Success Breeds Respect
I’m not sure if the teabaggers will have much success in purifying their party, but it’ll be interesting to see how the Villagers will react. My guess is they’ll portray them as just folks exercising their patriotic duties, unlike those dirty fucking hippie traitors who ran a primary against the greatest man in America, Joe Lieberman.
Realistically, success buys respect in Washington. When the contemporary conservative movement got rolling in the 1960s and 70s, it didn’t have a track-record of success. But ever since 1980 or so the conservative movement has demonstrated, time and again, an ability to build national majorities around candidates who identify themselves with the conservative movement. The case for progressives is much weaker. But recall that Nancy Pelosi first took over as Democratic leader, the conventional wisdom was that the party was doomed. By winning in 2006 and 2008, she’s gained some respect from the press and if the House Democrats stay in power in 2010 she’ll earn more. But the fact of the matter is that Ned Lamont didn’t win. Howard Dean didn’t win. John Edwards didn’t win. And Barack Obama—despite efforts by fans to make him play the role—only very slightly flirted with the idea of playing the role of left-wing insurgent.
Which is to say that obviously coverage of NY-23 will depend in part on who wins. If the far-right succeeds in putting their man in office, that’s a feather in the cap of the far-right. If the far-right succeeds in shifting a previously GOP-held district to the Democrats, that makes them look silly. If progressive groups run successful primary challengers against Blue Dogs and then go on to win the general election, then they’ll look savvy and effective. If they don’t do those things, they won’t.
34 Responses to “Success Breeds Respect”
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November 3rd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Sure, but I think Atrios’ point is solid. The DC village persons tend to view strident conservatives as “authentic Americans,” whereas their liberal counterparts are seen as mean DFHs. I think the Rubio-Crist matchup, assuming Rubio wins the primary, would be a better analogue to Lamont-Lieberman than the NY-23 thing.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
The successes need some context; they don’t exist in a vacuum as political fodder for future elections.
Whether this looks “savvy” in the past tense depends on the future, and I don’t see how NY-23 works out well for the more-moderate Republicans in the NE and Midwest. This teabag stuff is simply not popular with them, and sniping some getable districts doesn’t change that (as opposed to Lamont, who was more similar to local politics). Comparing the two doesn’t make much sense to me.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I think that the cultural aspects of outsiders with Texan and southern accents dictating intolerant hard right values and telling the locals that their well-respected locally picked candidate doesn’t fit the orthodoxy and that local issues are for some reason inappropriate has been quite overlooked.
As the Republican party has been taken over by the hard right and become Southern, neither has translated well in the northeast. Rather than seeing this as some sort of inevitable hard right victory as the inside-the-beltway MSM seems only capable of viewing it, I see this as just another nail in the coffin of the Republican party in the northeast.
Let’s face it – people who live near Canada don’t like or appreciate their politics being dictated to them by people whose accents are mostly associated with slimey used car salesmen and television evangelists. Fred Thompson’s act might play very well in Tennessee – I doubt it will in upstate New York.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Don’t conflate primaries with general elections. Lamont won his primary election, and Dean did not.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
“I think the Rubio-Crist matchup, assuming Rubio wins the primary, would be a better analogue to Lamont-Lieberman than the NY-23 thing.”
NPR’s already touting Rubio as presidential material, so I think that only affirms Artios’ point, and make Matt looks stupid (”success buys respect in Washington?” Really? I guess that explains why everything is still bad for Obama, even after historic success last November. Sheesh.).
Money buys respect in Washington, Matt. Those calling you a tool of the establishment will be proven indisputably correct if you continue to pretend otherwise.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
with the qualification that the only “success” that counts is success at getting elected, with “success” at governing counting for precisely nothing. perfect for Republicans.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
But, but wait – all spring and summer you guys told us the Tea Partiers were nothing but bought-and-paid-for bussed-in GOP fake astroturf. When they had a rally in DC in September you told us not to believe our lying eyes looking at pictures of the crowds because really hardly anyone attended.
