GOP Storms to Victory in Two of Three Key Races

Yesterday New Jersey and Virginia held their gubernatorial races.

Both states saw Obama post major victories in 2008 and had liberal tax and spend governors. Obama put a great deal of face time into both races towards the end, staking his personal popularity. At the end of the day the voters spoke.

Virginia saw all elected state officials go into Republican hands by very large margins. That is not unexpected in a time where people have growing anxieties about the cost, size and scope of government. Virginia typically votes Republican in presidential races, but went blue last time.

New Jersey represented the biggest win for the GOP. It has an overwhelmingly Democratic population of registered voters, but still returned a five point victory for a Republican candidate against a Democratic incumbent. Even more significant was the fact that a conservative third party candidate got 5% of the vote. Much of that would have ended up in the GOP column otherwise.

This should put the brakes on the health care deform and cap and trade legislation not so secretly meandering through the House and Senate. At a time when the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faces disastrous poll numbers leading up to his own re-election effort next year, moderates and conservative Democrats should feel strong in resisting his efforts to strongarm them. Nancy Pelosi increasingly represents political poison to many Democratic incumbents.

New York's 23rd congressional district special election provoked a great deal of interest. In the days before the vote, a liberal Republican nominee withdrew and cast her support for the Democrat as opposed to the third party Conservative candidate who was belatedly backed by the Republican National Committee. The Democrat squeaked by. Yahoo headlines trumpeted a Democratic victory in a GOP majority district, but anyone with a brain that paid attention knows that almost losing to the nominee of a party almost no one has ever heard of should not make Democratic congressional incumbents feel warm and safe.

Fact is that voters understand that left wing Democrats only promise higher energy bills, more taxes, and doubtful delivery of more government services. Cash for clunkers turned out to have benefited American auto manufacturers only slightly. If the government cannot run something like that properly, what chance does it have to run health care? Americans know that you cannot keep spending when you lack the money. The Democrats will either learn the same lesson or find themselves in the private sector within a year or so.