CORRECTION:  Bill Owens did not vote for the Federal stimulus plan backed by Barack Obama in 2008.  He didn’t take office until the next year.  We regret the error.  Owens did later embrace the policy, advocating for stimulus projects in the North Country.

In a blog post yesterday, I copped to the fact that I sort of expected Democrat Bill Owens to lose his race against Republican Matt Doheny.

I called Owens’ campaign “quiet” and “lackluster.”  During the final weeks of the campaign, I was in room after room where the energy and audience support for Doheny seemed bigger and noisier.

When Siena’s second poll of the NY 21 showed that Doheny had closed a big double-digit gap and moved to within a single point of Owens, the three-year incumbent from Plattsburgh, I thought it showed real momentum.

But on election night, Owens was the one who surged past Doheny, picking up big margins in Clinton and St. Lawrence County, which lifted him to victory.

So what happened?  Here are five theories about why Owen prevailed.

1.  Incumbency really matters.  I don’t mean this in a cynical way.  Owens has drawn strong reviews during his first three years for helping constituents with individual problems, while also working hard on big problems, including the aftermath of tropical storm Irene, the Crowne Point Bridge crisis, and the regional economic downturn.  As a consequence, even many elected Republicans have endorsed him or described him as a good partner.  When early polls showed Owens leading by 13%, it was clear that his job performance had built a reservoir of good will.

2.  Owens had the centrist resume.  When Bill Owens first ran for office as a Democrat in 2009, a lot of people thought he was a Republican.  He had a strong record of helping boost economic growth in Clinton County.  After he went to Washington, he was careful to tack hard to the center.  Yes, he voted for Obamacare and later backed the Federal stimulus (which was approved before he took office).  But he also won a strong rating from the NRA and focused a lot of his attention on veterans and farm issues.  This made it harder for Doheny to tag him as a Nancy Pelosi liberal.

3.  Owens is establishment.  Matt Doheny tried to brand himself as the businessman in the race, but Owens has much deeper ties to North Country’s chamber of commerce class.  He’s served for decades on bank boards.  In his own law firm he partnered with legendary North Country state Senator Ron Stafford, a Republican.  And Owens himself has a North Country persona — less brash, less noisy, less young, less fast money — that’s much more in synch with the business community here.

4.  Owens campaign wasn’t that lackluster.  I stick by my argument that Doheny out-hustled Owens.  And the barrage of third-party money from conservatives was extraordinary.  But Owens built a big war chest and spent a ton of dough on campaign ads, including a couple that were highly effective.  He also quietly mobilized union groups to help with his get out the vote effort.  In the final days, he was supported by robo-calls from Bill Clinton and a big influx of spending from Democrats in Washington.

5. Owens faced a flawed candidate in a Democrat-friendly election.  In the past I’ve described Owens as the luckiest politician in North Country history.  This time, he won straight-up, without all the stars aligning in his favor.  But the simple truth is that Republicans are still suffering under a very damaged brand right now and tensions within the conservative movement are making it very tough indeed for even the best GOP candidates to prevail.  For all his good qualities, Doheny wasn’t strong or appealing enough to overcome those hurdles.

The bottom line is that Bill Owens has now emerged as the most influential and important politician in the North Country, and he no longer has an asterisk by his name.

If someone had suggested a half-decade ago that Owens’ political resume would grow to rival that of Stafford, his one-time Plattsburgh law partner, I would have told them that they were crazy.

But as Owens pivots from the campaign to tackle monumental issues including the farm bill and the fiscal cliff that threatens Fort Drum, he will be influencing decisions that will shape our region for decades to come.

Matt Doheny left the North Country’s political stage last week after falling at least 4,000 votes shy of toppling Democratic incumbent Bill Owens in the 21st district congressional race.

After three attempts at winning the region’s House seat, and spending at least $750,000 of his own money in this year’s contest, Doheny says he’s retiring from politics.

As the dust settles, I find myself circling back to the question of what happened to this once-promising, ambitious politician — a man his national party labeled a Young Gun.

What is it that prevented Doheny — a self-described moderate-conservative — from winning back a seat that once seemed like a safe bet for Republicans?

Here are six thoughts about what might have clipped his wings.

1.  Sheer bad luck.  If Bill Owens drew winning hands in 2009 and 2010, in the form of a nasty, divisive Republican-Conservative cat-fight, Doheny got the shaft.  His best efforts at unifying the center-right were stymied by bitterness and ideological disputes beyond his control.  By the time he was able to harness his side into anything like a unified force, Owens was already established as a three-year incumbent.  Doheny had also earned himself a fair amount of distrust from some conservative activists who felt like he got in the way of Doug Hoffman’s tea party destiny.