Suddenly in November you, Atrios and Benen say that fake silly GOP rent-a-crowd Tea Party has become “an enraged, uncompromising, right-wing base that will settle for nothing short of everything”
I won’t get into self-respect and consistency issues. I mean I know who writes the paychecks for you guys, but don’t you get whiplash from having to turn narratives on a dime like that? “We’ve ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia!”
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
The push behind Rubio, who is pretty much unknown within Florida, shows the willingness of some to give up a sure thing in the general election (Crist) for what?? A Rubio win in the primary gives the Democrats a good chance to take the seat. I guess we can look forward to Sarah and Fred Thompson and Newt coming down to tell the Republicans how to vote.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Campesino, what a fucking moron you are. You nitwits told us there were 40 billion people (roughly, I forget what preposterous numbers you were using) at that event and the evidence showed that there were fewer than what you find at a typical NASCAR event. Did things change in the interim? Did people retroactively attend the event?
But I’ll give you points for chutzpah invoking Orwell while making an argument about rewriting history.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
If the far-right succeeds in putting their man in office, that’s a feather in the cap of the far-right.
But then the issue of representing that district begins. A fruitloop like Michele Bachmann can carry it off because MN-06 happens to contain a lot of fruitloops, and to misquote Roman Hruska, shouldn’t the fruitloops be entitled to a little representation too?
So, will the ‘bagger cleave to the moderate inclinations of NY-23, propped up as it is by federal largesse towards Fort Drum and the St Lawrence Seaway, or try to make a name for himself among the good ol’ boys of the GOP House conference? There’s going to be a primary very soon, and lots of bruised egos among North Country NY Republicans who had to deal with Dick Armey’s Army of Dicks over the past few weeks.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Matthew Yglesias : do you really have to dive in that dirty mud ? Can’t you avoid to reprint childish and vulgar people to make your case ?
This is unfortunately, because the rest of your post is sensible and I agree with it. Success is the only relevant thing here. While the establishment keeps lecturing them that only a so-called moderate can win elections and that it is suicidal in the long term, the conservative base have experienced the contrary for years (for them, even the huge defeat of Barry Goldwater can retrospectively be seen as the first step to victories).
And according to polls, “conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009″ :
http://www.gallup.com/poll/123854/conservatives-maintain-edge-top-ideological-group.aspx
First of all, it seems to me that this is actually the people from this particular county of New York who lead Dede Scozzafava to stop her campaign. She was losing, so she stops. Nobody in the GOP asks her to leave (even if some endorsed her challenger). So my friends, I ask you : where is the so-called “stalinian purge” (as one New York Times pundit described her political defeat) ? In a very conservative county, 11 local party officials selected a lady who was not a conservative (as ultimate proof, and despite all the money she received from the GOP, she went to endorse the Democrat incumbent).
Your narrative does not make any sense. Outsiders with “southern accents” (?) did not dictate anything to anybody. It would be a shame if a party was indeed in the hands of some, and if you are expelled when you do not agree with every single point of their doctrine (for instance, social conservatism). But here we only have a lady who was rejected by the local electors because she was liberal in a conservative district. Not a big deal.
But the partial elections of tonight are interesting : one year ago, we were told that it was historical, that Obama was transforming the political landscape, that conservatives were doomed and that this was the end of the Reagan-Bush parenthesis (because even a moderate like McCain lost Virginia, Indiana and other states). Twelve months later, the candidate backed by Obama will probably lose Virginia by a 2-digit number.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Yeah that successful conservative movement. Really going strong!
