In LeMieux's pitch for campaign contributions, the former interim Senator never uses the words Medicare or Paul Ryan in describing why Hochul won. No, it was because of that tea party candidate, who, according to LeMieux, is actually a "wealthy liberal Democrat" that's the reason the GOP is pondering why, despite the hands on support of luminaries like John Boehner and Karl Rove, their candidate lost last night in Buffalo.
Last night, there was a special election for Congress in New York where a wealthy liberal Democrat spent nearly $2 Million of his own money to create confusion by running under the tea party banner. The candidate, Jack Davis, had run as a Democrat in the same district 3 times before. As a result of these unfortunate political games, the conservative Republican nominee Jane Corwin came up just short in the vote. As conservatives, we need to fight back against these shadowy campaign tactics!
Our nation's massive debt, over-regulation, and out of control spending are issues far too serious for us to be deterred. We know the majority of Americans are on our side and concerned about getting our fiscal house in order. Now is not the time to retreat, but to redouble our efforts to send conservative fiscal hawks to Washington DC. Will you show your support for fiscally conservative policies by contributing $500, $100, or even $25 today by clicking here?
538 Pollster Nate Silver writes in today's NY Times online that that line of argument proves false:
Suppose that Mr. Davis and Mr. Miller were not running, and that this were a true two-way race between Ms. Hochul and Ms. Corwin. If Ms. Corwin had won all of Mr. Davis’s vote (and Ms. Hochul won all of Mr. Miller’s vote), she would have won 51-49.
That would still qualify as a bad night for the Republicans, however. Based on the way that the district votes in presidential elections, it is 6 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole. That means, roughly speaking, that in a neutral political environment with average candidates, Ms. Corwin would have won 56 percent of the vote and Ms. Hochul 44 percent — a 12-point victory. A 2-point win instead, therefore, would have spoken to a relatively poor political environment for the Republicans.
Nor is it likely that Ms. Corwin would in fact have won all of Mr. Davis’s votes. He ran in the district as a Democrat in 2006, and polls suggested that his voters leaned Republican by roughly a 2-1 margin, but not more than that. If you had split his vote 2-1 in favor of Ms. Corwin, the results would have been Ms. Hochul 51 percent, and Ms. Corwin 48 percent.
So Republicans can’t really pin the blame for this result on Mr. Davis.
Well, this Republican - George LeMieux - can try to anyway, in his battle to raise money against Mike Haridopolos and Adam Hasner for the GOP Senate nomination, I guess.
