasty, meretricious campaign run by the Democrats in NY26. And he's also right that this is a sneak preview of the Obama '12 campaign.
The question is, are the Republicans going to roll over and take it? Are they going to weasel-word their own proposal?
Or are they going to double down? Despite the bad rumblings and storm warnings out of NY26.
I hope they double down.
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May '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
It does show that lying works. We knew that. The Fate of the republic is at stake, and we need to double down.
Who says you are a squish, Rob? I don't think so.
May '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
I hope they triple and quadruple down!
Aug '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
Once you go on the dole and others are paying you bills, it's hard to go back to paying for anything yourself. The fact is that seniors -- especially baby boomers -- have a lion's share of the wealth in the country and they receive the lion's share of entitlements as well.
It's crap. It's unjust that I have to work and pay taxes so that someone -- and I don't care if it is merely one person -- can get benefits that I can't afford myself. Poorer people than me get free preschool. Richer people -- though older -- get cheap/free healthcare while I pay $900 a month just to insure my family.
Entitlement programs kill mixed regimes (by which I mean Republican Democracies) -- even Aristotle understood this. He was right then, and it's still true today.
Jul '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
Rob, here's my take, 7 minutes apart from yours.
I think reading national trends into one quirky New York district is a stretch. But I also think it should instruct Republicans that they have a lot of voter-education to do
Oct '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
I agree. The future of the Republic depends on the federal government getting entitlement spending under control.
May '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
Does one political loss in a blue state mean that Social Security and Medicare are magically made solvent?
Are we in for the return of the boneless wonders?
Oct '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
As Lady Thatcher would say, now is not the time to go wobbly.
Jul '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
"Democrats scored an upset in one of New York’s most conservative congressional districts on Tuesday..."
For those who don't know New York, a conservative area is one where gay couples are, um, encouraged to wear hot pants to their Whole Foods, rather than codpieces.
Dec '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
We don't have the luxury of punting. If the growth of entitlements isn't dealt with in the current cycle, it won't happen.
The only Republicans I will support, and won't actively work against, will double down.
Feb '11
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
When will the Republicans learn that Queensberry Rules don't work when only one side is adhering to them?
May '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
You can't combat lies without identifying them as lies. Ryan needs only say, "That's nonsense. You want proof? Here's my plan. Read it. Before you reject it, read it. You don't have to trust me. It's right there in black and white."
There's nothing polite or civil about responding to lies as if they are mere disagreements.
Even if it the Left's media is right that Ryan's plan is political suicide, we still have to try it. We can't afford to kick the can down the road. And Republicans would be wrong to violate the free will of voters by getting elected on anything other than their true intentions.
Oct '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
Rob, you must know as well as I do we're facing our own McGovern moment. Ryan may not be a radical. but the Tea Party demanded the impossible and Ryan decided to give it to them, despite (or perhaps because of) it's political toxicity.
The Republican base will move closer to the center after this; the Ryan plan will burn us that badly. The best we can hope for is for a huge popular backlash in the next two months, followed by our presidential candidates and most members of Congress repudiating the plan.
That way, with a humbled and recentrified base (I just made that word up), Republicans will have a far easier time winning the center in 2012.
Let's be honest. The base has been lied too for decades. Ryan is the first politician to be straight with them. It's inevitably a painful process.
Jan '11
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
NY-26 - Such are the rewards garnered when Republicans decide to salvage a Democrat social program before it has gone bankrupt.
Bush and Social Security. Ryan and Medicare.
Strike 2.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are Democrat programs. If you don't think so, ask a Democrat. He'll straighten you out fast. They are the crown jewels, the legacies of FDR and the New Deal, and LBJ and the Great Society.
But the future is not auspicious for these Democrat legacies. They are accounting disasters, are unsustainable and bankruptcy looms.
Let it happen - and blame the Democrats.
When will Republicans stop thinking that their mission is to pull Democrat chestnuts out of the fire?
Save DC schools? No, indict the Democrats who run them and tell America that this is what Democrats plan for the country.
Revitalize Detroit? No, make it a case study of Democrat urban policy and use it as a national hammer on Democrat incompetence.
Public sector union members? Make them the new version of Reagan's "welfare queens."
Save Medicare? Republicans should challenge the Democrats to introduce new taxes to fund it - and then unanimously vote them down.
Fight, or whine. Your choice.
Aug '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
Kenneth: Rob, here's my take, 7 minutes apart from yours.
I think reading national trends into one quirky New York district is a stretch. But I also think it should instruct Republicans that they have a lot of voter-education to do · May 24 at 7:54pm
How do you educate people who get all their news from the MSM?
Aug '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
As I understand it, what siphoned votes from Corwin was a "tea party" candidate, who may have been a phony plant intending to split the Republicans. So I don't think there's anything to be learned about the political viability of Ryan's budget.
Feb '11
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
Kenneth: "Democrats scored an upset in one of New York’s most conservative congressional districts on Tuesday..."
For those who don't know New York, a conservative area is one where gay couples are, um, encouraged to wear hot pants to their Whole Foods, rather than codpieces. · May 24 at 8:03pm
Not very many Whole Foods stores around here Kenneth and, it's too cold to wear hot pants at least until late July... A bit further downstate perhaps.
In most of the Upstate districts(NY23 thru NY29), the rural areas are slowly de-populating while the metro areas are holding their own. Solid red Upstate is now fading to blue. Formerly conservative areas are now controlled by our "entitlement-pit" metro areas. Closed factories, sub-divided farms, etc... Think California with really crappy weather. Just a long, sad demographic slide.
To say that the NY26 election suggests that the Ryan plan is a liability is a stretch. Union involvement and conservative voter apathy, absolutely. Fear of the Ryan plan, not so much...
Double down.
Mar '11
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
With 91 percent of precincts reporting, Democrat Kathy Hochul had 48 percent of the vote, Republican Jane Corwin had 42 percent, and the ersatz Tea Party independent candidate Jack Davis, who ran for office three times before as a Democrat, snagged 9 percent. It seems reasonable to assume that the candidate in Tea Party clothing siphoned more votes from Corwin than from Hochul. Without the spoiler or if Corwin defended her support of the Ryan plan aggressively, this election could well have gone a different way. Don’t read too much into this.
Apr '11
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
In recent years, Republicans have stumbled a lot in upstate New York. They lost and had to recapture NY-19, NY-20, NY-25 and NY-29. They have lost NY-23 and now lost NY-26. It's not quite as bad as Connecticut where Republicans regained none of the lost seats in 2010, but it is sobering.
If the Democrats are going to bring on the scare tactics, we have have to fight fire with fire. I don't think we spend nearly enough time talking about the alternative to the reforms that Congressman Ryan has proposed, the economic catastrophe over the horizon. The Democrats have painted their picture of the world with the Ryan plan; we must paint our picture of the world without it. We have to the abstraction and make it real. There is no other alternative.
The choice must not be the way we do things now and some new way of doing things. That's a loser. The choice must be between our plan and ruin. And people have to understand what ruin means.
Be sad tonight if you must, but sleep it off. We've got work to do in the morning.
Mar '11
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
We should put our best candidate forward - Paul Ryan. If the country votes for Bankruptcy, let em - at least we tried our best.
Oct '10
Re: Trouble in New York, Trouble in 2012
It's the Stupid Party, Rob, and it's New York. A bad, bad combination.