Election Night Post-Mortem : Victories In Jersey And Virginia, Gingrich Wasn’t Right In New York

Republicans have a lot to be happy about tonight. Obama and the Democrats invested a lot of time and money in backing candidates John Corzine and Creigh Deeds and both of those candidates lost. Corzine in the heavily blue New Jersey to a guy running on a fiscally conservative district.

Christie, who is now the Governor-elect of New Jersey, even won in Middlesex County which Obama won by 30 points in 2008.

But in the coming days the liberals aren’t going to want to talk about Virginia or New Jersey. They’ll want to talk about the New York 23 race and the Republican civil war that had Republican candidate Scozzafava dropping out and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman losing despite a bevy of high-profile conservative endorsements.

So what does New York 23 mean ? Was Newt Gingrich when he said this : “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenlyconservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices” ?

I don’t think so. Hoffman’s loss in New York 23 had less to do with him than it did with dissension among the Republican ranks brought on not by conservatives refusing to fall in line behind the liberal Scozzafava thanRepublicans like Gingrich anointing a liberal candidate like Scozzafava (remember there wasn’t a primary to pick her) and then trying to cram her down the collective throats of theconservative base.

Liberals will claim that Hoffman’s loss confirms their theories about the GOP moving too far to the right. Establishment Republicans will claim that it confirms their conventional wisdom about needing to run less-than-conservative candidates to win races.

The truth ? If the GOP had just picked a conservative in the beginning, and rallied around that conservative from the get-go, New York 23 would likely have stayed Republican.

As James Pethokoukis notes, the New York 23 race proves “that me-too, moderate Republicanism is a non-stater in [the] party. Hofffman will encourage more primary challengers and boost folks like Rubio in FL and DeVore in CA.”

Oh, and by the way, let the scapegoating of Sarah Palin begin :

Republicans have said that this year’s elections are a referendum on President Obama. That might be the case - I would also ask, might this be a referendum on Sarah Palin ?
The two Republican gubernatorial campaigns rebuffed Palin’s offers to stump. They won, and largely on independent voters. Doug Hoffman, the third party candidate in the NY-23 election who Palin endorsed, is by all appearances losing.

That’s not even remotely fair. Hoffman’s loss was due to bumbling the nomination process by the Republican party establishment. But with liberals and the Republican establishment coming together in a perfect storm of Palin hatred “conventional wisdom” will soon have her taking the fall.