As the 2009 US election day got underway (on Tuesday in the US and Wednesday over here), Andrew Bolt gave his take on the situation in New York’s 23rd Congressional district:
Stand firm – and for something
Here’s the story. There’s a by-election for a House seat in upstate New York, and the Republican machine chooses Dede Scozzafava, a kind of Turnbull-like politician who could just as easily have stood for the Democrats.
The grassroots Republicans get upset that their party has lurched to the Left, me-tooing what it should be fighting. Sarah Palin gets upset, too, and decides to endorse instead the candidate who most clearly stands for her party’s values – Doug Hoffmann, who is actually the candidate for the tiny Conservative Party
…
The polls are tight, but Hoffmann still has a handy lead. The Liberals should read a profound lesson in this.
One minor problem:
In New York’s 23rd Congressional District, Douglas L. Hoffman, a little known accountant running on the Conservative Party line, conceded after midnight to his Democratic rival, Bill Owens, after driving a moderate Republican from the race.
Bolt was very wrong in several ways. Obviously, he didn’t get the result he expected – but I think there are some other problems with his argument.
For starters, I do not think “grassroots Republicans” means what Andrew thinks it means. The support for Hoffmann came from outside the district he was running for. Prominent Republicans such as Sarah Palin and Fred Thompson involved themselves in the race. Hoffmann himself does not live in the district. He also received support from national groups involved in organising the “tea party” movement. Hoffmann’s support did not come from the local grassroots Republicans, but was a concerted effort from the fringe of the party. Scozzafavva was the candidate the local Republicans had selected for their district. Rachel Maddow has a good summary and an analysis of the way this race had become a focus of the conservative fringe’s attempt to purge moderates from the Republican Party:
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You might look at the results above and think this is a close race, and that the Democratic Party candidate didn’t get a majority of the vote – if not for the Republican candidate staying on the ballot, those votes might have gone to Hoffmann. But it is important to note that this has been solid Republican territory for many decades – most of the district has not had a Democratic representative since the 19th century, and a Democratic Party candidate has not come near achieving 40% of the vote in recent elections. This should not have been a close race.
And that is where Andrew Bolt has really misread this election. The “profound lesson” is that you can have a party that stands firm and stands for something – say, total opposition to taking action on climate change, or blocking health care reform. But if the things the party stands for are at the fringe of public opinion – if standing firm on that position requires you to purge the party of “moderates” who don’t subscribe to all of those principles with the same fervour – then you condemn your party to the minority. This is something both the Republicans and the Liberal-National Coalition face – already in the political minority, if they follow Bolt’s suggestion they will inevitably reduce their membership, their share of the vote and their power. They might have the courage of their convictions and a coherent and passionately-held set of principles, but they won’t have enough support to do anything about them.
This is something single-issue or minority parties must come at from the other side – the Greens (of which I am a member) serve as an example of a party attempting to build its share of the vote. Is it inevitable that the tent must be broadened to do so? I am not sure about this. While a movement might be formed around certain core policies and issues, and while one strategy will be to convince more people that those views are right, winning over more people may mean accepting more diversity in views.
This raises some interesting questions about just how tightly a party must hold to a shared set of values. I don’t know exactly where the ideal balance is, but it seems clear to me that Andrew takes his quest for ideological purity too far. Just as the tea party movement drives the Republican Party towards the fringe, a push to turn the Coalition into the Tuckey-Joyce Party would do the same here.
(Thanks to reader Wayne.)
35 Comments
I actually much prefer that a party pick a set of values that it will represent, advocate for them, and leave it for the voters to decide if they agree or not – rather than simply try to trick as many voters as possible, even the ones they’re not going to represent, into voting for them. The problem with the “big tent” parties is that, as a voter, you have no idea what your vote will ultimately be used for.
When you vote for the ALP, you have no idea if you’re really voting for the Labor Right or the Labor Left. (Although smart money is, you’re voting for the Labor Right.) At least when I vote for the Greens, I know what policies they’ll advocate in parliament, and I have a pretty good idea which way they’ll go when something unanticipated arises.