The problem isn’t the lack of success of the progressives, while there is a point there. It’s that the manifest failure of the Republican party precisely because of the failed policies championed by the conservative movement never seems to cause a loss of respect. They have put the Republican party so far in a whole even 10+ Unemployment won’t give them back a majority. The national media never seems to notice that fact and often treat the conservative position as the majority one even where it obviously isn’t.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
That’s just bullshit. Success breeds respect if you’re conservative. Success breeds derision if you’re liberal. Nobody ever respected Carter. And they only respected Clinton when he did conservative things. The press hated Johnson for his liberal policies, but they loved him on the war until Cronkrite gave up on him. They only conservative to get any derision was Nixon, but it took a long time before the rest of the press went against Nixon like the Washington Post did. Without clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing, the press never goes against a conservative. Look at Michele Bachmann, the press should have lynched her long ago, but they didn’t and never will. he’s apparently speaking the will of the people. But Alan Grayson says some over the top things that happen to be true, and the press goes into overdrive deriding him as a radical. There are two standards here. Conservatives can lie and be completely absurd about it, and that’s colorful. Liberals can tell the truth in an aggressive way, and it’s mean spirited. The tea baggers hold a moderately well attended rally and it’s a huge event. The gays hold an equally sized event, and the press doesn’t bother to show up. The press wants to avoid any claims of liberal bias, so it’s become so conservative that objectivity is no longer even a concern for them. Anyone who doesn’t want to bomb the shit out of brown skinned people on general principle is a dirty fucking hippie. Anyone who advocates bombing the shit out brown skinned people for no reason at all is a very serious person. Balance is when there’s one liberal, one moderate, and three conservatives. Any idea that this goes both ways is just pure bullshit.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
as ultimate proof,
As truly ultimate proof, a garden-variety upstate conservative, endorsed by the NRA and everything, was labelled a “left-wing radical.”
Ultra ultimate proof.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
And when a Republican is president, all the commentators on TV are conservative because the people have spoken and that’s what they want. When a Democrat is president, we need to hear the opposing view. Either way, the commentators are always conservative. Bless MSNBC for at least bucking the trend in half their programing. But even they need “balance.” They have the racist viewpoint from Pat Buchanan, and they have the someone sane conservative viewpoint from Joe Scarborough. And that’s half the day for balance on the “liberal” network. Balancing one for one is considered a liberal bias. Balancing it three for one in the conservatives favor is considered moderately liberal. Balancing it with nothing but conservatives is considered “fair and balanced.” It’s just bullshit.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
It was for her ties with Acorn etc. but the facts are there : 1/ the local people did not vote for her. Explain why. Either she was a very bad candidate, or her ideas were controversial (to say the least). 2/ She endorses the democratic candidate. Explain why. It’s indeed unpleasant when someone with a different cultural background(*) comes to tell the locals who they should vote for, but here we have a popular movement. No stalinian purge, nobody imposed by the outsiders, just liberal policies rejected by the electors. (*) By the way, it works in the 2 ways, Andy : in the South, they probably feel the same way when they are lectured about their values,…
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Atrios is still around? That sucks. I don’t recall anyone saying the Lamont people were “dirty fucking hippie traitors.” I remember a lot of people saying that the Kos Kids were naive and Lamont was a stupid, single-issue protest candidate. Obviously Lieberman sucks donkey cock, but the Lamont thing was a bad idea.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
You must mean when a person like Hoffman comes from outside the district telling the voters that they should support him.
She is actually more conservative than average for the NY delegation.
In part because of your “different cultural background” argument: Hoffman has no interest or knowledge of the district. In a certain sense she is supporting the “home town” rather than the outsider more concerned with the issues of a fringe movement of the national republican party rather than district concerns.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
What’s this “if” about running challengers against Blue Dogs? Donna Edwards, anyone? That she is already totally forgotten in such discussions shows that the mainstream media is never going to view progressives as “savvy and effective.”
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm
She was losing, so she stops.
Oh, Flora Borer, you’re so clearly not familiar with America or American politics.
