Frank Rich: The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York

[DFW]

Whole editorial here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01rich.html?th&emc=th

By FRANK RICH
Published: October 31, 2009

BARACK OBAMA’S most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

The governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia were once billed as the marquee events of Election Day 2009 — a referendum on the Obama presidency and a possible Republican “comeback.” But preposterous as it sounds, the real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada. That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy. But such farces have become the norm for the conservative movement — whether the participants are dressing up in full “tea party” drag or not.
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The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P. On Saturday, the battered Scozzafava suspended her campaign, further scrambling the race. It’s still conceivable that the Democratic candidate could capture a seat the Republicans should own. But it’s even better for Democrats if Hoffman wins. Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure. That’s bad news for even a Republican as conservative as Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose primary opponent in the Texas governor’s race, the incumbent Rick Perry, floated the possibility of secession at a teabagger rally in April and hastily endorsed Hoffman on Thursday.

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes. Writing in 1964 of that era’s equivalent to today’s tea party cells, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the John Birch Society’s “ruthless prosecution” of its own ideological war often mimicked the tactics of its Communist enemies.
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Whole editorial here:

[joeycola]

1. I do not think it wise for Democrats to use labels

such as in the headline. We just sink lower into the pigpool.

[DFW]

5. Rich is an editorialist, not a reporter

In this case, I think he is justified, especially seeing as how his analogy to Stalinists is accurate in this case.

[bemildred]

7. Ideological purges are a very "Stalinist" sort of thing, actually.

Although he certainly does rank among the foremost killers of his fellow humans that history offers, he was also one of the foremost exponents of the totalitarian state, ideological purges, show trials, and the whole sorry gamut of police state tactics to which we have become so accustomed.

[SpiralHawk]

2. NY's 23rd -- this is another view of that frontier region - Native View

Read all about it:
http://thecalloftheland.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/arising-from-sacred-land-aiming-to-the-future/

[Doctor_J]

3. Breathtaking in its accuracy and eloquence, as usual

k/r

[DFW]

10. Agreed. Frank Rich just gets better and better with his analyses.

I never cease to be impressed by this man and his writing.

[bread_and_roses]

4. I have heard that Scozzafava is more socially "liberal" than the D in the race

If so (and I do not know; have not followed this race at all) then let the nutcase win. Let the R voters in that neck of the woods get a great big mouthful of what their Party really is and stands for. Maybe it will be enough to sicken them. And the last thing we need in NY is another Right-leaning DINO.

[DFW]

6. My father's newspaper was in that area.

He wrote for the Watertown Daily Times. It is indeed a Republican area, has been since before Teddy Roosevelt.
Even so, the people from there that I have met, while conservative (classic meaning, not as in Fox) in nature,
are not fire-breathing nut cases, and probably are having a difficult time debating whether to vote Democratic
for the first time in their lives, or vote for a whacko who really doesn't reflect their views and values at all.
If the Conservative Party candidate really did reflect their local values, they wouldn't be sending in Palin and
Beck along with $3 million into a district that, under normal circumstances, would have handed the seat to anyone
running as a Republican as long as they could breath and blink their eyes every so often.

[bread_and_roses]

8. Yes, I understand all that

I live in Upstate NY, though not in that district, and am quite familiar with the dilemna of having Rs who are more "liberal" than the Ds on the ticket. My point is that the R Party is not - and has not for a long time, if ever - been the Party that most of these "Eisenhower Rs," for lack of a better short term, imagine it to be. It is and has been the Party looking out for the rich. And in these last years degenerated into the Party of the fringe Theocrats. Let them find it out. And let the conservative "D" lose- these DINOs (and again, up here in Upstate I'm quite familiar with them) rely on the activists, including Labor, in their Districts to elect them, and then go to DC and vote against working people's interests when it comes to money and power. Thus encouraging more Blue Dogs to run, get Labor support (and often Progressive groups too - Arcuri with WFP support, for instance). Labor and Progressives convince their R members to vote for the D, then s/he goes to DC and again, votes against our interests. Let the nutcase win, it doesn't hurt the Ds - they didn't have the seat anyway - and will encourage other nutcases to primary the R in "close" districts. Doesn't hurt us, and maybe will help.

[quiet.american]

9. K&R. (Why am I not surprised that Dick Armey's name comes up in this).

Excerpt from Watertown Daily Times Editorial on meeting with wingnut-approved GOP candidate Hoffman:

Mr. Hoffman had no opinion about winter navigation and widening the St. Lawrence Seaway with their potential environmental damage. He was not familiar with the repercussions of a proposed federal energy marketing agency for the Great Lakes, which could pay for Seaway expansion contrary to district interests.

A flustered and ill-at-ease Mr. Hoffman objected to the heated questioning, saying he should have been provided a list of questions he might be asked. He was, if he had taken the time to read the Thursday morning Times editorial raising the very same questions.

Coming to Mr. Hoffman's defense, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who accompanied the candidate on a campaign swing, dismissed regional concerns as "parochial" issues that would not determine the outcome of the election. On the contrary, it is just such parochial issues that we expect our representative to understand and be knowledgeable about, if he wants to be our voice in Washington.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091023/OPINION01/310239957/-1/OPINION">Entire scathing piece here

[Doctor_J]

11. Typical right-wing thinking "Who cares if he knows about the issues?"

Palin doesn't know what countries comprise North America.