2.  An untimely resume.  Doheny wanted voters to see him as a straight-up businessman, but he made a ton of money on Wall Street doing the kinds of Bain Capital-style things that average citizens don’t understand and are increasingly leery of.  That CV might have looked A-OK before Washington bailed out Wall Street.  But now?  Doheny argued that skeptical questions about his business history were a kind of class warfare.  And he worked to brand Owens as a lawyer who didn’t understand entrepreneurship.  But in many ways the Democrat’s resume and history sounded more Main Street than Doheny’s.

3.  A cultural disconnect.  Matt Doheny was hard-charging, aggressive, forward-leaning, brash.  Those aren’t bad things.  But it didn’t always scan well. My sense is that it sometimes came across as glib.  It contrasted sharply with Owens quieter, more mature posture.  Doheny at times seemed more eager to talk than listen.  He sometimes answered hard, complex questions with blunt, one-word answers.  I’m not sure how that played with the moderate Republicans, women, and independents who decide North Country races.

4.  Personal baggage.  Doheny made a big deal of his decision to marry just before the election heated up, but I suspect that voters were still a bit leery of his personal history.  In 2004, Doheny was tagged twice for boating while intoxicated on the St. Lawrence River and Coast Guard officials described him as “uncooperative, very angry and combative.”  This year, Doheny was spotted in public with a woman other than his fiance, prompting the Glens Falls Post Star to question his “late-night dalliance in Washington D.C. that was videotaped and played up in the New York City tabloids.”

5.  That killer ad.  I’ve described Bill Owens’ campaign as “quiet” and “lackluster” and I stick by that description for the most part.  But there were a couple of TV spots produced by the Democrat’s team that I think landed serious blows on Doheny, in large part because they tapped into the narratives in points 2, 3 and 4 above.  The most effective was a spot called “Four Islands.”  I’m not saying the spot was entirely accurate or fair.  But did it do Doheny damage?  I’m guessing Yes.  Check it out.

6.  A shifting political tide.  Doheny himself has pointed out that the district’s voters tilted to Obama this year, making it tough for a Republican challenger to buck the regional trend.  I think it’s a fair argument.  But I also think it’s reasonable to point out that Doheny didn’t do much to distance himself from elements of his party that don’t play well here.  He was fiercely anti-union in a part of the world where unions are accepted even by many GOP leaders.  He made a big deal out of attacking President Obama and healthcare reform, and opposing tax hikes for the wealthy, even though those issues have complicated textures in the North Country.  Doheny, like a lot of Republicans around the country, bet the farm that average voters here were ready for a much more conservative line in Washington.  They were wrong.

I acknowledge cheerfully that this is all Monday morning quarterbacking.  There’s no prescience here.  If you had forced me to bet my nickel on one of these candidates last Tuesday morning, I guess I would have bet on Doheny

Given his defeat, the field for Republicans is wide open for 2014.  There are signs that Doug Hoffman, the Conservative candidate, may be interested in throwing his hat back in the ring.

Tomorrow in the In Box, we’ll look at how Owens won this race, and we’ll look at what it means that a Democrat has captured the North Country in a straight up contest with a sane, well-funded, centrist Republican.

Is this man really good for the future of the Republican Party?

I know this will be heresy to many Republicans, but it’s time — long overdue, in fact — for the GOP to abandon Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment.

“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” Reagan wrote.  “It’s a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.”

But that was in a different time, a different era.

These days, there are so many outright, full-bore crazies in the conservative movement that Republican leaders need to do some serious trash talking.

Even more, they need to do some gate-keeping.

How bad is it?  After Tuesday’s election, long-time Republican front-man Ted Nugent dispatched a series of tweets calling American voters “soulless fools.”

“What subhuman varmint believes others must pay for their obesity booze cellphones birthcontrol abortions & lives?” Nugent asked.

Donald Trump, meanwhile — one of Mitt Romney’s most visible surrogates during the election — called for “revolution” as the results were coming in.

“We can’t let this happen,” Trump insisted.  “We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.”

And then there was Bill O’Reilly, blaming the outcome of the election on brown-skinned people who “want stuff.”

“It’s a changing country,” O’Reilly said, his voice breaking.  “It’s not a traditional country any more.”  He went on to clarify that “the white establishment is now the minority.”

And then there was popular conservative talk radio host Neil Boortz, who responded angrily to the idea of congratulating President Obama on his victory.

“I would like to congratulate Ted Bundy on sneaking into yet another sorority house and killing another coed. I would like to congratulate Adolf Hitler on his invasion of Poland. I would like to congratulate the — Al Qaeda for their successful attack on New York City. I would like to congratulate the Ansar al-Sharia crowd over there in Benghazi for their successful assault on our consulate. Congratulate Barack Obama? I’m sorry.”

This stuff isn’t “conservative” and it’s not “principled” and it’s not the “real” America.  It is, to bend a phrase, crazier than an outhouse rat.  It’s bonkers.