When the ‘bagger jumped in, after Scozzafava was selected by local Republicans, he did so through funding that came almost entirely from out-of-state donors. Scozzafava wasn’t simply losing; she had her campaign coffers bled dry by the Club For Growth PAC.
NY-23 is solid Republican, but it’s not Texas Republican.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Paulie, and maybe if those people had actually helped instead of covering Lieberman’s ass, Lamont would have won. I remember a whole lot of people saying Lieberman was great on everything but the war, that he didn’t deserve to picked on etc.
It’s only been since 2008 that most of those voices shut up. You don’t remember reality as it actually happened. Most of the people who opposed Lamont’s run within weren’t doing so for the reasons you state, even if they like to pretend they were now.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I really don’t think that insider types really get that, to a lot of us, bringing up the Lamont campaign this way is a lot like saying “Hey! Remember that time we stabbed you in the back so we could help out our old buddy joe? Good times!”
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
First of all, it seems to me that this is actually the people from this particular county of New York who lead Dede Scozzafava to stop her campaign.
Actually, your post bears no resemblance to reality (anybody surprised?)
Here’s Scozzafava on why she withdrew:
” “The reality that I’ve come to accept is that in today’s political arena, you must be able to back up your message with money. And as I’ve been outspent on both sides, I’ve been unable to effectively address many of the charges that have been made about my record.”
Now here’s this little nugget from the Washington Independent:
“that 95 percent of Hoffman’s donations came from individuals and PACs based outside of the district. (Hoffman himself doesn’t even live in NY-23.) Only $12,360 of the $265,341 he’s raised came from potential constituents. Hoffman collected money from donors in 35 states. Of the total 146 donors, only 22 were actually from within the district he hopes to represent. The campaign’s biggest backer is the Washington-based Club for Growth, accounting for more than one-third of all fundraising ($83,260).”
So, since Dede Scozzafava stopped her campaign because she was being outspent, and 95% of Hoffman’s money came from outside the district – it takes a particular flight of fantasy to believe (nevermind argue) that “this is actually the people from this particular county of New York who lead Dede Scozzafava to stop her campaign”.
If you’re going to go around spreading this type of crappola, there’s really no reason to read your posts. Maybe time to move on and troll the next blog on your list.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Whigs, Republicans, Conservatives, but never a Democrat in this district.
So, explain again to me why this would be a “feather in the cap” of the GOP extremists supporting this candidate should he win?
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Soullite: don’t blame Lamont’s loss on some mythical elite that liked Lieberman.
Face facts — Lamont lost because he never gave a majority of Connecticut voters much reason to vote FOR him. He was a single issue protest candidate against the war, which got him the Democratic nomination.
Some people — including you, evidently — figured that was enough to win the general election, especially since (they also figured) having won the Democratic nomination, Lamont was going to get the enthusiastic and energetic support of hundreds of thousands of Connecticut voters who had barely heard of him, while they had been voting for Lieberman for years.
Not smart. Lamont needed to use the Democratic nomination to CONVINCE those people. Instead, he took ‘em for granted.
MattY comes close to a simple Rule: primary challenges to Democrats are only good, to the extent they lead to Democrats winning general elections.
To the extent they don’t, they’re bad.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:57 pm
“Face facts — Lamont lost because he never gave a majority of Connecticut voters much reason to vote FOR him.”
Face facts yourself. He lost because a bunch of Republicans saw a great chance to stick it to the Democrats, and a few Democrats voted for the tired old face they knew, even though he had already shown signs of shitting on everything the party that supported him for decades is supposed to represent.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:07 pm
LOL — do the math.
Lieberman won with 50% of the vote, Lamont got 40%, and Schlesinger, the laughably weak Republican candidate got 10%.
So, yeah — if the Republicans had tried to put up a stronger candidate, they might have given the Senate seat to Lamont. But it’s sort of a good idea to realize Republicans aren’t ALWAYS as dumb as progressives generally are. (Schlesinger actually got a LOWER percentage of the registered Republican vote than he did of the electorate as a whole.)
