The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Can You Say ‘Mandate’?

Posted on | November 24, 2010 | 4 Comments

Sam Foster at American Thinker does the math on the 242-seat GOP House majority and his colleague Bill Zwerger adds about the NY-25 race:

The vindication for the NY Tea Party comes from the fact that Mr. Maffei was a true-blue, Obama supporting, Pelosi controlled liberal, who showed a great deal of disdain to any constituents who disagreed with his statist view of government’s role. In fact, he voted with Pelosi 96.5% of the time during his brief stint in the House, including yes votes on the stimulus, health-care, and cap and trade.

Why didn’t Maffei understand that this was an extreme agenda that wouldn’t sit well with voters? True, western New York isn’t Alabama, but it isn’t the Upper East Side, either. I still remember the place where Da Tech Guy and I stopped to get gas and coffee before the election:

“I work 75 hours a week at this place,” said the owner-operator of a convenience store on State Route 41 in Cortland County. “All I ever get are bills coming in, where they’re raising the taxes on this and raising the taxes on that.”
The silver-haired small business owner’s diatribe had begun when I put a copy of the Syracuse Post-Standard on the counter and he asked, “Reading about all our political prostitutes?”
Obviously I was from out of town and he had apparently spotted me as a reporter, so I asked him what his feelings were about the upcoming election. “I’m not voting for any incumbents — all the challengers, that’s who I’m voting for,” he said.

People kept saying, as loudly as they could: “We’re fed up!” And yet politicians like Dan Maffei kept ignoring them. Then Election Day arrived and the people spoke with overwhelming clarity.

But even now, Democrats are trying to pretend that ObamaCare is so popular that Republicans wouldn’t dare touch it. That’s what the polls tell them — just like the polls told them Dan Maffei was going to win by 12 points. Da Tech Guy is exasperated:

We just had an election where Republicans running against Obamacare won more seats than anyone has seen in over 50 years and you are trying to tell me there is no mandate because of your poll?

Indeed, and if you want to find the GOP mandate, a good place to start looking is NY-25, as I explain in my latest American Spectator column:

Ann Marie Buerkle was outspent by a 5-to-1 margin in her campaign against incumbent Rep. Dan Maffei in New York’s 25th district. Maffei was a phenomenal fundraiser — of his $2.7 million total, the freshman Democrat collected more than $1.2 million from PACs — and the district had voted for Democrats in the past three presidential elections, delivering 56 percent for Barack Obama just two years ago.
When Buerkle first declared her intent to run for the seat, she said, “People looked at me like I was crazy. They said, ‘He’s got so much money. How are you going to beat him?'” . . .

Please read the whole thing.

Category: Ann Marie Buerkle, Democrats, Election, Health Care, New York, Polls

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