On an episode of “The West Wing,” when the delegates at the Democratic National Convention failed to make a decision as to who would be their nominee, Leo asked President Bartlet what they were doing, he responded that they were, “eating their young.”
Democrats have a strong reputation for infighting and are routinely pilloried for being overly critical of members of their own party. Unlike the Republican Party where there is an expectation that one must embrace the mainstream doctrinaire agenda mind, body, and soul, there is room in my party for people who choose to not be sycophants.
There is a wide array of diversity in my party and those views are well represented. With such political diversity, there is of course going to be fighting among its members, but that is what makes the Democratic Party even stronger. I am no longer one of those blind Democrats who go to bat for anyone who has a “D” next to his name (There was once a time that I used any argument that I could think of to defend the Clintons). I also have a litmus test for candidates seeking my vote and will choose the candidate who best reflects my views, but is also the most able to do the job. Clearly that is not the Republican Party of today. They want a near unanimity among its members.
Those Republicans who have the audacity to have independent views are attacked as a turncoats. (By the way, America would not be America if not for liberalism.) Once they are destroyed, they are held up as an example to others who might deign to think for itself. No other example is more reminiscent than what has happened in upstate New York.
Dierdre Scozzafava, the Republican candidate for Congress in New York’s 23rd district, or as I should now say, the former Republican candidate for Congress, has dropped out of the race. A poll from Siena College reported that she was in third place with 20 percent behind Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and Democratic Party candidate Bill Owens. I personally do not care about Scozzafava because she is a moderately conservative Republican and I would not have wanted her to win the race anyway, but it is telling that many other Republicans did not believe that she was legitimately conservative enough. Just because she fails to pass the quota test on certain issues like card check, abortion, and gay marriage, most conservatives have relished in lambasting her as a liberal. (I imagine if I were more famous that Republicans might say that even the far left liberal Mario Carter is more conservative on abortion than that ultra left wing progressive Scozzafava.)
Scozzafava even recognized how far right her party has turned and made the decision to endorse Owens. Once again, Republicans are showing how ignorant they are and how they simply will not be satisfied until they are reduced to being nothing more than a core of radical rightwing extremists.
Those popular in the right wing community have fallen all over themselves in their attempt to line up to the Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Tim Pawlenty have all endorsed Hoffman. Even Newt Gingrich has been attacked because he chose to support Scozzafava. Apparently, Gingrich, the man who has claimed that there will be death panels within the public option and who famously labeled Sonia Sotomayor a racist is now too moderate for the Party of Lincoln, who ironically was a moderate.
It also says something about who these conservatives are willing to endorse because they believe that he sufficiently passes the test of Reaganism. Doug Hoffman is not someone whom people with any decent standards of ethics should line up behind. He is not even a resident of the district that he claims that he wants to represent in Congress. In fact, 99 percent of his campaign money comes from outside his district.
The Watertown Daily Times said that he had no “grasp of local issues.” (What could anyone who lives in the 23rd expect from someone who chooses to not live in the district that he wants to represent in Congress?)
While campaigning, he has claimed to be a fiscal conservative but that has not stopped from collecting a $479,000 earmark as a member of a financial hospital board. Initially, he did run for the Republican Party’s nomination but when he lost it to Scozzafava, he decided to be the Republican’s answer to Joe Lieberman. He embraced the support of an extreme right wing party. He watched gladly as a disgusting political outfit create a fake liberal organization called “Common Sense for America,” make dishonest claims about Scozzafava such as calling her, “the best choice for progressives.”
By the time this column is read, the residents of the 23rd will have already elected their new congressman. I don’t have any strong feelings either for or against Bill Owens at this point, but it is always a nice change of pace to see Republicans eating their young.
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