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If the right can spread enough Fear and Smear to motivate the base, and the economy can remain stalled enough to diminish our side's efforts, they hope to take over something. The GOP has shown zero interest in actual governance these past two years, so you can reasonably expect Darrell Issa to issue subpoena after subpoena until Palin/Gingrich 2012 or Whoever is in full swing if they do gain the majority somewhere.
Here in New Hampshire the manifestation of this March to the Fringe from a Republican party that not too long ago wasn't insane has been a sight to behold, and is exemplified by the slate of federal candidates that has emerged.
John E. Sununu, widely seen as out of step with New Hampshire values, was crushed in 2008. So what did Republican primary voters do on Tuesday? They voted in someone to the right of him, and with the added imprimatur of the Sarah Palin Seal of Approval, a woman who was a huge drag on the McCain ticket. And almost beating her, a carbon copy (that guy with the long name, according to Bill O'Reilly).
In the first district, Republican voters chose a Walking Scandal. But it didn't matter to them - he is the voice of the Tea People. He will privatize Social Security, he will re-institute pre-existing conditions and the Medicare Part D donut hole, so they put him over the top.
In the second district, a place where progressives have a larger share of the demographic, the choice of Republican nominee is the most telling. Six term Washington Insider Charlie Bass tried really hard to reinvent himself into Mr. Fringe. Now, make no mistake - the man who voted to put the government into the decisions of the Schiavo family is capable of being as fringe as they come - it all depends on what his party bosses tell him to do at any given moment. But nobody bought what Bass 2.0 was selling, so Plan B was to hide for the summer and ride name recognition to an easy win.
But it didn't work out that way. Thoroughly unlikeable by even his own base, Bass barely managed to scrape by a radical right-winger who was totally broke, and had a similar radical right-winger taking her votes.
In other words, to be an acceptable nominee in today's New Hampshire Republican party you have to be completely unacceptable to the mainstream Granite Stater.
This is a party whose Chairman calls us "vermin," and whose worker bees attack one of their own (for voting to provide some of our citizens with the same rights the rest of us have) by sending mailers out depicting him "as a flasher at an elementary school."
The Fringe is knocking at the gates.
But here's the thing: if, after two years of throwing tantrums, the GOP does not take over the House and/or Senate in Washington, their party is going to break apart into pieces. They have no long term political or policy strategy on running the country. The goal is to get a foot in the door now, and figure it out later. If they fail at that, they will have shown the country at large that all that Party of No-ism displayed since January 2009 was as obstructive and unhelpful to the country's future as we on the left know it has been.
New Hampshire's two house seats and one open senate seat figure large in this outcome.
Now is the time for you to put it all on the table. Now is the time to wake up the drop-off voters and tell them what's at stake. Don't wait for OfA to do it.
And yes - and those of you who know me know what a thing it is for me to say this - now is the time to put away our differences and our problems with our own party for the larger contest.
We have so much to be proud of on our side in Carol Shea-Porter, Paul Hodes, Annie Kuster, and at the state level, John Lynch and his Democratic majorities. The Democrats' years in the wilderness have shown them that their time in power at the service of the citizens of the Granite State must be spent wisely and well, a lesson that has not been lost on those representing us. Now we must do everything we can to make it possible for their work to go on, and to keep the Fringe at bay until a day comes when a voice of reason re-emerges on the right and a true contest of ideas can happen again. If such a voice ever comes.
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