America, meet the new de facto leader of the Republican Party.
And his name is Doug Hoffman.
Republican Dede Scozzafava announced this weekend she was suspending her candidacy in the House special election in upstate New York after it became clear polling had her falling farther behind her two opponents in the race, Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate, Hoffman.
Those polls saw Owens and Hoffman in a virtual tie, leaving Scozzafava to play spoiler after the more conservative Hoffman entered the race as a third-party candidate to challenge Scozzafava’s conservative bona fides.
In just weeks, the NY-23 election went from another nondescript congressional race to a national referendum on the future of conservatism and the GOP.
Since Obama took office, media pundits and political commentators have waxed philosophically and frequently on the state of the Republican Party, some offering elegies but most offering advice on its direction after its devastating electoral defeats in 2006 and 2008.
Moderation urged national GOP figures like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Minnesota Gov. and 2012 presidential hopeful, Tim Pawlenty, and even former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
Days before Scozzafava suspended her campaign, Gingrich warned his party about the direction he saw conservatives moving in throwing their support behind Hoffman.
“Well, there’s no question, on social policy, she’s a liberal Republican,” Gingrich told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteran.
“On... abortion, gay marriage, which means that she’s about where Rudy Giuliani was when he became mayor. And yet, Rudy Giuliani was a great major.
And so this idea that we’re suddenly going to establish litmus tests, and all across the country, we’re going to purge the party of anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent — that guarantees Obama’s reelection. That guarantees Pelosi is Speaker for life. I mean, I think that is a very destructive model for the Republican Party.”
When Newt Gingrich, the architect of social conservatism’s revival and the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the nineties, offers such a warning and calls for moderation as political advice, we’ve entered new political territory, the realm of the surreal.
Where we really are now is a much more interesting and possibly unforgiving place, a place where moderation be damned in favor of that old time conservatism.
Sarah Palin saw it coming when she endorsed Hoffman weeks earlier over Scozzafava.
Palin bucked her national party in favor of the endorsement, noting Hoffman’s conservative bona fides.
The GOP base rallied around Palin and blasted Pawlenty and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for refusing to offer similar endorsements of the real conservative in the NY-23 race.
Oklahoma’s own Mary Fallin, a 2010 GOP gubernatorial hopeful, offered views on the race, writing Hoffman to let him know his third-party campaign, “has reminded Americans everywhere that principles come before party affiliation.”
This weekend, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Hoffman had its full support and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions welcomed Hoffman “with open arms.”
Gingrich, too, took a new position on Hoffman, offering his endorsement once Scozzafava dropped out, as Pawlenty did only days earlier.
Thus, over the course of just one weekend, the Grand Old Party became the Uber Grand Old Party, ready to let American voters know once again what the two most pressing and important issues really facing the country are, the two musts for any candidate who wishes to gain traction in the party: be pro-life and be anti-gay.
James Cooper is a MA student in screen studies. He received his BA in film studies and political science from the University of Oklahoma.
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