There are two lessons from yesterday’s elections:
1. Obama is no longer the anointed messiah. His magic has faded and a lot of people who voted for him a year ago either stayed home or voted Republican in the gubernatorial races of Virginia and New Jersey. That is good news for opponents of Obama’s socialist initiatives. However, the 2010 Congressional elections are still a year in the future and the intensity of the Tea Party opposition against the government leviathan will need to be maintained by the grass roots tea party movement. There will be plenty of opportunities for opposition to Obama to rally. Improvements in the economy despite Obama’s policies and a failure by Democrats to pass any Obamacare bill this year (as seems increasingly likely) could create complacency among conservatives and independents.
That would be a mistake. Next year, Obama may double his efforts to advance his radical agenda if he believes that he won’t have the chance to do so again. Or he may try to relaunch his “moderate” pre-election image to ensure another two years of Democrats controlling Congress. In either case, continued opposition is critical. Only a resounding victory for conservatives in 2010 followed by forcing Obama into retirement in 2012 will stop irreversible changes to the fabric of the United States. Once a new government program is in place, it is almost impossible to roll back. If we can put a decisive stop to left wing policies in 2010, Obama will have the same choices as Bill Clinton in 1994. Continue pushing European sociliast policies against an opposition-dominated Congress or adapt, move to the center and try to co-exist with Republican dominance of Congress.
2. Conservatives can win, but only as Republicans. New York Congressional district 23 provided this lesson. A special election had to be held because Obama appointed Republican Congressman John McHugh Secretary of the Army. Republican county chairmen selected not a moderate Republican, but a liberal Republican, Dede Scozzafava, as their candidate. This created outrage among conservatives across the country and in the district and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman surged in the polls. Scozzafave quit the race last Saturday and endorsed the Democrat Bill Owens thereby confirming the claim that she was really a Democrat in all but label only – a DIABLO 
Owens won by a narrow margin. Better to have a Democrat win than a Republican who would have been indistinguishable from a Democrat. Yes, Hoffman’s narrow loss was disappointing. The lessons are that Republican party apparatchiks need to let their members pick the best candidate and third party candidacies almost never work. If it weren’t for third party candidate H. Ross Perot in 1992, Bill Clinton might never have been elected. In NY-23 there was no choice for conservatives but to support the third party candidate. In the future, let’s hope Republican party officials do a better job recruiting candidates that align with the ideals of the Republican party.