When you have top-tier Republican candidates talking about “legitimate” rape and pregnancies resulting from rape being “God’s will,” it’s vicious and it’s unhinged.

When you have leading Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain calling for construction of a fence along the Mexican border that is “electrified, with a sign on the other side that says it can kill you” it’s ugly and nuts.

When you have top conservative voices calling the President of the United States “a retard” (Ann Coulter) or “Barack the Magic Negro” (Rush Limbaugh), it’s grotesque and lunatic.

When conservative allies blame hurricanes on gay people or earthquakes on abortion, they aren’t devout or fundamental or churched.  They are creepy and weird.

So here’s the 12th commandment for the Republican Party.  If you say crazy things — about “diseased” immigrants, say, or about women advocating for contraception being “sluts” — you are out.

O-U-T.  Persona non grata.  Done.  Finished.  If you babble on about the President’s birth certificate, or his secret Muslim faith, you are banished.

The GOP has a steep enough hill to climb, rebuilding its damaged brand, without being hoisted again and again on the petard of the lunatic fringe.

Taking this kind of hard-line on nuttery will be frightening for party leaders because they’ve let so many kooks into the big tent.

It’s also true, as David Frumm has pointed out, that a lot of carnival barkers are making kajillions of dollars by co-opting the Republican brand, joining what he calls the “conservative entertainment complex.”

It’s good business — damn good business — for Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Michael Savage to bounce off the walls and tell people to go out and buy gold and survival kits in advance of the coming apocalypse.

But it’s not good for the Republican Party.  Not by a country mile.

So where does the GOP start?  How about saying good-bye to Trump?  Or Nugent? Surely, the GOP is capable of that kind of baby step toward sanity and self-policing.

If not, then we will certainly continue to see legitimate conservative causes — and smart, sane conservative voices — eclipsed and deligitimised by the kind of people you wouldn’t trust to baby-sit your dog, let alone run your country.

The Republican Party’s brand new crisis in New York state is a metaphor for what’s happening to the GOP nationally.

In case you missed it, while Mitt Romney and Senate Republicans were getting spanked around the country, Democrats were also quietly making moves to take final, complete control of the state legislature in Albany.

Yes, the votes are still being counted, but make no mistake:  New York Republicans thought they had this election in the bag and were convinced, especially after this year’s redistricting efforts, that their state Senate majority was safe.

What went wrong?  It’s pretty simple, really.  The Republican Party has been outflanked in the American political scene, not once but twice, and we’re seeing the impact here in the Empire state.

On the right, Conservatives and tea party activists are increasingly well organized and dogmatic.

Republicans who don’t toe the inflexible line carved out by purists will be punished, either with primary challenges or with third-party attacks during the general election.

We saw this drama play out through the spring in the GOP national primary, with Mitt Romney swatting desperately at ultra-conservatives who were unelectable, yet who held broad appeal with many voters inspired by tea party rhetoric.

Even after Romney moved to center himself for the final push to the White House, fringe Republicans kept popping up with loony arguments about “legitimate” rape and pregnancies caused by rape being “God’s will.”

Here in New York, meanwhile, conservative Republicans went hard at moderates in the state Senate, unseating Roy McDonald in Saratoga county in the primary.

Then Conservatives ran a third party challenger against Poughkeepsie moderate Stephen Saland in the 41st district Senate race.

Saland’s crime against conservative orthodoxy?  The Republican supported same-sex marriage.  Without that challenge, Saland would have won handily.

In an interview with Gannett,  Conservative Party chairman Mike Long was unrepentant about attacking the GOP from its right flank.

“I want [Republicans] to keep control but I was not going to throw the principles of the party out the window for the purpose of keeping control,” Long said.

“That’s the lesson that legislators have to understand. They have to understand that when they vote—many times, not all the times—votes have consequences.”

Meanwhile, however, Republicans are also being challenged on their left flank.

The Democratic Party, which is less purist, less insistent on orthodoxy than the conservative movement, has been running more moderate candidates.

Many of them are pro-business centrists.  They’re following Andrew Cuomo’s lead, taking a progressive line on social issues, while embracing regulatory and tax reform.

Terry Gipson, the man poised to steal away the traditionally Republican seat in the Hudson Valley, is a businessman and a moderate, who campaigned on jobs and the economy.

No longer are Democrats offering up candidates in upstate races who have no funding, and who campaign exclusively on liberal causes that give them little chance of winning.

With Democrats willing to move to the center, the electorate in New York state is also becoming more and more Democratic.  That combination gives them a powerful edge in elections.

In an interview yesterday with NCPR, state Senator Betty Little said her Republican Party will have to change to compete in this new climate.

