Democrats protecting Republicans from smear jobs by small-c conservatives! Republicans endorsing big-C Conservatives! The governator learning what acrostics are! Interior versus the coasts! Yup, the orthodoxy war in the GOP continues.
Let’s catch up: First Gov. Rick Perry ignores his own repeated belief that politics shouldn’t cross state lines by crossing party lines to endorse Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in today’s New York 23rd Congressional District election. This has been seen as a split between the Republican Governors Association, several ranking members of which stumped for Hoffman, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which was sticking behind Republican State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava: But it’s not that simple.
Exhibit A: First, Scozzafava stands down from the race at the very last minute, issuing a very short message via her website that “to those who have supported me – I offer my sincerest thanks.” However, she has since confirmed to the Syracuse Post-Standard that she was worn down by the “amount of hate and lies and the deceitfulness” coming from her own party: That probably includes Rush Limbaugh‘s particularly distasteful assault (talk about tautology: Limbaugh and distasteful), which was so bad that Democrats have been calling her to commiserate. It’s now going to be interesting to see how the fringe right responds to House Minority Leader John Boehner (who would have been her boss if she’d won) saying of Scozzafava that “we accept moderates in our party and we want moderates in our party.” He and the Republican National Committee then endorsed Hoffman, while Scozzafava endorsed Democrat Bill Owens.
Exhibit B: Perry’s not-so-subtle digs at former Republican darling and one-time close political ally Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and his entire state. Remember the days when the actor (surely some mistake? – ed) could do now wrong, so much so that Republicans were talking about changing the constitution so that he could run for president? No longer. While the star of Kindergarten Cop has been hitting the headlines with hidden messages, Perry has been savaging his management of California’s economy by reprinting an anonymously-authored op-ed from Trends magazine ( a publication usually filed under “who the hell are you?”, and we’re waiting from a call from Perry’s office, explaining why they put out a press release reprinting an article with a major error in it. Texas doesn’t have a budget surplus, and Perry knows that. As his own bio admits, Texas has “a balanced budget,” although he glosses over using Federal stimulus cash to get there).
Of course, Perry’s claims that he’s the real fiscal conservative are predicated on 1: slashing taxes and regulations so much that businesses move here as a tax dodge and 2: tolerating levels of poverty amongst the population that seem barbaric to many observers. He’s gone after Ahnuld by name in the Wall Street Journal, so this latest attack is a little subtler. A little.
This article appears in swine flu.