The big parties will still have those debates, of course – but they have them internally, and the voter gets very little say in which side wins.
And all this adds up to a commentator who is convinced he is an expert at everything, and proving he is an expert at none of them. Climate change, political punditry, economics….the turgid list of his mistakes goes on and on, a bit like the man himself. “Sewer!” as Lord Redesdale would say…..
“At least when I vote for the Greens, I know what policies they’ll advocate in parliament, and I have a pretty good idea which way they’ll go when something unanticipated arises.”
Me too…
“And all this adds up to a commentator who is convinced he is an expert at everything,”
Or, to give him the benefit of the doubt he knows how foolish and gullible his fans are
Andrew really is trying for a job at Fox isn’t he, this is the same sort of spin that Fixed is using. Rush Ligmbah is very funny on this blaming everyone except themselves.
Well Jeremy and Rob, only because of Bob Brown in my opinion; without him the Greens would be all over the shop – like the Democrats were towards the end.
Interesting isn’t it that this GOP comeback has been dropped like a hot potato over at FixNews, now that it has turned out a little different from what was expected?
The other point that Bolt misses, and it is inherent in your analysis, is that the whole thing represents a fight within the GOP. The results illustrate how divided they are, and, as you suggest, it is their more centrist candidates (Jersey, Virginia) who actually won. You want a profound less from these results, that’s it.
Tim blair also had a post about the election – obviously he was beside himself with glee about Palin weighing in to the race via her facebook account. It should be obvious to so-called journalists like bolt/blair that if fringe extremists like Palin and Michelle Malkin, who have no appeal whatsoever to independent voters are publicly backing candidate A, then surely those independant voters are going to associate that candidate with the people promoting them.
“Well Jeremy and Rob, only because of Bob Brown in my opinion; without him the Greens would be all over the shop ”
Still if you’re a lefty who else would you vote for? Seriously I can’t in good conscience vote Labor, just look at how inhumane they are with regard to asylum seekers! Look how silent they were over Mohammed Haneef. How many millions have they just given to Australia’s richest schools? There is NO OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE between Labor and the Liberals (ok, there’s Tuckey, bishop etc etc)
Jeremy: That’s how things tend to work here, but it’s not how things work in the US. Over there, there’s very little bloc-voting – there’s not a “party line” enforced on representatives. This means that a centrist Republican can be expected to vote in a way that aligns with their own beliefs (see Simon Jackman’s ideal point estimates that show the spectrum of left-to-right views of US Senators).
Robj @ 10.
I decided to put my money where my mouth is. I joined the Greens last week.
This is why I would love to see Andrew Bolt run for politics as a Liberal. Andrew is torn apart by two very conflicting aspects of his own nature: 1) He is extremely opinionated and confident in the veracity of those opinions; and, 2) He is extremely tribal.
Why are these conflicting? Because 1) ensures that Andrew is unable to tolerate a differing opinon from his own, therefore he seeks to turn his “tribe” into what *he* thinks it should be and yet 2) ensures that Andrew has to belong to a tribe (political group). So, ultimately, Andrew will do exactly what he believes he doesn’t want to do: be destructive for and of his own tribe.
Despite what he says he stands for, I think Andrew Bolt tends much more to autocracy than to democracy.
DeanL @ 13
A feature that I believe fuels Bolt’s rigid belief in his own infallibility is the very blog he runs. This “million hits a month” malarkey convinces him that he speaks for this vast, mainly silent, army of old-school Conservatives who are in complete agreement with him.
The reality of his various positions on matters puts him in close proximity politically to the likes of Barnaby Joyce, Wilson Tuckey, and the witless Steve Fielding ( who surely must approve of Bolt’s closet Catholicism). If Bolt’s so sure of his position he should put up for the upcoming election in Higgins….or doesn’t he have the guts of Clive Hamilton? Probably not.
Bolt is a Redneck in the classic sense of the term.