“I think [party leaders] have to look deep and look at where the country is going.  And I think they need to be a little more centrist than what they have been in this election.  They do need to be more inclusive,” she argued.

But in the months and years ahead, the path walked by the GOP will likely grow narrower and narrower. Welcome to the razor’s edge.

If Democrats continue to gobble up moderate positions — pro-business, pro-growth — while Conservatives continue demanding hard-line social stances — anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage — Republican lawmakers may find themselves toppling.

Indeed, we’ve already seen some talented, moderate Republicans leave the scene or change flags altogether.  Dede Scozzafava now works for Democrat Andrew Cuomo.  Teresa Sayward endorsed Democrat Bill Owens and Barack Obama.

Those are the kind of women who might have been the future face of the GOP.

Now, instead, they’ve moved on — weary of ferocious attacks from conservatives.  The fear for Republicans is that more and more voters will do the same.

[NOTE:  This essay first appeared in May of this year.  I've posted it again here with a few small additions.]

I’ve reported here repeatedly that the Democratic Party is riding a long-term wave of demographic and cultural trends that bode well for its future.

A more urban, multi-ethnic, women-empowered society — and those are all measurable, real-world changes our nation is experiencing right now — will almost certainly benefit the party of Obama and Pelosi.

But as we head into the crucible of the 2012 election, there is still a massive, gaping omission in the story that the Democrats are telling to voters, one they will need to remedy if they are to become the party of the future.

Put simply, Democrats need to explain how they will pay for the government which they believe America wants and needs.

Before I explain what I mean, let me detour for a moment to point out that Democrats don’t need to spend much time or energy arguing in favor of their vision of “big” government.

By overwhelming margins, Americans support all the big-ticket items that make up about 90% of the US budget, from Social Security to Medicare and Medicaid, to education, the military and homeland security.

Yes, we all grumble about pork and waste.  But that’s just the normal bird-dogging of citizens who, quite reasonably, want to get good value for our tax dollars.

There is no evidence that voters have bought into the broader, conservative, Ron-Paul-esque notion that the fabric of government itself needs to be unraveled or dismantled.

When pressed, Americans are even pretty comfortable with the idea that there should be an appropriate safety net, to help citizens who stumble, or fall into poverty, especially if they are children or senior citizens.

And we also want — indeed, we demand — a robust network of police and first responders.

The big question, then, isn’t what government should look like in the future.  The real question — and, yes, I lay this predominately at the feet of Democrats — is how to pay for it.  How to sustain it over the long term.

[Why do Democrats' carry this burden?  Because they are, for the moment, the political movement that supports maintaining something that looks more or less like the status quo.  The modern Republican Party does not -- which is one reason they lost big last week.]

Currently, roughly half of all US spending is borrowed.  Which means that any vision for a long-term, stable government on the scale that Democrats (and their constituents) want will have to include some enormous changes.

Some cherished services will almost certainly have to be cut, not because leaders oppose them ideologically but because they are just too expensive.

I’m guessing that in the future people probably won’t be able to retire at age 65 and draw government checks for the next quarter century of their lives.

[I'm also guessing that a moment is coming when Americans will no longer feel comfortable spending more on our military than the next five most powerful nations combined.]

Other services will have to be provided more cheaply, either by allowing the private sector to deliver them (not always the solution, but in some cases it might help) or by demanding concessions from public employees.

(The era of lifetime health insurance and pensions ended long ago for private sector workers, and I’m betting the time has come for public sector workers to see a big change as well.)

We will also have to generate a lot more revenue.  Some of that will come from growth, as the economy bounces back, but it’s also time to level with the American people:  all of us will have to pay more if this is really the government we want.

Taxing rich people won’t get us there.

The short-term reality, of course, is that Republicans will block enactment of any vision that achieves a sustainable balance.  They’ll argue that even when balanced with spending cuts, any new tax revenues are a socialist scourge.

But that doesn’t mean Democrats can’t or shouldn’t lay out what their plan looks like.

Some on the left will point out that Republicans have also quietly embraced big government, and done little to bring down our national debt.  This is true.

Most economists believe the various budgets put forward by GOP leaders over the last year would grow rather than shrink the long-term deficit, because of massive tax cuts that aren’t off-set by spending cuts, and because of plans to grow the military.

But fair or not, the identity and core values of the Republican Party aren’t linked to the health, quality, and sustainability of the Federal government.

On the contrary.  Many conservatives would be quite cheerful seeing even good programs cut or eliminated, even if it requires insolvency to get us there.

So for better or worse, Democrats carry the torch of the government model created during the New Deal.  They will be the ones to figure out how to pay for it, and put it on an even keel, or no one will.

Until President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put forward that vision, they will remain vulnerable to the suggestion that their vision, no matter how laudable or popular, is simply a pipe dream.

And right now, that pipe dream is adding about $1 trillion a year to the national debt.