Posted by
Bert Chapman on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 6:11:41 PM
On the whole it was a good night for conservative political aspirations. The Virginia gubernatorial victory, while expected, was nice due to the mandate Gov.-elect McDonnell received. He will now have to deliver on his job creation goals. A very pleasant surprise was Chris Christie's victory in New Jersey's gubernatorial election. He'll face an acute challenge in dealing with that state's tradition of high taxes and regulation and systemic corruption. We should wish him well.
The defeat of Maine's same-sex marriage statute was particularly nice. It now means that all 31 attempts to foist this abominable practice on states have been rejected by voters even in particularly liberal states like Maine & California. The closeness of the results indicate that traditional marriage proponents still have a lot of work to do educating the public on the need to constitutionally codify male-female marriage.
The Democratic victory in New York's 23rd congressional district is disappointing but not surprising. The GOP party bosses in that district did an extremely poor job choosing a candidate whose commitment to core GOP ideology was very dubious. That district will not produce as conservative a candidate as many other areas of the country would prefer, but it still should produce someone who's generally committed to fiscal, social, and national security conservatism in broad outlines. Conservatives should back a candidate who actually lives in that district, is familiar with its history, economy, and political culture, and is actually selected by his or her constituents instead of being seen as a carpetbagger foisted by external interest groups such as the Club for Growth (who are generally good) or by out of touch party machine personnel.
Last night was a good start but more work needs to be done to develop effective and appealing alternative policies to those being propounded to by the White House that will resonate with voters in the 2010 elections.