The Rednecks were originally the Scottish Covenanters, who wore red neckcloths to signify loyalty oaths signed in blood, and were committed to theological purity above all possibility of practicality or victory. Before and at the climactic Battle of Bothwell Bridge, the Covenanter army became swept up in a debate about purging their own ranks of the “ungodly”. From Wikipedia:
“In the weeks after Drumclog the Whig army degenerated into a kind of mad General Assembly. As fruitless debates continued between moderates and extremists, absolutely no attempt was made to see that the men were either properly trained or armed….As the enemy closed in the debates at Bothwell continued as intensely as before. Many, tired and discouraged, simply drifted away. The Hamilton faction, now dominant, was blind to all appeals to military necessity, preferring days of humiliation to reflect on the sins of the church since 1648. In desperation, James Ure of Shargarton appealed for sanity: ‘We intreated them… to let us go on against our enemy, and let all debates alone till a free parliament and a general assembly. They told us, we were for the indulged [those scots who had compromised with the king], and they would sheath their swords as soon in those who owned it as they would do in many malignants [the enemy]‘ … the desperate attempt to create a Godly army continued with as much fire as before.
…As Gilbert Burnet, the Scottish cleric and historian, who was also Hamilton’s uncle, later wrote – ‘they had neither the grace to submit, nor the sense to march away, nor the courage to fight it out.’ ”
I can’t think of a better description of what Bolt and the republican right are doing than “sheathing their swords” in those who are trying to restore some kind of sense to conservative politics, rather than in their enemies. Rednecks all.
monkeywrench
The million hits a month facinates me, if you break it down you get 3300 hits a day, and if you presume that most people go to his blog at least twice a day, that means his audience is around 1700 people per day, which isn’t that many is it?
You might want to double check your orders of magnitude Surly
oops sorry he has 17000 veiwers, still pathetic
I blame the calculator that comes with Windows
Apparently LP regularly breaks the 1 million page views (i think it’s views) per month and they aren’t even attached to an MSM tabloid the way bolt is. He really doesn’t have a very large following when you consider all the MSM outlets he appears in.
Has anyone here seen the Conservative candidate, Doug Hoffman?
Jon Stewart had a couple of interesting segments, where Hoffman comes across as a slightly less than sparkling speaker, or even politician. To put it mildly.
Before the elections he had “Vote, or keep going about you day”.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-2-2009/indecision-2009—vote-or-keep-going-about-your-day
And after the election, the wonderfully astute “T*rd Polishing” – where he goes about smacking down all the inane post election analysis from party people and commentators alike.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-4-2009/indecision-2009—local-election-results
Or better still, just watch The Daily Show on a regular basis -because you get stuff like this, which is just hilarious!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-november-3-2009/indecision-2009—reindecision-2008-and-beyond
RAOTFLMGDAO.
Quick question – why are we covering domestic U.S. politics??
I can’t speak for Tobias, but what interests me is Bolt’s argument that the Liberals should become more extreme in their ideology and continue pushing away the moderates within their ranks, like the GOP are doing. As shown here, that isn’t an electorally successful plan.
Baldrick@21
We’re not, we’re covering Bolt covering domestic US politics, and making himself a prize bell-end in the process….can’t we comment on Bolt if he’s not touching on purely local subjects now? Can you think of any more inane ways to try and hit on this site?
Adam@20 I love Stewart, but since we moved house I had to temporarily ditch cable TV; can’t wait to get him and Colbert back!
Surly@16/18
When you consider that Pure Poison probably accounts for hundreds of bolt’s hits a day; then there’s the searches one can do in Boltopia looking for his frequent historical ballsups ( you usually have to read through about ten pages before you find the one you want) ….then the million hits start to look a mite inflated. But I think he sincerely believes this equates to a massive army of phantom warriors… much like that grey, rotting mob that helped out Aragorn in The Return of the King……
I was going to say that I write as my muse directs me, but Dave’s explanation makes more sense.
Tim is right – the in-fighting itself is a bad sign, as well as not a lesson that the Liberal Party needs to learn. And then there is the twisted logic – which seems to be “if we chop out the wishy-washy moderates in our party and just leave the people who are well to the right, the it will become much easier for us to convince enough moderates and independents to vote for us.”