Lieberman got a third of the registered Democratic vote, which is pretty damning. These were the guys that Lamont absolutely HAD to have — and, except for the Iraq protest, he gave them no reason at all to vote against Lieberman and for his candidacy. Not a single reason to vote FOR Lamont, at all — except to protest the Iraq War.
That’s just not good enough.
And the real proof is the Independent vote, which ALWAYS decides elections in Connecticut, where Lieberman crushed Lamont 54-35%.
Enough with the ‘if only the Republicans had put up a better candidate’ or ‘if only the elite Democrats hadn’t liked Lieberman’ so much crap: the reason Lamont lost was… Lamont.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Not as Stupid as Will Allen Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Campesino, what a fucking moron you are. You nitwits told us there were 40 billion people (roughly, I forget what preposterous numbers you were using) at that event and the evidence showed that there were fewer than what you find at a typical NASCAR event. Did things change in the interim? Did people retroactively attend the event?
But I’ll give you points for chutzpah invoking Orwell while making an argument about rewriting history.
===========================================================
I have no idea how many really were at the 9/12 rally and don’t care. I mentioned it because MattY and the other JournoListers really DID care – the narrative then insisted that the Tea Party was small, fake, manipulated astroturf. Did I say small? Lefty blogs spent immense bandwidth during the week following trying to establish how few people were there.
Now, virtually overnight, this group of mindless puppets whose strings were pulled by the GOP and its allies has been transformed (according to MattY, Atrios, Benen, Frank Rich, et al.) into a powerful vicious extreme right-wing stalinist organization that’s tearing the GOP apart.
That’s the new narrative, and we’re all supposed to forget about the old one as it’s no longer operative. Deliciously amusing.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
“That’s just not good enough.”
Who the fuck are you to determine what’s good enough? Your numbers support my point entirely. Somehow, merely by challenging a completely principle-free scumbag like Lieberman, Lamont became a wild-eyed tool of MoveOn.org. That’s why independents, who vote based solely on media narratives since they don’t understand politics well enough to have any sense of their own political preferences or the politices that moght advance those preferences, supported Lieberman.
And, since Lamont was the, um, DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE, why did he need to provide a reason to vote against Holy Joe? What did Joe offer that was so appealing to that third of the Democrats, along with a majority of independents and Republicans? Seems to me your question cuts both ways. In a world where people vote the policies and not the person, Lieberman gets crushed.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:22 pm
…success buys respect in Washington.
By success, you don’t mean artistic success or successful marriage or success at Boggle. You mean power. Power buys respect. But electoral success isn’t the only or even always the main source of power. So the right is respected even when it loses elections, because it commands private power, economic power, ideological power. Simple.
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
That’s the new narrative, and we’re all supposed to forget about the old one as it’s no longer operative. Deliciously amusing.
Are you really that fucking dense, or obtuse, or disingenous, =======Campy=======?
Dick Armey’s gang and the Club for Growth are about as Washington-insider as it gets. And yet, these corporate wingnut-welfare whores now have at their disposal a small, vocal, heat-packing contingent of nutballs. There is no contradiction, there is no revisionism.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:35 pm
pseudonymous in nc Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
That’s the new narrative, and we’re all supposed to forget about the old one as it’s no longer operative. Deliciously amusing.
Are you really that fucking dense, or obtuse, or disingenous, =======Campy=======?
Dick Armey’s gang and the Club for Growth are about as Washington-insider as it gets. And yet, these corporate wingnut-welfare whores now have at their disposal a small, vocal, heat-packing contingent of nutballs. There is no contradiction, there is no revisionism.
=========================================================
Keep repeating, keep repeating, keep repeating……….and it MUST be so!!!!
Drink some more kool-aid!
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:50 pm
“success buys respect in Washington”
That must explain why McCain is on my TV every Sunday
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Campy =================> twat.