Institutional Loyalty vs. Individual Loyalty

Monday, October 19, 2009

HORSERACE, NEWT GINGRICH

Fred Thompson has endorsed Conservative party nominee Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava in New York's special election, and one of Fred's guys offers me some thoughts in response to my earlier post.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but would add one beat to your item: I have no problem with the RNC or NRCC backing whomever the locals have picked (I think there is a story there as to how Dede made the cut, and by the way, I'm not surprised that Hoffman, given his low key demeanor and lack of political polish, didn't wow them, either). I do have a problem, however, when so called "conservatives" — who were happy to claim no particular allegiance to the Republican Party when it would have entailed defending or supporting George W. Bush in the final three years of his Administration, and were proud to put "conservative principles over politics and party" — abandon the conservative in a race to endorse a Republican candidate who clearly is not a conservative or even a conservative Republican and may not, in fact, even be a Republican.

I understand why House members are loath to step out on Rep. Pete Sessions and the NRCC; they, after all, have elections to deal with a year from now. I understand the RNC's support for Dede, it is after all, tasked with winning elections, and she is on the GOP line. But Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee, among others, have spent a lot of time, energy and money attempting to persuade the conservative movement in America that they are our leaders. Their lack of support for the conservative in the NY-23 race leads me to believe that they either have little understanding of the movement (Romney and Huckabee, I think, don't have a clue), or have badly misread the mood of conservatives and expect their longstanding relationship will suffer little for an endorsement they can spin as "improving" the candidate's position on, say, taxes. I'm willing to give Gingrich a bit of a pass on this one. On the others, where many conservatives for one reason or another have had serious doubts about them, I think this reflects their truer nature. They are akin to the scorpion on the back of the frog. I feel sorry for the frog that he had to learn the hard way. But good riddance to the free-riders.

It's a fair point, and perhaps I should have been clearer in my earlier post, to defend Republican institutions for backing a subpar Republican candidate, not Republican individuals. Newt Gingrich hasn't been specifically assigned the job of electing GOP candidates, and has the leeway to decide the party would be better off in the long run with a strong showing by Hoffman. Obviously, he decided otherwise.

Gingrich justified his Scozzafava backing by pointing out she agrees with him on many of the key issues of the day, including her opposition to a cap-and-trade bill. I'm a little surprised to find that on Scozzafava's web site, there's no press release on the Gingrich endorsement, but they link to a Syracuse Post-Standard story on the endorsement.

10/19 11:38 AM Share