On having a party with clear values, I agree – but just how tightly defined do those values need to be? How much diversity of views is too much? How much is too little? I think the answers to a lot of those things depend on what the party itself is aiming for – and the approach Bolt and the tea-baggers are proposing won’t work if the aim is to win a majority.
Dave went:
It’s certainly not in Australia with compulsory voting. Governments here live and die by median voter theorem. The further from the center you get, the more the general public thinks you’re a lunatic.
“Well Jeremy and Rob, only because of Bob Brown in my opinion; without him the Greens would be all over the shop – like the Democrats were towards the end.”
I don’t think so. The Democrats had the big problem of having two completely different sets of members. Those who thought the purpose of the party was to be a broker between the ALP and the Liberals, and those who thought the purpose of the party was to expound the policies that were middle-of-the-road when it formed, but had become comparatively soft left when the two major parties lunged to the right in the 1980s.
Almost all Greens voters expect the party to present a progressive social and progressive economic outlook on the issues. There’s a bit of tension in terms of just how much priority should be given to the environment – many of the lefties who left the ALP and Democrats (like me) are more interested in the social and economic issues than the environmental ones – but it’s nowhere near as fundamental as the Democrats’ dilemma.
Jeremy@26
In the end, the Democrats really just came across as having lost both its original impetus (”keeping the bastards honest” had such a hollow ring after Meg Lees’ GST backflip) and, as you say, it lost policy direction when it couldn’t construct a persona to counter the mainstream parties in the 80’s.
I joined the Greens because there really is nothing different about Rudd’s Labor and Turnbull’s Coalition. Both sides are mouthing platitudes about climate change, but it’s clear that neither are willing to get to the heart of the problem and wean this country off its high-CO2 lifestyle. And on social and economic issues, the criminal cruelty of both sides with regard to asylum-seekers, and the complacency of both on tax reform, are certainly issues where I get absolutely no encouraging signals from them.
As regards the original subject of this blog, no comments have been added to the Bolt blog entry since Wed. 4/11. I think Bolt would like this one to go away quietly.
Prior to the election Nate Silver had this to say about Scozzafava suspending her campaign:
Silver goes on to say:
While Silver’s predicted outcome is also wrong, at least there’s an attempt to base analysis on actual data instead of who is making the most noise – it is no surprise to me that both tim and andy were starstruck by Palin entering the fray. In their world this gave Hoffman a walk-up start. And i agree with monkeywrench: a sure sign Bolt wants a topic to disappear is the abrupt end of commenting.
MW@23 – mind your manners sunshine. Is this your site is it?
baldick@29
No, it’s not my site. This particular part of it belongs to Tobias, and I’m sure if he had an issue with my manners, he’d act accordingly. You’re still being inane.
{OK, we’ll leave it there thanks. There was a topic in this thread at one stage – Tobby}
Yeah, yeah, yeah, American electoral politics is all very interesting—but this is something that deserves examination, as it hints at behaviour that goes further than mere crap, biased analysis:
This is an example of the most important (yet possibly least noted) Bolt-watching subject, IMHO.
That is this: To what extent does AB want to bully/influence the internal politics of our alternate governing party? Just how successful is he? Might this bullying/interfering actually be our man’s least ethical & most anti-democratic pursuit?
I fear that people here give him a free pass to use his MSM perch to interfere in the conservative side because, well, Bolt haters here don’t much care for that side of politics, now do we?
Not at all. i often make the observation that bolt/blair/ackerman/most MSM rightwingers have hijacked the term ‘conservative’, using it to describe a set of wingnut positions that have little to do with conservative idealogy. They are simply John Howard’s cheersquad, and what they want for their side of politics is someone just like him – never mind that Howard as a so-called conservative
played politics withtrashed our country’s institutions and indulged in every excess frequently attributed to leftists. Yes bolt boosted Costello, but only so the Liberals would stay in government, and would become competitive again in opposition.The real problem of course is that the Liberal party listen to these people instead of what voters are saying they want.
I’m curious, Confessions.
Exactly how would you define “conservatism” then???
It was a joy to read mad Mark (somewhere a village is missing its idiot) Steyn’s equivocation on this topic.