Conservatives process Tedisco loss

Another interesting response to Jim Tedisco’s humiliating loss in the 20th race is featured on the conservative website newmajority.com.

It’s David Frum’s brainchild, but the writer is Tom Qualtere, who has connections in the North Country.

Here’s the nut of his argument: About a quarter of registered Republicans are voting for Democrats on a regular basis.

And that’s enough to destroy a conservative movement that had engineered itself (in some cases through congressional redistricting) for narrow, 51% majorities.

Voters who are still registered Republican have simply stopped voting with their party in recent years and cannot even be convinced to come home for strongly assumed “safe candidates” like McCain and Tedisco. In fact, 25% of registered Republicans in NY-20 voted for Barack Obama while 26% claim they would support Andrew Cuomo over Rudy Giuliani for Governor in 2010.

It is because of these lapsed Republicans, in New York and elsewhere, that Washington looks the way it does right now. Yes, these “Obamacans” (or whatever we call them) should be focus-grouped and their reasoning thoroughly analyzed. And yes, the Bush-to-Obama transition has breathed vibrant new vitality into the Democratic Party that has not yet subsided. But beyond NY-20 and George Bush and Barack Obama lays a party and a movement in a coma, dying on life support, in emergency need of new doctors and new treatments.

Qualtere lavishes scorn on the national Republican committees who backed (and shaped) Tedisco’s campaign.

“While we hold therapeutic tea parties and keep looking to the past for inspiration and much-needed energy,” he concludes, “liberal Democrats are winning once-unthinkable elections.”